“They say giving away art to be auctioned off at charitable events costs artists money, and often they don’t even get a tax receipt.”
Tag: 06.20.08
First Modern Computer Was Built 60 Years Ago
The first computer to be built using the same fundamental plans that underpin modern PCs has reached its 60th anniversary. The Small Scale Experimental Machine, better known as “Baby”, ran its first program at 11 am, 21 June 1948, at Manchester University in the UK.
Kansas City Star Eliminates Classical Music Critic
“The Kansas City Star has eliminated the position of classical music critic, and with it Paul Horsley, who was given his walking papers on Monday after more that eight years in the job. Also gone from the culture department are the fashion editor and two of the three calendar editors.”
Osage County Coming To London
The play, by Tracy Letts, which won five Tony awards last week, will receive its UK premiere at the Southbank venue in late November, although an exact date is yet to be announced.
Is Romance Lost To Higher Lit?
“Publishers must delicately exploit the middle ground between high and low. Elements of genre writing are often introduced to spice up the ‘literary’ kind and some genres are given credence, their merits discussed. They are reclaimed for seriousness; seriousness is arguably the better for it. Yet one staple of genre fiction, the sentimental, soft-focus romance novel, remains apparently beyond rescue.”
MPAA Says It Should Collect Copyright Damages W/O Infringement Evidence
The Motion Picture Association of America said Friday intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement.
Imax To Go (Giant) Digital
“Next month, the company will roll out the first three digital Imax installations with exhibitor AMC Entertainment — two in Washington and one in Baltimore. Three more will debut in August in Philadelphia. Imax expects to have digital systems deployed at 50 sites by year’s end, with the goal of converting its 296 owned or equipped theaters in 40 countries.”
Artists, Museums, And The Art Of Commerce
“It is the artists, and a certain line of thinking about art, that have given the people with the cash permission to buy and sell what amounts to nothing, and to do so for ever larger and more insane sums of money. All this sensational commerce is fueled by the anti-aesthetics that were born nearly a century ago among the Dadaists, and have by now morphed into the laissez-faire aesthetics that give collectors sanction to regard one of Jeff Koons’s stainless-steel balloon animals as simultaneously a camp joke and a modern equivalent of a Tang dynasty horse.”
New Canadian Copyright Law Full Of Restrictions
“Want to rip a DVD so you can show your film-class students a series of clips? Nope. Want to post a Battlestar Galactica tribute video to YouTube? Time to hire a lawyer. If it’s locked – and the definition of what constitutes a lock is terrifically vague – then in most instances you can’t touch it.”
Harvard Museums Under One Roof
After many years and many false starts, Harvard is finally launching a major expansion of its art museums. In the process, what have been three separate institutions — the Fogg Art Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum — will be consolidated under one roof, and one name: the Harvard Art Museum.