“Librarians? Aren’t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons — the ultimate humorless shushers? Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging — the kind that, according to the Web site Librarian Avengers, is ‘looking to put the ‘hep cat’ in cataloguing’.”
Tag: 07.06.07
County Moves To Hang On To Barnes Collection
Montgomery County, PA, says it will file a motion to block the Barnes Collection from moving to Philadelphia. “A wedding to Montgomery County is something the Barnes Foundation clearly wants no part of. It only has eyes for Philadelphia. The Barnes Foundation last month spurned Montco’s marriage offer, even though the county offered to provide at least $50 million for the Barnes if its collection would stay.”
The OJ Book – If They Publish It
This week the family of murdered Ron Goldman purchased the rights to OJ Simpson’s book. But “even if any further legal hurdles are cleared, finding a publisher for the book will prove difficult, players in the book trade said. For one thing, although virtually all of the copies that had been printed by ReganBooks were confiscated, one sold on EBay in January, and last month the entire text was leaked on the Internet, where it’s been intermittently available.”
Berlin’s Art Production Machine
“Berlin has become a production center for works sold from Portugal to Dubai. Rents are going up. The dilettantes have departed. The foreign purveyors have nestled in. What remains is less the innocent verve of the past than an atmosphere that — although aesthetically adventurous and more open to experimentation than in most cities — has matured with a shrewd eye toward marketing.”
The $325 Raphael Sells For $37.3 Million
New York art dealer Ira Spanierman bought a painting in 1968 for $325. Last night the Raphael sold for “18.5 million pounds ($37.3 million) with commission, more than 100,000 times the price he paid for it. The portrait of the Florentine ruler Lorenzo de’ Medici set a record for the Italian painter at the Christie’s International sale in London.”
Crystals And Shapes And Everything Else
Daniel Libeskind has had his way with an addition to the Royal Ontario Museum. “Taken on its own terms, the addition is extraordinarily skilled and tremendously exciting. That scrum of jostling shapes, exploding out of a U-shaped courtyard formed by the museum’s stern, much- altered 1914 building, electroshocks dull Bloor Street.” But “in too many ways Libeskind has been allowed to run amok.”
Inside Philip Johnson
Johnson’s 47-acre estate is “a collection of 14 structures that includes the legendary Glass House, completed in 1949; a guesthouse; an art gallery; and a sculpture pavilion, the complex survives as an enticing voyage through the ups and downs of late-20th-century architecture set in a dreamy landscape of rolling lawns and maple trees. But as imposing as it is as a historical landmark, it is as telling about his weaknesses as a designer as about his influence as an advocate for architecture.”
Record Stores Dying? Not Hardly
“You’d think from looking at the headlines that there would be no point buying CDs at the moment because it’s a dying format. But it still accounts for more than 90% of the market in value terms. And as far as albums are concerned, it’s still the vast majority of the market. The perception that the CD belongs in the dark ages is totally wrong. Certainly, the CD remains a superior product to any digital alternatives: cheaper, easy to rip and burn, secure and coming with all the added peripherals such as cover, liner notes and lyrics.”