Category: today’s top story

“The cuts come as part of an effort by the DIA to trim $6 million from its $34-million annual operating budget. The layoffs involve 56 full-time employees and seven part-time workers and come from departments including curatorial, conservation, learning and interpretation, building operations, communications and marketing and accounting.”

“At a time when stock portfolios are plunging and many homes, even grand ones, have no equity left to borrow against, an increasing number of art owners are realizing that an Old Master or a prime photograph, when used as collateral, can bring in much-needed cash. … This little-known corner of the art business is lightly regulated and highly litigious. But this has not dissuaded clients who have included rich collectors like Veronica Hearst, art galleries and prominent artists themselves, including [Annie] Leibovitz and Julian Schnabel.”

“Police are to guard tonight’s Vienna premiere of a controversial stage comedy inspired by the saga of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who imprisoned and abused his daughter, after protests and appeals for it to be banned. Hubsi Kramar, the production’s director and star, has been forced to change its title from Pension Fritzl – a Cellar Soap to Pension F because of the outcry. Tickets for tonight’s opening have sold out.”

“New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person.”

In a speech this week, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami explains his decision to travel to Israel to receive an award. “In Japan a fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came. The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza.”

Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, talks about his Arts in Crisis initiative, now under way: “‘When there are economic challenges, the first things that staffs and boards cut are programming and marketing, and that’s the worst thing you can do,’ he says. ‘You’re guaranteeing yourself you’ll have less revenue next year, and that’s how sick organizations get really sick. That’s why I’m so nervous right now and why I’m doing this.'”

A proposal by Foster and Partners and manufacturer Aston Martin (better known for sports cars) has won the New Bus for London design competition run by mayor Boris Johnson. The rounded red double-deckers should be on the roads in 2011.

“Margaret Atwood has pulled out of the inauguraul Emirates Airline international festival of literature in the wake of a novelist being blacklisted for potential offence to ‘cultural sensitivities’. Other authors due to appear at the festival, including bestselling children’s authors Anthony Horowitz and Lauren Child, are now also reconsidering whether to attend.”

Wayne Clough: “Our job is to authenticate and inform the significance of the collections, not to control access to them. It is no longer acceptable for us to share only 1% of our 137 million specimens and artifacts in an age when the Internet has made it possible to share it all.”

“It is a vice few can avoid yet nobody craves, for to experience envy is to feel small and inferior, a loser shrink-wrapped in spite. … Now researchers are gleaning insights into the neural and evolutionary underpinnings of envy, and why it can feel like a bodily illness or a physical blow. They’re also tracing the pathway of envy’s equally petty foil, the sensation of schadenfreude — taking pleasure when those whom you envied are themselves brought down low.”