A LITTLE DISTANCE PLEASE

Okay, so Sotheby’s chairman has resigned in the midst of the auction house investigations. But if his people still control the board of directors, how will the company make a clean break from possible misdeeds of the past? – Financial Times

TARNISHED TALE: Sotheby’s chairman Alfred Taubman rebuilt Sotheby’s and helped make it successful – it was all a kind of fairy tale. But sometimes fairy tales write their own dark endings… – New York Times

HANDICAPPING THE GUGGENHEIM

What are the chances the Guggenheim’s proposed Gehry building for lower Manhattan will ever get built? Not entirely solid. On the other hand, “these days the Guggenheim name is as much a prestige brand as BMW, Bollinger or Armani and not one that is lightly dismissed especially in its home town. [Guggenheim director Thomas] Krens says ‘more than 50’ cities and towns around the world have invited the Guggenheim to set up shop. Sydney Morning Herald

BOLD STROKE: No museum has been so defined by its architecture as the Guggenheim. That helps explain the grand scale of what the proposed lower Manhattan Guggenheim would be. – New York Magazine

STILL TOO HOT TO HANDLE

After reducing the time some of Robert Mapplethorpe’s more explicit photographs are shown in its documentary about the 1990 obscenity trial over the work, Showtime’s “Dirty Pictures” gets an “R” rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. As originally edited, the film would have been tagged with an NC-17 which would mean the network couldn’t have shown it in prime time. – Newsweek (Variety) 04/27/00