“Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney heads a roll call of literary figures to have written confidentially to the Dean of Westminster, the Very Rev John Hall, calling for the ultimate accolade to be conferred on Hughes. Other supporters include Sir Andrew Motion, who took over from Hughes as poet laureate, and Lord Bragg as well as prominent academics.”
Tag: 12.01.09
BBC Auction Show Bidders Were Ringers, Regulator Says
“Sun, Sea and Bargain Spotting, a BBC Two auction series produced by Reef Television, featured numerous episodes of staff from the independent production company participating in the show while pretending to be members of the public.”
Under New Law, British Library To Return Missal To Italy
“The Benevento Missal, which was stolen from a cathedral in southern Italy soon after the Allies bombed the city during the Second World War, has been in the collection of the British Library (formerly the British Museum Library) since 1947.” The book falls under the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act.
Curatorial Triumph: V&A’s Medieval & Renaissance Galleries
“An entire wing of the Victoria and Albert Museum has been requisitioned. A suite of ten galleries has been completely overhauled. More than £30 million has been spent.” The new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries transform “the V&A from an outmoded Victorian maze of glass cases into a modern museum of world-class calibre.”
What Killed Jane Austen?
“Fresh, retrospective analysis of her symptoms, published today, suggests that the author of Pride and Prejudice may have died prematurely of tuberculosis caught from cattle. Examination of Austen’s correspondence and the recollections of her family prove, it is claimed, that she was not, as previous medical experts hypothesised, a victim of Addison’s disease….”
Stop Us If We’ve Told You This Before
“While the source of remembered information can be crucially important (Did I read that in The Onion or the daily newspaper?), so is its destination.” And yet we frequently don’t remember what we’ve already told to whom. Research suggests “that destination memory is relatively weak,” which “helps explain several embarrassing, and annoying, kinds of social interaction.”
When An Exhibit Feels Like A Pop-Up Version Of An Article
Visitors to the “Terra Cotta Warriors” show at the National Geographic Museum spent “more time on the texts that line the galleries’ walls than on the statues displayed across their floors. It was often easier to get face time with a 2,000-year-old terra cotta warrior than an unjostled view of the text panel that explained him.” So why “were we so happy to be there?”
Before Mesopotamia, An Almost-Civilization Thrived
Millennia ago, the graves of Old Europe “held an impressive array of exquisite headdresses and necklaces and, in one cemetery, the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts to be found anywhere in the world. The striking designs of their pottery speak of the refinement of the culture’s visual language.”
Washington National Opera Cuts Productions, Staff
“Following weeks of rumors about serious financial difficulty, the Washington National Opera on Monday announced cutbacks, not only to staff, but also to programming for next season. The 2010-11 season will present only five operas, down from six this season and seven in 2008-09.”
When An ‘Author’ Needs A Writer
“Midwives, collaborators, co-authors, co-writers, writers-for-hire, book doctors, ghosts–call them what you will–give aid and adjectives to athletes, politicians, movie stars, moguls, miscreants and the briefly famous who are asked to tell their stories and don’t know how.” Which doesn’t mean, of course, that the writing pro will get credit for the work.