“The past two years, so many arts groups in North Texas have had to find new directors, managing directors and CEOs that people have wondered if there was something wrong — with the Arts District? With Dallas in general?” Turns out it’s not just in Texas…
Category: today’s top story
Salman Rushdie’s Impending Visit To India Becomes Political Battleground
Still outraged over The Satanic Verses after 24 years, a major Muslim seminary in northern India has demanded that Rushdie’s visa to enter the country for this month’s Jaipur Literary Festival. (Rushdie holds an Indian passport.) The question has become an issue in upcoming elections in one of India’s largest states.
Picasso, Mondrian Stolen From National Gallery Of Greece
“Thieves have snatched a trio of valuable artworks from Greece’s National Art Gallery in Athens, staging a devious pre-dawn heist and making off with paintings by Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian.”
Drunken Woman Punches Out (And Moons) $30M Clyfford Still Painting
“A 36-year-old Denver woman, apparently drunk, leaned against an iconic Clyfford Still painting worth more than $30 million last week, punched it, slid down it [with her bare bottom] and urinated on herself, according to a criminal case against Carmen Lucette Tisch.”
2011 US Music Sales Up In US For First Time Since 2004
“In total, 4.4 million more albums were bought in 2011 than in 2010, with CD remaining the most popular format. Only one in three albums were purchased digitally, figures show.”
Ronald Searle, 91, Beloved Cartoonist And Illustrator
“[He was] best known for his spiky comic drawings depicting the outrageous antics of the St Trinian’s girls, and for his illustrations of the Molesworth series, written by Geoffrey Willans and which, as any fule kno [sic], tells of life at the boys’ prep school St Custard’s.”
NY Philharmonic Gets A New Exec Director
“He is Matthew VanBesien, a 42-year-old former orchestral player who put away his French horn a decade ago and went on to run the Houston Symphony and then the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Australia.”
Czech Literary Hero Josef Skvorecky Dead At 87
A novelist, scholar, and dissident, Skvorecky fled Prague during the 1968 Soviet invasion. He and his wife settled in Toronto, where they founded a press and published writers such as Vaclav Havel and Milan Kundera whose books were banned in Czechoslovakia. Best known among Skvorecky’s own books are The Engineer of Human Souls and The Republic of Whores.
Boston Mayor Wants Huge Increase In (Non-)Taxes On Museums, Non-Profits
Mayor Thomas Menino has introduced changes in Boston’s PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) scheme, with a plan requiring any non-profit with more than $15 million in property to pay 25% of what they would owe in commercial taxes as for-profit businesses. Many museums would see payments quadruple over the next five years.
The Louvre Has Overcleaned A Leonardo, Claim Two Top Conservators
“Two of France’s top art experts have voiced their protest over the cleaning of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne – a jewel of western art – by resigning from the Paris museum’s advisory committee responsible for its ‘restoration’.”