“Tempers are running high in the principality of Wikipedia, that remarkable tract of cyberspace where, as in all good democracies, the citizens rule in theory, but in practice they are held a safe distance from the levers of power. The hubbub comes in the wake of an embarrassing bout of death-by-Wikipedia, in which two American senators were marked down as dead – on Inauguration Day, no less – when in fact both were alive and kicking.”
Tag: 01.29.09
Portrait Of The Modern American Composer
“Three-quarters of those surveyed considered themselves to be professional composers, but only 10% made their primary living from that work.”
Sale Of Brandeis Art Is Blot On University
“What’s happening at Brandeis is shameful. Not just because it shows a lack of appreciation for art and the role cultural expression has in the life of a liberal arts college, but because it reveals how low the university has sunk during the Reinharz regime and how vulgar its values are now.”
New Met Museum Director Thomas Campbell Talks About The Future
Priority one is financial stability. The Met’s gargantuan endowment, envied around the world, has inevitably been hit by the crash. It is also braced for a drop in revenue and in donations. But, says Campbell: “This is not a period when we just hold our breath and wait for things to get better.”
Ex-MoCA Director Strick To Lead Nasher Museum
Jeremy Strick is off to Dallas to the Nasher Sculpture Center. “The appointment was in the works well before November, when it first came to light that the Museum of Contemporary Art was on the brink of financial collapse.”
Toronto Book Fair In Trouble As Publishers Bail
Toronto’s newest fall literary festival appears to be on shaky ground even before it holds its debut edition after the country’s largest trade publisher, Random House of Canada, and another big player, Penguin Group (Canada), announced that they won’t participate.
If Barack Obama Were A Building…
“Comparing Obama to a flashy new building feels all wrong; our new president seems determined by both action and symbolism to prove that he is no radical, a member of no avant-garde. If I had to pick a contemporary architect to compare him to, I suppose I’d lean toward Renzo Piano or Norman Foster, both of whom fold traditional aesthetic values into crisp new buildings and seem as impatient as Obama with histrionics and wasted motion.”
Koolhaas Firm To Design Arts Center In Taipei
“The [Office for Metropolitan Architecture] design encompasses three theaters – two that seat 800 and one that holds 1,500 – all of which feed into a central cube clad in corrugated glass that unites their stage accommodations so that the theaters can be used separately or in combination.”
How Badly Were Foundations Hurt By Bernie Madoff?
Nicholas Kristof has gathered a list of non-profits that had money invested with Madoff before his pyramid collapsed. “What is staggering is how many of these 147 foundations had all their assets invested with Mr. Madoff and may have been wiped out as a result.”
Real Poor People Hit The Silver Screen
Frozen River, Chop Shop, Ballast, and Wendy and Lucy form something of a critically-acclaimed wave of movies – “recession indies” – about poverty in America. “But will audiences respond? So far, the signs aren’t encouraging… When Americans do go to movies about the poor, they’re usually set a continent or two away.”