“The heirs of Hergé, the creator of the popular Tintin comics, were dealt a crushing blow in Dutch court this week. In a shocking decision, the court ruled that they do not have the rights to the iconic boy reporter character.”
Can You Consciously Design A Metaphor To Change Someone’s Mind?
“I’m here to tell you that they can, and are. … They aren’t supposed to make someone remark: ‘That’s beautiful.’ They’re meant to make someone realise that they’ve only been looking at one side of a thing.” Michael Erard (“For five years I worked full-time as a metaphor designer at the FrameWorks Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC … I continue to shape and test metaphors for private-sector clients and others”) explains how it’s done.
Former Orchestra Exec Director Sentenced To Nine Years
When Stephen Jay Carlton, director of the Peninsula Symphony in California was hired in 2009 “at an annual salary of $75,000 plus full medical benefits, the balance sheet for the Symphony at the fiscal year ending June 2009 showed about $500,000 in endowment funds with close to $10,000 in the checking account. On Sept. 20, 2013, when the alleged fraud began to unravel, there was $1,400 in endowment funds and $0 in the checking account.”
CBC Fires TV Host Over Secret Art Deals
“The Star found Solomon had been brokering the sale of paintings and masks owned by a flamboyant Toronto-area art collector to rich and famous buyers. Solomon, in at least one case, took commissions in excess of $300,000 for several pieces of art and did not disclose to the buyer that he was being paid fees for introducing buyer and seller.”
Researcher: Gossiping Is Good For Your Health
“The best predictor of good health was the quality of the social contact they had with others. The only thing that came close was giving up smoking. It came way above body weight, whether they were obese or not, what medication they were on or treatments they had had, whatever therapy they had had, the exercise they took or alcohol they consumed. What was a much bigger factor in their recoveries was the size and vibrancy of their social network.”
James Conlon Is Next Chief Conductor Of Italy’s Top Radio Orchestra
The American conductor, currently music director of Los Angeles Opera, has been named the new principal conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI in Turin, beginning in 2016.
First It Was A Rembrandt, Then It Wasn’t. Now It’s A Rembrandt Again
“The painting was sliced down the middle and straight through its center in the 19th century, probably to be sold as two Rembrandt portraits. At some point in the next 40 years, it was sutured back together with pieces of an entirely different canvas, and layered with paint to cover up its scars.”
Meet The New U.S. Poet Laureate, The First Hispanic In The Post
“As a child, Juan Felipe Herrera learned to love poetry by singing about the Mexican Revolution with his mother, a migrant farmworker in California. Inspired by her spirit, he has spent his life crossing borders, erasing boundaries and expanding the American chorus.”
‘Bibliotherapy’ – Can Reading A Book Prescription Really Make You More Mentally Healthy?
Our correspondent relates a session with a bibliotherapist at Alain de Botton’s School of Life (it worked) – and explains that the practice (if not the term) is very old indeed.
What If They Gave Major Dance Awards And (Almost) Nobody Came?
“This year’s Benois de la Danse, which took place over two days at the end of May in its traditional home, the Bolshoi Theater, was particularly marked by the absence of award winners.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.09.15
The Met’s Coming Rebranding: A Puzzlement
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-06-09
Eifman Ballet’s ‘Psychiatric’ Problem
AJBlog: Fresh Pencil Published 2015-06-09
Alternative to Despair
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-06-09
Act of worship
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2015-06-09
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Tony TV Ratings Slip Again
“The ratings for the live ceremony hosted by Alan Cumming and Kristin Chenoweth are close to the all-time low for the Tonys, which was 6 million in 2012. Final numbers will be issued Tuesday. Among viewers ages 18 to 49, the demographic preferred by advertisers, the telecast earned a .9 rating.”
The Tonys Seem To Be Afraid Of Its Own History (Fear Over Ratings?)
“Recognizing history is something the Tonys, in recent years, have become not just indifferent to but openly fearful about. The thinking is all terror-based: Ratings have fallen from decades past; the telecast skews old; young people must be entertained at all costs.”
TV Execs Talk About The Difficulties Of Reaching And Keeping Audiences
“If you make a show for a certain audience, you want to make sure you get that audience,” he says, going on to explain that this is pointedly different from the old model of trying to pull in as many viewers as possible.
How Big Is The Tony Effect? ‘Fun Home’ Quadruples Sales
“The Tony Award for best new musical … is likely to be a major turning point, allowing the production to reach new markets, and new audiences, that might have been initially put off by its searing exploration of sexuality and suicide.”
‘A Cross Between The New Criterion And Mad Magazine’: Half Of Komar And Melamid Launches New Art Mag
“As the artist-provocateur Alexander Melamid sees it, modern art is deathly ill, but he thinks he has the cure. It is Artenol, his new quarterly magazine, described on its website as ‘a purgative for an ailing art world, a palliative for afflicted aesthetes.'”