Christie’s auction house has turned state’s evidence and told anti-trust investigators from the United States Justice Department about an alleged deal with Sotheby’s to limit competition on sellers’ commissions. Watch for the lawsuits to start flying. – The Telegraph (UK)
It’s that “save the NEA” e-mail that has been endlessly circulated around the internet. Doesn’t matter that it was written in 1995 and that threats to PBS and the National Endowment have receded. – San Francisco Chronicle
Back in the 1970s, the arts’ biggest funding buddies were the tobacco companies. Now tobacco is out and the big American investment banks are funding British arts institutions. The benefits both ways are many. – Financial Times
Christie’s auction house has turned state’s evidence and told anti-trust investigators from the United States Justice Department about an alleged deal with Sotheby’s to limit competition on sellers’ commissions. Watch for the lawsuits to start flying. – The Telegraph (UK)
That’s how interesting the new £21 million lottery-funded Art Gallery in Walsall is. “Here, at last, is an alternative to the ever-present high-tech of Richard Rogers and Norman Foster.” – The Times (UK)
– has refused to play a concert at the Austrian Embassy in Washington DC in protest against the inclusion of the far right party in the Austrian government. – CBC
Connecticut’s Goodspeed Opera House, has for years talked about building a larger, state-of-the-art facility to complement his Victorian candy box of a theater in the town of East Haddam. Now the company is planning not just for a new theater but for the literal transformation of the town, with theaters, new retail space for galleries, restaurants and specialty shops, a pedestrian plaza, a possible musical theater school, a 30,000-square-foot scene shop, riverfront walkways and, most dramatic of all, a showboat with a 700-seat dinner theater cruising the river. – Hartford Courant
Just what is the world looking for in its classical music artists? How high can fees go? And what is the right supply/demand ratio for the musician world? New head of the London-based International Artist Managers’ Association has some ideas. – Sydney Morning Herald
— and huge losses. – Publishers Weekly
Nobel writer Gunter Grass says computers and the internet are bad influences on good writing, and that pen and paper are an essential part of his life as a writer. ” I mistrust this computer work,” he says. – Wired
