Tag: 06.17.09

Those Indie Best Sellers Might Not Be Best Sellers After All

“When writer and Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Lisa Scottoline (Look Again) asked who she had to sleep with to get on the Indie Bestsellers Lists at the opening panel of the day of education at BEA, she pointed up what some consider to be a flaw in the American Booksellers Association’s bestsellers list: it is weighted so that it doesn’t reflect raw sales.”

Sans Crosswalk, Art Institute Visitors Risk Their Safety

“Ever since plans for the [Art Institute of Chicago’s] Modern Wing were unveiled eight years ago, I’ve been harping on the need to bring pedestrians safely between Millennium Park and the wing, either through a tunnel or a mid-block crosswalk. And I’m not the only one. In a phone call Tuesday from the Paris office of the Modern Wing’s architect, Renzo Piano, his staff confirmed that Piano has personally asked Mayor Richard Daley for a crosswalk.” Without it, 90-year-olds are jaywalking there now.

Unable To Fund Season, North Shore Music Theatre Closes

“North Shore Music Theatre, which during its heyday was the largest nonprofit theater in the region, announced yesterday that it failed to raise enough money to reopen this summer and will close for good.” The shuttering of the 54-year-old company “leaves a huge hole in the arts scene on the North Shore, where as many as 350,000 people a year attended the theater’s slate of lavishly produced musicals staged in the round.”

How Do Tories Value The Arts? What’s Their Arts Policy?

Tory MP Ed Vaizey, the shadow arts minister, seems to be on a charm offensive, which he explains this way: “One of the goals I have set ­myself is, if the Tories win on a Thursday, there will be far fewer people in the arts world waking up in a cold sweat on a Friday.” Whether they’d be right to be fearful is another question, which could only be answered by the party’s actions.

In London, Here Come The Young Female Playwrights

“Last year, Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Her Naked Skin became the first play by a living female playwright ever to be staged in the National’s largest auditorium, the Olivier – a fact that, understandably, caused a stir. This year, the number of twenty something British female writers coming up through the ranks suggests the venerable theatre could soon be hosting a slew of exciting new plays by women.”

PBS Bans New (But Grandfathers Existing) Religious Shows

“The Public Broadcasting Service agreed yesterday to ban its member stations from airing new religious TV programs, but permitted the handful of stations that already carry ‘sectarian’ shows to continue doing so. The vote by PBS’s board was a compromise from a proposed ban on all religious programming.” The network had already required stations’ programming to be nonsectarian, but it had not strictly enforced that rule.

Who Ever Thought Holden Caulfield Would Make It To 76?

“’60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,’ by J. D. California, a 33-year-old humor writer from Sweden who uses that gimmicky nom de plume, might be read as an update of sorts to [J.D.] Salinger’s 1951 classic, ‘The Catcher in the Rye,’ which has sold more than 35 million copies. The new work centers on a 76-year-old ‘Mr. C,’ the creation of a writer named Mr. Salinger.”