Category: today’s top story

Damien Hirst’s 2-day art auction has concluded, bringing “a total of $200.7 million, more than the auction house’s high estimate of $177.6 million.” The sum obliterates the previous record for an auction of works by a single artist.

Last year Lehman Brothers Foundation gave $39 million to more than 200 non-profits, including many arts groups. But with the Lehman bank closing, the foundation must close — eventually — because it no longer has a corporation sustaining it. Yet its assets are protected from creditors.

James Patterson “currently outsells JK Rowling, John Grisham and Dan Brown put together. This year he’s on target to sell more than 20m books in the US alone, adding to his $1.5bn in global sales, making him the world’s bestselling author by a mile.” But Patterson’s “scribbling” isn’t just a super-efficient brand, reaching for global dominance; it’s also a collaborative effort, honed and refined by a number of highly talented individuals.

“The San Francisco Opera has received a commitment from board Chairman John A. Gunn and his wife, Cynthia Fry Gunn, for a gift of $40 million. It is the largest single gift by individual donors in the company’s history, and is believed to be the largest ever made to any American opera company.”

“During his term, Gioia spearheaded a vigorous program of initiatives that quelled much of the criticism of the agency, especially from conservative groups. Also, through a landmark study on reading, he gave adult literacy an unexpected platform.”

Alexei Ratmansky, 40, “who will leave the Bolshoi at the end of the year, has agreed to spend 20 weeks each season at Ballet Theater for the next five years. He will choreograph at least one new work or retool one of his older dances each year, but will also take on a more general artistic role.”

“In selecting him, the Met seems to have opted for intellectual heft as well as continuity. Educated at Oxford and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, Mr. Campbell arrived at the museum in 1995 and built his reputation through much-praised catalogs that were both scholarly and sumptuous, and shows involving complex logistics and diplomacy.”

“Next week, Damien Hirst becomes the first artist to sell brand-new work at auction,” which has the art world buzzing about the possible impact on traditional galleries if artists begin taking their work directly to market. For his part, Hirst says that it’s about time the massive amounts of money that get thrown around at auction houses actually started accruing to artists themselves.

“Fans of indie music, for instance, were found to have low self-esteem and little motivation, but described themselves as creative. Rap enthusiasts, on the other hand, tend to think a lot of themselves and are extremely outgoing… The study’s most remarkable discovery is that refined lovers of classical music share a high number of personality traits with those who prefer rocking out to heavy metal.”

“Arts institutions across Italy are reeling from a sweeping round of budget cuts adopted this summer by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s four-month-old conservative government. More than $1.3 billion has been slashed from the culture ministry’s budget for the next three years.”