Ben Sonnenberg, 73, Founder Of Grand Street Quarterly

“[He] funneled the proceeds from the sale of his father’s five-story town house on Gramercy Park into Grand Street, a journal conceived in the spirit of high-minded but nonacademic magazines like The Dial and Horizon. … A dandy, boulevardier and self-educated litterateur, Mr. Sonnenberg consulted only his own taste, backing it with substantial paychecks to his writers, some well known and others not.”

The Met Museum’s New Director On A ‘Fundamental Shift’ In Presentation

Thomas P Campbell: “We assume people know who Rembrandt is, for example … and, frankly, considering our international audience, I doubt whether many of them do know who [he] was, or the significance of a particular period room, in a broader context. What I’m trying to do is to get the museum rethinking the visitor experience from the moment that people arrive at the museum: the signage they encounter, the bits of paper they pick up, all the way through to the way we deliver information in the galleries.”

In The Current Art Market, What A Piece Is Matters More Than How It Looks

“Future historians peering at the outcome of art sales this year may conclude that the early 21st century was the time when abstract notions took precedence over visual perception. … This new cerebral approach to art that ignores the visual aspect has gone a long way toward erasing the distinction between supreme artistic achievement and moderately successful art.”

Setting Philip Levine’s Poetry To Music Is Not Easy

In their plainspoken-ness and length, Levine’s poems hardly seem like promising material for choral composers. “[I]magery based on the smell of gasoline – and witty lines about how TVs seem to talk to themselves – ‘is not something you’d put in Debussy’,” says one composer who has taken on the Levine challenge for a commission from the Philadelphia choir called The Crossing.

What If Kinky Friedman Were Actually Elected Texas Governor? Reykjavik Tries Something Similar

In the wake of Iceland’s financial collapse, punk rocker/comedian Jón Gnarr founded “the Best Party” (that’s its real name) and promised voters things like a Disneyland at the airport and “a drug-free Parliament by 2020.” Gnarr has just become mayor of Reykjavík, and he’s taking the job quite seriously.