A London exhibition showcasing erotic art through the ages is rekindling old debates on art and pornography. “The exhibition throws light on how different cultures at different times have viewed sex. What it reveals above all is how styles of art have changed over the centuries, while human beings and their desires have essentially stayed the same.”
Tag: 10.16.07
Rethinking Public Art
A conference on public art debates the state of the art in Seattle…
Fractional Giving – The Tax Law Changes All
“We have more fractional gifts than any museum in the country, something like 800. That change has had an unbelievably negative impact on our acquisition program, a profoundly negative impact. The difference in the number of gifts from one year to the next has dropped off by 80% or something.”
Partner Removes Caravaggios, Dealer Cancels Show
“New York art dealer Lawrence Salander canceled the opening of his last exhibition yesterday after his London-based collaborator removed about half of the artworks planned for the show.”
No-Win In Broadway Labor Standoff
“The issues that have led to this volatile standoff are less about money than about technology and its effect on a tradition- bound industry. The saber rattling may harken back to union hall fist-waving of the 1930s, but the stakes are extremely high.”
Wit Of A Woman (In The Top Ten)
A new list ranks the “wittiest” Brits of all time. Not a woman to be found in the top ten. So herewith some nominations…
The Best Case Yet For Returning The Parthenon Marbles
“If only in the name of scholarship, it is clear that these pieces should be reunited. And the Greeks are willing to go to any length to collaborate with the British Museum (in negotiations that have become increasingly amicable they have, for example, proposed exchanging any number of other antiquities in return). By the time the new Acropolis Museum opens next autumn, it is their hope their actions (and, in this case, the stones) will speak louder than any legal argument over the ownership of the objects. And the tide appears to be turning in their favour.”
Why Poet Laureates Don’t Succeed
“If a laureate’s real purpose is to give voice to the state we are in, then Andrew Marvell was a man with a public purpose who lived in political times and who gave voice to the private impact of history in the making. Andrew Motion increasingly looks like a poet desperately in search of a purpose. And that’s not a failure of Andrew Motion’s imagination. It’s the political failure of our collective imagination.”
Minnesota Downloader Asks Court To Set Aside Exessive Copyright Fine
“The petition to U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, among other things, challenges the constitutionality of the 1976 Copyright Act, the law under which the RIAA sued Jammie Thomas of Minnesota, as well as over 20,000 other defendants. The $750 to $150,000 fines the act authorizes for each download is unconstitutionally excessive and against U.S. Supreme Court precedent, wrote Brian Toder, Thomas’ attorney.”
Surprise – Radical New Nielsen TV Ratings Same As Old
“The new system is a compromise between advertisers and broadcasters after years of squabbling over the best way to measure how many people watch commercials.”