Category: today’s top story

Four paintings by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Degas and Monet worth an estimated SFR180m (£84m) have been stolen from a museum in Switzerland in what police today described as a “spectacular art robbery”.

“Hollywood could be back on its feet as early as Monday. The major studios and the Writers Guild of America are putting the finishing touches on a deal that could bring an end to the costly walkout. Today the two sides are expected to finalize a three-year contract that guild leaders plan to present to thousands of writers in Los Angeles and New York on Saturday.”

“Academy Award organisers have said they are ‘running out of time’ in the search for a deal to avoid the Oscars being hit by the Hollywood writers’ strike,” even as the guild prepares to present a tentative deal to its members this weekend.

The John S. & James L. Knight Foundation has announced $40m in gifts to arts initiatives and cultural institutions in South Florida. “The grants will be awarded in two phases, the first a package of endowment funds totaling $20 million and paid over five years to the Miami Art Museum ($10 million), the Museum of Contemporary Art ($5 million) and the New World Symphony ($5 million).”

“The administration’s budget also called for cuts at the National Endowment for the Arts, but not nearly of the magnitude of those faced by public broadcasting. There the administration proposed a cut of $16.3 million — to $128.4 million from $144.7 million.”

The Bush administration wants to hack federal funding for public broadcasting by more than 50% and possibly zero out the budget in as little as two years.

“Hollywood’s striking writers and major studios [have] reached the broad outlines of a new employment contract, resolving key sticking points over how much writers should be paid for work that is distributed over the Internet… A final contract could be presented to the Writers Guild of America’s board as early as Friday.”

The arts funder is realigning its funding. “A total of 185 arts organisations will not have their funding renewed, while 27 will have their grants reduced. But 81 venues that have not previously received Arts Council funding will benefit from new grants over the next three years.”

“Wherever you look this year, Herbert von Karajan is back on top of the classical agenda and a whole industry is working all hours to keep him there.” Norman Lebrecht wonders why that is, when the celebrated conductor “never made an original note of music, bequeathed a transmissible idea or represented any appreciable human value.”