There are curators. And then there are “Curators of Interpretation” who in the UK are “increasingly important people in the world of art, under a government that makes its grants to public galleries conditional upon the ‘accessibility’ of the works they display. It is their job to make the exhibits accessible to the masses, by helping Joe Public to see the point of what he is being shown. They also have an expanding role in deciding how exhibitions should be mounted, so as to make them welcoming and instructive to philistines like me.”
Tag: 12.05.02
Pyramidal Efficiency
The Egyptian Council of Antiquities reports that one million stones were used in the building of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. “The number is under half of the previously estimated amount of 2.3 million stones, indicating that the Egyptian pyramid builders were even more organized and efficient than previously thought.”
Where’s The Buzz?
Book sales seem slow this holiday season. Is it because of the economy? “I suspect there is another reason that there seems to be so little fun in book publishing and selling now: there’s no buzz book, no book that people talk about or at least hear about, even if they don’t read it. Book talk is great for book selling.”
Ooh Baby Baby…
Wendy Perriam has won “one of the least coveted prizes in literature” – the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, awarded by the Literary Review. The prize is for the worst literary description of sex in a novel, and some of the literary world’s best-known authors have been nominated. “Robert Posner of the Literary Review said Perriam’s book stood out from the rest because ‘they had never before heard of pin-striped genitalia’, although he admitted the committee of judges were confused as to what it actually meant.”