“In response to nearly two days of angry online commentary, particularly on Twitter, Amazon.com said on Monday that ‘an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error’ had caused thousands of books on its site to lose their sales rankings and become harder to find in searches.” Contradicting the widespread charge that books with gay and lesbian themes had been targeted, “Amazon said 57,310 books in several broad categories had been affected, including books on health and reproductive medicine.”
Tag: 04.14.09
Preserved In An Archive, Public Art That Might Have Been
“The dreams, visions and occasionally successful pitches” of scores of artists “are in the vast archive of the Public Art Development Trust. From 1983 until funding was lost in 2004 the charity organised art competitions, brokered deals between artists and developers, and commissioned work in an attempt to create more inspiring public art than stone generals and draped bronze maidens.” The public will soon get a look at the archive, which has been acquired by the Henry Moore Foundation.
Tully Hall’s Organ Is Absent, And Partisans Grow Nervous
Alice Tully Hall has reopened to acclaim following its renovation, but the hall’s pipe organ, “a personal gift of Miss Tully herself, remains absent, dismantled and resting in limbolike storage in upstate New York. … [T]he chairman of the Juilliard School’s organ department, Paul Jacobs, and the organ’s curator, Peter Batchelder, have gone public with worries that Lincoln Center may secretly want to wash its hands of the organ.”
Russia And Ukraine Are Bickering — Over Nikolai Gogol
“Gogol once wrote that he could never decide whether his soul was Russian or Ukrainian. In an era when Ukrainian aspirations for nationhood were dormant, he did not see the two as contradictory; for him, Ukraine and Russia were inseparable parts of a greater whole. Unsurprisingly, many Russian politicians and pundits have seized on this theme, making the bicentennial [of Gogol’s birth] an occasion to affirm Russian-Ukrainian unity — and snipe at Ukrainians who are less than fond of the idea.”