“Cox Enterprises Inc., which owns nearly half of The Daytona Beach News-Journal, has sued the newspaper’s board of directors, accusing them of wasting $13 million for naming rights to a community arts center in Daytona Beach. The lawsuit seeks to stop the transaction and return the money to the newspaper, or have Cox’s ownership share bought out. Cox also wants unspecified damages and prior approval for any similar deals in the future.”
Tag: 05.15.04
Wood: The Problem With Novelists
“The simple but profound problem with many novelists, as James Wood reads them, is that they have failed to realise the true nature of their chosen form; they are artists who have not yet learned how to reply to their calling. Stendhal once famously compared the novel to a mirror being carried down the road, innocently catching all the angles of life. By contrast, Wood argues, contemporary novelists too often treat their pages more like flypaper, ready to cling on to any randomly floating bits of cultural debris.”
Roomful Of Turkey (Feathers)
“If you stick a quarter of a million turkey feathers dyed black on all four walls of a room in a major art gallery, you are bound to get some kind of reaction from visitors – if only splutterings about taxpayers’ money. Curators at Manchester Art Gallery said this week that they were delighted that the responses to Susie MacMurray’s installation, Flock, have been the most intense since the gallery reopened in 2002 after being extended and refurbished.”
Las Vegas – America’s Best?
“In a city where the only currency is currency, there is a table-level democracy of luck. Las Vegas is perhaps the most color-blind, class-free place in America. As long as your cash or credit line holds out, no one gives a damn about your race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, address, family lineage, voter registration or even your criminal arrest record. As long as you have chips on the table, Vegas deftly casts you as the star in an around-the-clock extravaganza. For all of America’s manifold unfulfilled promises of upward mobility, Vegas is the only place guaranteed to come through–even if it’s for a fleeting weekend.”
Ancient Library Of Alexandria Discovered
Archaeologists have discovered what they claim is the long lost great Library of Alexandria. The Library is often described as the first great university in the world. “The 13 lecture halls uncovered could house as many as 5,000 students in total. A conspicuous feature of the rooms was a central elevated podium for the lecturer to stand on. It is the first time ever that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site in the whole Mediterranean area.”
Defending the Tonys (Sort Of…)
Last week’s Daniel Okrent column in the New York Times about the Tonys in which he called the awards a sham had Broadway producers fuming. But on a couple of points at least, writes Simon Houpt, he had a point.
Beaverbrook Goes To Court To Get Paintings
“The British Beaverbrook Foundation, a trust established by the late Lord Beaverbrook to continue his charitable works, has filed a lawsuit in an effort to claim millions of dollars’ worth of art housed at the Fredericton (New Brusnwick) Art Gallery. The gallery holds an exquisite collection of art by such masters as Turner, Botticelli, Gainsborough and Dali. However, his grandsons, Max and Timothy Aitken, who head up the British and Canadian Beaverbrook Foundations, say that 175 art works at the gallery are the property of the foundations and they want at least some of them back.”
Art As Fodder For Other Art
Artists are increasingly using other artists’ art as the raw materials for their own work. While artists have always drawn inspiration from other work, “the difference now is that artists — professionals and amateurs alike — are taking existing works and messing with their content and expression to create something new. If you want a name for the phenomenon, you could look at its insistence on the rights of the individual and call it democratic art, or focus on its wholesale limb-splicing and call it FrankenArt, in a nod to Mary Shelley’s science-fiction horror story.”
Who Will Raise $600 Million For WTC Buildings?
New York governor George Pataki has had difficulty finding a leading fundraiser to head the effort to raise $600 million for a memorial and cultural buildings at the World Trade Center site. “Mr. Pataki’s inability so far to find a leader for the campaign has contributed to a delay in deciding which cultural organizations will occupy the site
Global Art On Demand
An electronic kiosk promises art on demand. “At a touch-screen terminal called a Totem, you’d browse for a painting by its name, the artist’s name, or the museum in which it is housed. Works are available from institutions like the Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the National Gallery in London. Then you’d choose how many copies you’d like to print, at what size and on which medium (choose between 25 types of paper, including canvas and photographic paper). Then go pay the cashier. The Mona Lisa on canvas costs about $30, but larger prints run up to $150.”