Amazon: Hachette Dispute Is About Lower Prices And More Money To Authors
“Books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more,” Amazon said in the statement, which was posted on the forum for its Kindle ebook reader. “If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive.”
International Study: Culture Is Big Travel Appeal For Young People
“Of the 15 countries with the largest economies in the world, the participants – plus 1,000 additional young people surveyed from the UK – said that France was the most attractive place as a source of arts and culture, followed by Italy, the US and then the UK.”
“Save The Corcoran” Court Hearing Has An Uninhibited Star Witness
Philanthropist Wayne Reynolds, who was first wooed for the Corcoran’s board chairmanship and then rejected, “led a packed courtroom Wednesday on a rollicking and highly critical narrative account of his interactions with gallery leadership, at one point likening the Corcoran’s executive suite to ‘a goat rodeo,’ and asserting that he could do better, if given a chance.”
Met Opera Proposes Federal Mediator For Last-Minute Labor Talks
“With time running out before a lockout of its workers threatened for later this week, the Metropolitan Opera proposed on Wednesday that federal mediators be brought in at the 11th hour to facilitate negotiations with several of the company’s unions. But it was unclear if the unions would agree to a mediator, or if there was enough time left to forge a deal.” (includes video)
Orlando Ballet “Needs To Take A Deep Breath,” Says New Boss
“‘We all need to take a deep breath,’ says Jim Mitchell, the ballet’s fourth executive director in three years. During that time, the leadership was in flux and the organization was left homeless after a mold infestation shut down its headquarters in the former Orlando Utilities Commission building.”
Tracey Emin’s Bed Will Spend Ten Years At The Tate
“Tracey Emin’s controversial artwork <em>My Bed</em> is to return to the Tate after selling for £2.2m earlier this month. Count Christian Duerckheim, the piece’s new owner, has agreed to loan the work ‘for a period of at least 10 years’, said Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota.”
Is Your Name Your Destiny?
“Names work hard: They can affect who gets into elite schools, what jobs we apply for, and who gets hired. Our names can even influence what cities we live in, who we befriend, and what products we buy since, we’re attracted to things and places that share similarities to our names.”
James Wolcott, Frank Bidart, David Rabe Win PEN Literary Awards
“The poet Frank Bidart, the critic James Wolcott and the playwright David Rabe are among the winners of the 2014 PEN Literary Awards, announced today by the PEN/American Center.”
Downtown L.A.’s Arts District Is Pricing Out The Artists (It’s An Old Story)
“In the 1970s, the streets east of Little Tokyo and west of the L.A. River made up a dingy district of hollowed-out warehouses that landlords rented to artists who needed a lot of space for little money. … [Now, a] new coffee shop moves in every month or so, and it’s hard to walk two minutes in any direction in the 52-block neighborhood without finding a blue-and-white filming notice.”
Hollywood And Kodak Unite To Save Motion Picture Film
“Faced with the possible extinction of the material that made Hollywood famous, a coalition of studios is close to a deal to keep Eastman Kodak Co. in the business of producing movie film. The negotiations … [should] result in an arrangement where studios promise to buy a set quantity of film for the next several years, even though most movies and television shows these days are shot on digital video.”
Rome’s Opera House Avoids Liquidation (For Now) With Labor Deal
“A tentative agreement has been reached between management and unions representing the staff of Rome’s Opera House, following recent strikes over the theatre’s restructuring and salvage plan. The threat of liquidation which had been hanging over the Opera House has been averted, pending an upcoming referendum by unions on the terms of the restructuring programme.”
Cincinnati Art Museum Names New Director
“Cameron Kitchin, director of Memphis’ Brooks Museum of Art, has been named the new director of the Cincinnati Art Museum after a nearly seven-month search.”
Can This Program Hook A New Generation Of Young Dance Addicts?
An experimental program at Manhattan’s New Victory Theater has been presenting to youngsters – for free – three weeks of wide-ranging modern dance programming, with the companies doing the same material they perform for adult audiences. The dancers seem to love it even more than the kids do.
100 Years Of World War I Movies (And How They Changed)
David Mermelstein surveys the ways in which The War to End All Wars has been portrayed on screen, and how each era’s preoccupations affected the stories those films told.
This Is The Guy To Bring To A Bloody Knife Fight (If You’re Putting It Onstage)
“Death is easy, but for a good eye-gouge, Broadway directors call Rick Sordelet. … A top purveyor of staged mayhem, Mr. Sordelet has created fistfights, sword duels, stabbings and gunplay for some 60 Broadway productions – as well as Hollywood films, the Metropolitan Opera, the 1995 Super Bowl halftime show, and Ben Hur Live.”
Poetry? There’s An App For That – Five Of Them, In Fact
The Times‘s app critic (yes, it has one) looks at an encyclopedic offering from the Poetry Foundation for discovering new poems; a Shakespeare app that includes all the sonnets and plays; two packages, for writing haiku and for longer verse; and an app devoted entirely to Eliot’s The Waste Land. (includes video)
London Theatre By The Numbers – This is A Booming Industry
“In 2012/13 more than 22 million people went to a London theatre performance and £618.5m was taken at the box office. London cinema admissions totalled 43 million, meaning the average ticket price would need to be more than £14.40 – which it is not – for cinema to have a bigger box office figure than theatre.”
The Met Opera: Caught Between Competing Realities
“Whether our current opera house model will survive will depend, I believe, on how successfully opera houses attract new artists to create work that speaks as eloquently to the traditions as to present-day audiences.” It’s an open question, however, whether the Met can do so. It certainly cannot while the stage door is padlocked.”
Iraqi Anger As Militants Damage Cultural Heritage
“The angry public reaction to the attacks on Mosul’s cultural history — including the eviction of Christians by militants, which outraged many Muslim residents who celebrate Mosul’s reputation for tolerance — appears to be the first spark of rebellion against harsh Islamic rule.”
Michael Kimmelman: Why The Frick Museum Shouldn’t Expand
“The city’s truest anti-MoMA, the Frick becomes the latest front in a larger battle to prevent nonprofit outposts of civilization from falling prey to the bigger-is-better paradigm.”
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Time-Shifted Viewing Increasingly Competes With Live TV (And It’s Changing How Programing Is Done
“In the past year, the volume of DVR playback viewing that occurs during primetime hours has reached the point where the DVR now ranks as the No. 1 network. The ratings generated by viewers opting to watch time-shifted programs — from across the television dial — are equivalent to the averages of the Big Four networks combined.”
More Universities Get Out Of College Radio and Affiliate With Public Radio Stations
“College-radio fans say the deals threaten rock innovation and experimentation. Many fledging bands still get their start on college radio, where the lack of profit constraints allows the stations to experiment with music and expand listeners’ horizons, they say.”
Corcoran Lawyers Make Case For Breakup
“After painting a grim portrait of a museum on the edge — empty coffers, emergency climate chillers in the courtyard, a backup power generator in the street, “combustible” student art-making equipment one floor below priceless works — lawyers for the Corcoran Gallery of Art on Tuesday rested their case in favor of a dramatic reorganization.”
After Funding Uncertainty, Ontario Steps Up Again To Fund Toronto Luminato Festival
“For the past year Luminato has been working with Queen’s Park to extend that support. And in making the case, Luminato had some impressive numbers to provide. The festival generates about $60 million each year for the Ontario economy, delivers $12 million in provincial taxes and provides the equivalent of 600 full-time jobs in labour income.”
After Only Six Months On The Job, William Penn Foundation Head Resigns
“Peter J. Degnan, who came to William Penn as managing director at the beginning of March from his post as vice dean of finance and administration at the Wharton School, has tendered his resignation, foundation leaders said Monday.”
Andrea L Rich, Controversial Former LACMA Head, 71
“In her methodical process of updating LACMA’s technology, balancing the budget and reorganizing the curatorial departments into “centers,” she often seemed to impose an unwieldy university structure on a relatively eccentric art institution.”
NYT Art Reporter Carol Vogel Caught In Unattributed Wikipedia Quote
“As the comparison shows, Vogel appears to have substituted and deleted a few words, but otherwise left the structure—and several strings of words—mostly intact.”
Get Happy! Scientists Work On Finding Out What That Means
“To track happiness they had to figure out what signaled the feeling and then decide how best to measure that. That ability to track emotion, which is part of a broader field called sentiment analysis, is a nut that everyone from Facebook to the National Security Agency (NSA) is trying to crack, and Dodds and Danforth believe they have found a granular way to do it.”
Pussy Riot Pair Sues Russia Over Imprisonment
“Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova say their prosecutions amounted to torture. They have filed a case at the European Court of Human Rights against Russia, seeking compensation.”