Tag: 12.28.19

A Powerful Professional Organization For Writers Seems To Be Imploding

Or is it self-immolating? In any case, when the RWA suspended writer Courtney Milan, who had spent years on its ethics committee and pushing for more inclusion and equity, for calling a book “a racist mess,” a boulder of anger, past racist treatment, secret committees, and a board exodus started rolling down the RWA’s hill of money and influence. Will the organization – 40 years old and at the forefront of a billion dollar industry – survive? (For more, here’s a complete timeline of what’s been happening.) – Houston Chronicle

Lee Mendelson, Producer Of The Charlie Brown Christmas Special, Has Died At 86

Of course he did many other things in a long life of TV producing – many of them Peanuts-focused – but “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was one of the first and biggest and certainly, along with his lyrics for “Christmas Time Is Here,” Mendelson’s most enduring contribution to Christmas in the United States. He died on Christmas Day. – Washington Post

How Many ‘Goya’ Paintings Were By His Studio, Not His Own Hand?

And, of course, in a larger sense, does it matter? Well, it matters for the money, of course. “Juliet Wilson-Bareau, a Goya scholar, told the Observer that museums must re-examine their Goya holdings because there are so many ‘problematic’ pictures. She regularly sees auction houses and dealers selling works under Goya’s name when she is convinced that they are by lesser hands.” – The Observer (UK)