Tag: 12.07.05

Is Flap Over Wikipedia Accuracy Warranted?

The storm over erroneous entries on Wikipedia is more thunder than substance. “Of course, the flip side of the enormous flexibility provided by the Wiki format is that “anyone” includes people who are driven by motivations other than community spirit. But vandalism, malice, racism, spam, and the like can be kept to a minimum, as long as there are more good guys than bad guys. This is obviously happening at Wikipedia, or no one would be using it.”

Brits To Investigate Waterstone Acquisition Deal

The British Office of Fair Trading will investigate Waterstone’s proposed purchase of rival Ottakar’s. “The OFT received more than 350 letters from consumers, publishers and authors opposed to the £96m deal, which was announced in September. Yesterday the watchdog said that the weight of opinion was a key factor in its decision to send the proposed deal to the Competition Commission for scrutiny.”

Miami Reinvents As Capital Of Culture

“After the money, the clubs, the drugs, the beaches, the models, the art deco, the swanky hotels and the TV series, Miami has got the culture. Last weekend, the city hosted Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB), the largest art fair in the Americas, welcoming 195 galleries from all over the world, and following on the heels of the Miami International Book Fair, the largest in the US.”

New Role For London’s ICA?

The new head of London’s Institute for Contemporary Art says that “the institute’s historic role as the place in Britain where fresh developments in modern American and European art could be witnessed – it was the first British gallery to show a Jackson Pollock – was no longer relevant, given the proliferation of galleries and museums such as Tate Modern. But its programmes of performance, film, music, art and talks should ‘provoke and challenge, keep pushing the boundaries. Britain deserves a space that tries to ask the deep questions; where people can look at the complexity of the world around them’.”

La Scala’s Biggest Night?

Thirty-year-old conductor Daniel Harding is fronting this year’s opening night at La Scala. “Silvio Berlusconi’s tottering government is threatening to cut subsidies by 30 percent in a rage of scorched-earth legislation ahead of next year’s election. This could be La Scala’s last glamour night for a while and the designer-suit claques won’t let it pass without ructions. No pressure, but our boy – who posed beneath gleaming chandeliers in a Manchester United shirt for Gazzetto della Sport – will need to play a blinder if he is to avoid backlash from off-pitch dramas.”

The Curse Of The Writing Workshop

“Writing workshops, for their ubiquity, are currently the most significant phenomenon influencing American literature. Enrollment into them has become de rigueur for people with a calling to write, and is assumed by increasing numbers (including publishers) to be as necessary a first step toward a writing life as college would be toward a professional life. But because the self-styled “best” of these workshops comprise such a poor lot of dull, mechanical stories, it becomes necessary to ask: What goes on in these programs, and how do they influence today’s writers, for ill or for good?”

Next Thing You Know, The Scream Will Turn Up On eBay

“The folks at [Germany’s] Pirmasens Museum had long given up hope that a cache of paintings by that city’s most famous 19th-century painter, Heinrich Burkel, would ever be found… Then this fall Heike Wittmer, the museum’s director and archivist, saw what looked like three of the missing Burkels on a Web site advertising an art auction in Concordville, Pa., outside Philadelphia. Wittmer contacted cultural officers in the German government, who in turn contacted the FBI’s new Art Crime Team… The paintings, valued at about $125,000, found their way in the 1960s to a New Jersey man who bequeathed them to his daughter about 20 years later.”