“With its enduring relics of a glorious imperial past, spectacular glittering mosques and breathtaking landscapes, Iran lays claim to some of the finest cultural jewels in the Middle East. But a potentially catastrophic collapse in the country’s tourist trade is threatening to leave this dazzling array of attractions largely unseen by foreign eyes, as international tensions with the west deter a growing number of overseas visitors.”
Tag: 04.12.07
Senate Wants Smithsonian Shake-Up
“Members of a Senate oversight committee yesterday recommended a shake-up of the Smithsonian Institution, starting with its governing board, whose members were depicted as out of touch with the management of the 160-year-old museum complex.”
Why We Need So Many Book Prizes
The shortlist for the International Man Booker Prize, not to be confused with the original Man Booker Prize, will be announced this morning in Toronto, and despite some skepticism as to the need for yet another literary prize, John Fraser says that it’s all in a good cause. “There’s never enough to be done for the beleaguered world of books. If anything will get a worthy offering off a seller’s shelves and into the hands of a willing reader, even by curiosity aroused through the latest “damn book prize,” then all well and good, or even better!”
Court Ruling Hasn’t Fazed Movie “Scrubbers”
Mere months after a federal judge ruled that it is illegal to produce unauthorized, “sanitized” versions of feature films with profanity and sexual content edited out, the practitioners who sparked the case are back at it. ” Thanks, in large part, to what they say is a loophole in copyright law that allows cuts for educational purposes, some of the companies that were ordered to turn over their inventory to Hollywood studios instead are scrubbing more movies, and other firms are getting into the market.”
Chicago’s Love Affair With Sol LeWitt
“Sol LeWitt, the master of Conceptual and Minimal art who died this week in New York at age 78, was one of the few artists from those movements who caught on fairly early and strongly in Chicago. His ascetic geometrical sculptures and wall drawings could hardly have been expected to overcome a local taste for figurative fantasy art, but overcome it in large measure they did, and he exhibited here more frequently and in greater depth than just about any other East Coast artist who achieved prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s.”
30 Years On,Roots Still Resonates
It’s rare that a TV program, especially a miniseries, can actually have a lasting impact on the fabric of a nation. But thirty years after it first aired on ABC, Roots, the powerful drama about the life of American slaves, is still seen as a major cultural flashpoint. Not only did it change television’s willingness to tackle tough issues, “it changed historical research… partly because it focused on African-Americans and partly because it focused on the stories of everyday people.”
PBS Bows To Activist Pressure, Amends Burns Doc
“PBS promised yesterday to amend Ken Burns’ coming documentary series on World War II to include stories about Latino veterans after activists complained he ignored their contributions to the U.S. effort. Burns has also agreed to hire a Latino producer to help create the additional content.”
Why Argue When You Can Attack?
In an unusually public spat, two prominent professors are trying to destroy one another’s careers amid charges of shoddy scholarship, anti-Semitism, and plagiarism. Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein have been at each other’s throats for years, but their battle was taken to a new level this year, when Dershowitz, who teaches at Harvard, began actively advocating against Mr. Finkelstein receiving tenure at DePaul University.
Arkansas Museum Snaps Up Another Philly Eakins
“Less than four months after Philadelphians thwarted its bid to buy ‘The Gross Clinic,’ an 1875 masterpiece by Thomas Eakins, an Arkansas museum founded by the Wal-Mart heiress Alice L. Walton has quietly purchased another much-loved Eakins painting from the Philadelphia medical school that sold the first.”
Kurt Vonnegut, 84
“Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan,” several weeks after suffering brain injuries in a fall.