Category: today’s top story

“Former Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence M. Small had inquired about the institution’s insurance policies with Chubb Group at a time when he collected compensation from the insurer as a member of Chubb’s board of directors, people familiar with the contacts said yesterday. Smithsonian officials previously said Small was never involved in the museum’s insurance policies.”

“Indie filmmakers seeking success on YouTube are no longer content to bask in the validation of a few thousand viewers. Instead, these auteur-entrepreneurs are using software, crowd sourcing and “virtual studio” sites to broaden exposure for their work and make a few bucks while they’re at it.”

The holy grail of modern arts management is the quest for younger audiences. One consulting group thinks it has found the answer: offering heavily discounted tickets to premiere events that haven’t sold out on its members-only website. “Goldstar Events now has 315,000 members, two-thirds of whom are under the age of 45… Moreover, Goldstar’s younger members are far more ethnically diverse than the average big-city fine-arts ticket buyer.”

“Filmmaker Woody Allen will make his opera directing debut with Puccini’s comedy “Gianni Schicchi” to open the Los Angeles Opera’s 2008-09 season… ‘I have no idea what I’m doing,’ Allen said in a statement, ‘but incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.'”

An independent panel investigating recent leadership scandals at the Smithsonian Institution has issued a scathing report that lays much of the blame for the Smithsonian’s problems at the feet of now-resigned CEO Lawrence Small. “Rather than rein him in, the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents stood passively by, the report said, allowing him to spend the institution’s money on copious personal expenses and to treat the board as irrelevant to decision making.”

Tom Lee has apparently been reelected president of the American Federation of Musicians (the primary musicians’ union in North America,) a post he has held since 2001. Lee’s reelection had been somewhat in question, as there has been much dissension among union members concerning his leadership in recent years. Particularly aggrieved have been West Coast-based recording musicians, who made a direct attempt to run Lee out of office at this week’s AFM conference in Las Vegas.

The fury of Muslims around the world at the announcement of the knighting in Britain of author Salman Rushdie caught the nominating committee that submitted him for the honor completely by surprise, despite the fact that Rushdie spent more than a decade under a death edict issued by Iranian clerics. “The writers’ organisation that led the lobbying for the author of Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses to be knighted had originally hoped that the honour would lead to better relations between Britain and Asia.”

“Marcel Breuer, one of the fathers of modern architecture, built only one skyscraper, the 29-story Cleveland Trust Tower, which today stands abandoned on a forlorn block downtown. But a plan to demolish the tower, and replace it with a midrise government office building, has caused an outcry among architectural preservationists, who call the building an overlooked landmark. … Some people, though, just call Breuer’s building ugly.”

A UK survey reveals the list: “Leonardo shines in top place both in the overall choices and in the list nominated by over-25-year-olds. The answers mention only three artists born before the 20th century – and of these, Picasso clings by his fingertips in 10th slot among adults and is not rated at all by 18- to 25-year-olds. Other historical figures to survive are Leonardo da Vinci and Jane Austen. More recent heroes nominated include Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and Andy Warhol.”