Category: today’s top story

“The Defense Department will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to ‘engage and inspire’ the local population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government.”

This summer’s outdoor pavilion at London’s Serpentine Gallery is, believe it or not, the first project Frank Gehry has had built in England. Time‘s Richard Lacayo swung by to have a look and take some pictures. (The surprise: No curves, just angles.)

“The governing board of the Screen Actors Guild is being urged to ballot its members over strike action. Contract talks between the actors’ union and Hollywood studios are at a deadlock, after the latest pay deal was rejected in July. Those negotiating on behalf of SAG’s 120,000 members are calling for a ballot. They want the board to back a strike, calling it ‘unavoidable’.”

HBO is developing a new series that we have to hope is science fiction: “Set 25 to 40 years in the future, when the precipitous decline of the U.S. leads to a mass exodus of its citizens, Americatown centers on a cluster of newly arrived American immigrants in a big foreign city.”

“Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world … not the United States…The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.” (The head of the U.S. National Book Foundation replies, “Put him in touch with me, and I’ll send him a reading list.”)

Attracting audiences and donors is an even tougher proposition with the economy in dire straits, but it hasn’t been easy since 2001. “The bottom line is that worries never left, experts say, so arts decision-makers didn’t need the current financial crisis to snap them to attention. There has been an ongoing urgency to face the new music and dance — not the old-fashioned waltz but steps unimagined before Necessity called.”

The conservative-leaning daily publishes its final edition on Sept. 30 after attempts to find new investors fell through. While “the paper… took political and socio-economic stances that were unpopular in a city teeming with Democrats,” many observers praised its local news and extensive arts coverage. But the Sun had a paid circulation of only 14,000. “The paper definitely carved itself a niche, but it wasn’t profitable.”

“Glenn Lowry, the director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, was the best-paid chief executive of a U.S. nonprofit art institution last year, with a total compensation package of $1.7 million in 2007.” The runners-up? “Peter Gelb, general manager of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, who had a $1.1 million compensation package and Michael M. Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, who made $1.06 million….”

“The London home of the publisher of a controversial new novel that gives a fictionalised account of the Prophet Muhammad’s relationship with his child bride, Aisha, was firebombed yesterday, hours after police had warned the man that he could be a target for fanatics… Three men have been arrested on terrorism charges.”

“His designation, announced last night by Kennedy Center officials, comes with a twist: Eschenbach, 68, also will hold the newly created title of music director of the Kennedy Center. In this role, he will work closely with… the center’s programmers on the kinds of interdisciplinary, themed festivals and projects that have become something of a Kennedy Center hallmark.”