“An audited financial statement posted on the Getty’s website reflects investment gains totaling $766.74 million from mid-2012 to mid-2013, enough to cover expenses while socking away about $534 million for the endowment. Officials said the endowment gained an additional $300 million during the second half of 2013, reaching $6.2 billion by year’s end.”
Archives for March 13, 2014
Canada Gets Its Version of the U.S. Justice Dept.’s E-Book Price-Fixing Suit
“Kobo is beginning to feel the pinch of prospective lower profit margins in Canada. The Canadian Government is forcing them to renegotiate contracts with all of their major publishing partners.”
When Was the First E-Book, Anyway?
Well, that depends on what you think qualifies as an e-book …
Missing Norman Rockwell Turns Up in Ohio
“The 1939 painting, called Sport, was used as one of the many Saturday Evening Post covers for which the artist is well-known. It sold last spring for more than $1 million at an auction in New York and disappeared later last year” – in Queens, yet again.
Who’s Designing the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion This Summer?
A Chilean architect named Smiljan Radic – and it will look like a cross between a flying saucer and Stonehenge.
Why Can’t Conservatives Pull Off a ‘Daily Show’?
“Political philosophy isn’t what keeps Republican-leaning comics from succeeding – it’s corporate hurdles, cultural forces, and the demographics of show business.”
Okay, Folks, Don’t Expect ‘Cosmos’ to Save Science in America
“If only Americans loved science a little more, the thinking goes, we could end our squabbling about climate change, clean energy, evolution, and funding NASA and the National Science Foundation. These are high hopes to pin on a television show, even one as glorious as Cosmos.”
Why We Can’t Stop Liking the Brands We Loved as Kids
Derek Thompson describes it as the Concrete-Mix theory of habit formation.
The Most Famous Playwright Most of Us Have Never Heard Of
Jon Fosse is “perhaps Europe’s most-performed living dramatist, translated into 40-odd languages. In 2010, he won the biggest prize in global theatre, the £275,000 Ibsen award,” and last year he was thought to be a frontrunner for the literature Nobel. Why does the English-speaking world know so little of him?
Russia’s Upstart Ballet Company Finally Schedules U.S. Debut
The Mikhailovsky Ballet, the well-funded St. Petersburg company that famously lured Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev away from the Bolshoi, was going to appear in New York in 2012 – until ABT, which also engaged the couple, invoked a non-compete clause. But they’re coming stateside at last.
What Do These ‘Kings of the Dance’ Think of the Title?
Ivan Vasiliev is sort of inspired by his kingship; Roberto Bolle is more amused.