Category: today’s top story

“What the courts may settle is this: Is copyright ownership enduring and inviolate, as old media companies believe? Or is it a more transitory function that technology is overrunning anyway, even as its weakening will ultimately be good for everyone? And doesn’t our mash-up era, in which compelling new works of art are created by combining perhaps less compelling old ones, prove the point that you can’t really own an intellectual idea, even if copyright law thinks you can?”

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is embarking on an ambitious and unprecedented plan “to collect significant pieces of midcentury residential architecture, including houses by Rudolf M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright and his son Lloyd Wright, and to treat them as both museum objects and as residences for curators… The idea has already started to generate chatter in the architecture community.”

“The French art scene has lost its buzz. The culture of the past looks safe, with government-owned museums, opera houses and theaters all well attended. But today’s creators, from visual artists to writers, often seem out of touch with society. In a country gripped by uncertainty about its identity, in a campaign dominated by the word change, they have little to say.”

David Orr takes issue with recent criticisms of the Poetry Foundation in the pages of The New Yorker. “Poets may get frustrated with the Poetry Foundation; they may complain; they may disagree with certain projects. But the Poetry Foundation, however misguided or impolitic, hasn’t given up on poetry. The question is: Has The New Yorker?”

Even as he designs a gargantuan glass house for Michael Ovitz, architect Michael Maltzan is remaking bits of Los Angeles’ skid row — not for gentrifying interlopers but for the homeless people who live there. “Here architecture is used as a tool not only for aesthetic upliftment, but also to forge both a strong sense of community and a visual presence for the poor in a city that often seems to have forgotten them.”

“In 1965, leisure was pretty much equally distributed across classes. People of the same age, sex, and family size tended to have about the same amount of leisure, regardless of their socioeconomic status. But since then, two things have happened. First, leisure (like income) has increased dramatically across the board. Second, though everyone’s a winner, the biggest winners are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.”

New York’s opera scene hasn’t been so lively in years. The Met is quickly reinventing under a series of initiatives by Peter Gelb. And New York City Opera has thrown down the gauntlet with the hiring of the provocative Gerard Mortier. “Clearly City Opera, which has long been literally overshadowed at Lincoln Center Plaza by the Met, is taking on its behemoth neighbor.”

“In a startling move, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, faced with crushing debt and the specter of bankruptcy, is looking to sell the ‘Golden Age’ collection of rare stringed instruments it bought from philanthropist Herbert Axelrod in an unprecedented $17 million deal four years ago.”

“A new theory asserts that biology, not physics, will be the key to unlocking the deepest mysteries of the universe, such as quantum mechanics.”

Historians are up in arms over a 2001 executive order issued by President Bush which made it much more difficult for the public to gain access to historical presidential records than ever before. “[The] order restricted the release of presidential records by giving sitting presidents the power to delay the release of papers indefinitely, while extending the control of former presidents, vice presidents and their families.” Congress is considering a bill to overturn Mr. Bush’s order.