Leonard Bernstein’s Long-Lost Late-Life Love Letters

Kunihiko Hashimoto, then a 26-year-old insurance worker, attended a New York Philharmonic concert in Tokyo in 1979, and he went backstage afterward to meet Bernstein, soon to turn 61. They fell in love, and though Lenny was never one for monogamy, letters in Library of Congress archives show that they remained involved for the rest of Bernstein’s life. And the relationship became professional as well as personal. – The Observer (UK)

If Mega-Dealers Have Eaten The Art World, What’s Next?

How long can this last? “This market brings together two groups who normally don’t socialize: critics and collectors. There are the exotic-seeming rich people, as any reader of Henry James would know well; once at dinner, asking one collector where he lived, I got a listing of his homes: the Park Avenue apartment, the ranch in Ireland, the winter place in Florida, and so on. Art dealers, too, are fascinating because they sell to collectors expensive artifacts that satisfy no immediate need.” – Hyperallergic

Endeavor Content, An ‘Aggressive’ Arm Of William Morris, Owns Parts Of Hit TV Shows, Irking Writers

The company is part of Killing Eve, the movie Book Club, and around 100 other media properties, to date. Their spin: “In a world of media consolidation at an unprecedented scale, the size and scale and reach of media companies today is unlike anything we’ve ever seen, and the idea of ownership and creative freedom is under threat. … So how do we help create an alternative and help create leverage for people?” (The Writers Guild of America isn’t signing onto that, of course.) – Los Angeles Times

The Old Argument Continues: Is ‘Craft’ A Bad Word In The Visual Arts Community?

Magdalene Odundo, a Kenya-born British ceramicist who hand-builds her work, says clay is a natural substance for creating bodies and other shapes. And no, she doesn’t find the word “craft” offensive – but: “Crafting work is a term that means you are making work, you are actually crafting a piece of work. There is nothing wrong in making craft; I actually think it’s a very apt word for making, but it’s not helpful when it classifies certain work as not being of equal status to art.” – The Observer (UK)