Category: today’s top story

Monet’s 6-foot, 7-inch-wide canvas, “Le Bassin aux Nympheas,” dating from 1919, had been expected to sell for between 18 million pounds and 24 million pounds, said Christie’s. The auction house said the seller had been guaranteed an unspecified minimum price.

“He succeeds Jeffrey Weiss, who resigned at the end of February after just nine months in the post, saying that he felt that it did not allow him to focus enough on curatorial and scholarly work.”

“As a result of John Updike’s efforts, every school there will shortly receive 20 double-sided posters. On each side will be a reproduction of an artwork. Taken together, these 40 images are intended to trace the history of painting in the US. The campaign has not been without controversy. It strikes me that Updike’s central idea – providing 40 reproductions of paintings, free, to the nation’s schools – is needed urgently in Britain.”

“The minister’s announcement apparently foretells nothing less than the dismantling of Italy’s entire opera system, as currently based on a network of 14 state-supported Fondazioni or chartered opera houses — the 13 singled out in the 1996 reform law plus the recently added Fondazione Petruzzelli at Bari.”

Theatre de la Jeune Lune, which won a Tony Award in 2005 as the nation’s outstanding regional playhouse, is closing at the end of July. The performance company’s board voted Saturday for the closure. The company is $1 million in debt.

The Motion Picture Association of America said Friday intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement.

“There is a mindset that believes that the granting of a tax exemption entitles the government to control how the resources of the nonprofit sector are to be spent. This raises questions about the compact made with the American people when the income tax was first imposed. There were understandings at the time, one of which was that nonprofit institutions carrying out charitable functions would be exempted from the income tax.”

” ‘Watching television’ is a term full of assumptions that, after a half-century, are increasingly suspect. For one thing, just what does ‘television’ mean now? The ‘watching’ part is also open to debate.”

“Dare we call this block-long, 185,000-square-foot structure in the Meatpacking District a branch? Scheduled to open late in 2012, it’s three times the size of its uptown sibling.”

“The director has removed many familiar faces from the acting and directing company and taken the repertory in bold new directions at this 73-year-old festival, one of the nation’s longest-running and largest repertory companies.”