“Auction houses are guaranteeing prices of some top works in this week’s London art sales, which coincide with the worst financial crisis since the Depression. The sales … have a total minimum price tag of 107 million pounds ($187 million). Sotheby’s has more than half of its total lot value guaranteed; Christie’s International guarantees 38 percent, meaning both promise fixed prices to vendors whether the art sells or not.”
Tag: 10.14.08
Faculty Union Forming At Manhattan School of Music?
Manhattan School of Music teachers have begun organizing to form a union, arguing that “they are poorly paid, lack job security and have little say in how the school is run and no recourse for complaints. … The struggle has injected a dose of real-world politics into the melody-basted halls of the Manhattan School, one of the city’s top conservatories and the producer of legions of highly skilled singers, pianists, fiddlers and other performers.”
Accused, Milan Kundera Says He Wasn’t An Informer
“In a sensational plot line that could have come straight from the pages of one of his own novels, the acclaimed Czech-born writer Milan Kundera has been accused of denouncing a Western spy to the Communist secret police when he was a student. … The reclusive Kundera, now 79, categorically denied the accusation yesterday, accusing [a Czech state] institute and [the] media of ‘the assassination of an author’.”
King Children Battle Each Other Over Mother’s Bio
“In the third King v. King legal dispute in four months, two of Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.]’s children are refusing to provide a biographer of their mother, Coretta Scott King, who died in 2006, with a collection of her photographs, letters and personal papers. Their brother, Dexter King, chairman of their father’s estate, has asked a judge to force them to comply. At stake is a $1.4 million book deal with the Penguin Group — as well as the reputation of one of America’s most famous families.”