Sharon Waxman, is the founder, CEO and Editor in Chief of TheWrap. She is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author, and was a Hollywood correspondent for The New York Times. Twitter: @sharonwaxman
Experience:
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Nefertiti News
Is anyone keeping score here? Word comes from Cairo that Germany has agreed to establish a joint committee to decide whether the famed bust of Nefertiti (that’s her along the left column of this blog) can go back to Egypt on loan, as has been requested by the country’s leading archeological gadfly/pharaoh, Zahi Hawass. Hawass…
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The Getty Empties Out
A sad sight. I went to the Getty Villa in Malibu today to see the last of the 40 objects that are in the process of being returned to Italy over the next few weeks. It was a quiet day, and a sunny one. Pieces have been quietly disappearing from one day to the next.…
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DreamWorks Plays Chess
If you are surprised to see me weigh in on DreamWorks moves to exit its relationship at Paramount in today’s NYT, mmm, well, so am I. But a tip came my way, and the reporter in me couldn’t pass it up. The story is essentially that DreamWorks is looking to make a deal to move…
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A Glimpse From Inside
This is what it looks like from inside the working world of Hollywood, now a strike zone. The screeching sound you hear is the shut-down of show after show, from Santa Monica to Burbank to Rockefeller Center. That is the sound of the brakes applied to a multibillion dollar entertainment industry. Here is one partial…
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A Tale of Two Hollywoods
At the PEN USA awards last night in Beverly Hills, it was no surprise to hear a lot of talk about the Hollywood writer’s strike. The theme was the First Amendment (isn’t PEN’s theme always the First Amendment?), and some made strained — even angry — comparisons between the screenwriters’ standoff over money, and the…
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Italy Scores: Now it’s the Dealers
Who’s next? Why, the dealers are next. Jerome Eisenberg, the long-time and much in-the-mix antiquities dealer, has given Italy eight pieces of art valued at about a half-million dollars, according to reports today. (See AP and Bloomberg .) Eisenberg, now 77, has claimed to be doing so "for ethics and good will," but we may…
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True Grit
Every year I look forward to attending the "Courage in Journalism" awards, given annually to a few women who demonstrate true fearlessness in the pursuit of truth. The event is a lesson in humility and a reminder of what price some journalists pay for their ideals. This year’s ceremony, held last night at the Beverly…
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Tune in Tomorrow
Friends and Readers: Hope you will tune in tomorrow, 2:30 pm PST, Tuesday, October 30, as I guest-host "The Politics of Culture" on KCRW for the first (and, depending, very possibly the last) time. You can listen live at 89.9 FM if you are in Los Angeles, or hear it online at KCRW.com, and it’s…
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The Twisted Tale of a Body Part
It was bound to come to this: ancient body parts held hostage by a French bureaucracy fearful of creating a precedent. That’s the truth behind a strange tale playing out in France this week. The mummified, tattooed head of a Maori warrior was what an enlightened deputy mayor in Rouen decided was not a work…
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Italy Racks Up Returns
More booty going back home: Princeton's art museum has agreed to transfer title to eight ancient artifacts to Italy in the wake of demands by the government, my colleague Elisabetta Povoledo and others reported over the weekend. Of 15 items under dispute, Princeton will keep 7 objects and transfer legal title to eight, and four…
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Zahi – 1; Western Museums – 4 (Heads Up, Boston)
A major break-through has occurred for Egypt in its quest to reclaim five major pieces from five major Western museums. The Hildesheim Museum in Germany has agreed to lend Egypt the statue of the architect of the Great Pyramid in time for the opening of Cairo’s new Grand Museum in 2012, Egypt has confirmed today.…
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Where Does This Document Belong?
Sexy, isn’t it? It’s the Magna Carta, one of apparently 20 known original copies of a charter issued in 1215 that set us — yes, us, we the lotus eaters who bask in the land of the free and the home of the brave — on the path to individual rights separate and apart from…
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The Getty Story Plays Out
Here's a new Associated Press story telling readers of this blog what they knew was going to happen: as the ink dries on the newly-signed agreement between the Getty and Italy, in which the museum returns 40 pieces to Italy, Italy is dropping civil charges against Marion True. That should happen when her trial resumes…
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Through the Looking Glass, Backwards
It takes a lot to interrupt my writing silence, but today’s article by Kim Murphy in the L.A. Times makes it necessary. Kim managed to gain access to the basement of Iran’s contemporary art museum where, she informs us, the most important collection of impressionist and modern Western art outside the West is stored, though…