Category: today’s top story

The popular satirical web site “Stuff White People Like” has finally gotten around to skewering the lily-white world of classical music. “Though white people do not actually listen to classical music, they like to believe that they are the type of people who would enjoy it… [The genre] has used white guilt to exist for over a century beyond its relevance.”

“The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is expected to name as its next director the outgoing director of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Richard Armstrong, according to sources close to the search. Mr. Armstrong would replace Thomas Krens, who resigned in February.”

“The Bayreuth Festival board named Katharina Wagner and her half-sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier as new co-directors of the Bayreuth festival Monday. The decision will silence an extended quarrel over who should replace their aging father, Wolfgang Wagner, as head of the world-famous opera festival.”

“More than two-thirds of all paid-for downloads are bought from iTunes, and the store is now the biggest music retailer in the US, eclipsing Wal-Mart and other retail chains.” But “beleaguered record labels are stepping up their campaign to undermine iTunes, and rumours are swirling about a dramatic U-turn from Apple’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, over the way the iTunes store operates.”

“I would say that this has probably been the greatest planning fiasco in the history of the world. Daniel Libeskind’s prize-winning design, a flexible, schematic concept that established a framework of achievable, creative possibilities, has been progressively purged by political pandering and economic pragmatism. The Port Authority’s own brutally detailed report earlier this year gave some cogent reasons why a strong, unified vision of civic and urban renewal on a plane worthy of a great city could not survive.”

“Ticket sales at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe were down by almost 10% – the first fall in eight years. Bad weather, the poor global economy, competition from the Olympics and problems at the Fringe box office were all cited as factors in the downturn.”

Now Sao Paulo is creating a registry of street art to be preserved, exempt from Mayor Gilberto Kassab’s drive to eliminate “visual pollution.” The episode is sparking a public discussion of what constitutes art.

They are challenging their entire profession to take the high design standards usually reserved for elite clients and systematically deliver them to society’s most vulnerable: to design hospital rooms that give the chronically ill a sense of control over their lives, libraries that will make children spend hours with a book, or simple structures that grant working immigrants new dignity. In other words, to convince ordinary people and those on the margins that architects don’t just make giant, radical shapes. They can make giant, radical change.

“As Mickey turns 80 this fall, the most beloved rodent in show business is widely regarded as a national treasure. But he is owned lock, stock and trademark ears by the corporate heirs of his genius creator, Walt Disney. Brand experts reckon his value to today’s Walt Disney Co. empire at more than $3 billion.” But “film credits from the 1920s revealed imprecision in copyright claims that some experts say could invalidate Disney’s long-held copyright, though a Disney lawyer dismissed that idea as ‘frivolous’.”

“Robert Wittman is the ranking undercover art-crime investigator at the FBI — the Donnie Brasco of the art world. The 52-year-old has spent two decades impersonating shady dealers and befriending thieves in order to track down $225 million worth of missing objects, from a Rembrandt self-portrait to an original copy of America’s Bill of Rights.”