TV watching in America is way down this spring, and Nielsen has an explanation – DVRs.
Tag: 06.01.07
The $100 Million Skull
Damien Hirst is selling a diamond-encrusted skull he created for $100 million. “The life-sized platinum skull, studded with 8,601 stones weighing 1,106.18 carats, cost Hirst $20 million to make — about the same amount of money as Jay Jopling spent to build his new White Cube Mason’s Yard gallery.”
Joan Tower Collects Up Women Composers
“Evidently music by women still needs champions; women remain strikingly underrepresented in the ranks of composers. According the American Symphony Orchestra League, 1 percent of the music American orchestras played in 2004-5 was written by women. That figure jumped to 2 percent in 2005-6, thanks to Ms. Tower, who was the most-played living composer over that season because of the project ‘Made in America,’ a commissioned work played by 65 orchestras around the country.”
WTC Museum Has An Identity Problem
The World Trade Center Museum is under construction. But “the museum’s identity problem was built in from the start when officials quietly commanded that an exhibition space be created under the memorial plaza designed by Michael Arad. A memorial is not enough, the reasoning went; the event must be interpreted. Though two wars and thousands of deaths have been unleashed in 9/11’s name, the 115,000-square-foot museum focuses on ourselves and our losses.”
A Season On Broadway
“ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway,” chronicles the success of shows from the 2003/04 Broadway season. “The film is a love letter to theater and the people who make it. It’s a New York story (all roads here lead to Times Square) that’s designed to capture the excitement of every step in the creative process, from conception to rehearsals to press openings to, if you’re good and lucky, the award ceremonies.”
Uproar Over iTunes Info
“The launch of music tracks free of digital locks on iTunes has been overshadowed by the discovery that they contain data about who bought them. Some fear this data could be used to identify the owner of the tracks if they turn up on file-sharing sites.”
America Set To Star In London Auctions
If it’s June, it’s auction month in London. This year American art is front and center. “It used to be the other way around. But this summer half what we are selling in our postwar and contemporary art auction is from the United States, and a third of the consignments for our Impressionist and modern art sale are from America too.”