Class Action

Back in 2009, the New Museum organized a show of the private collection of Greek billionaire Dakis Joannou, curated not by the museum’s staff but by Jeff Koons—the superstar artist who, as it so happens, features prominently in the tycoon’s holdings. The conflict of interest didn’t end there: Koons had designed Joannou’s thirty-five-meter yacht and was even the best man at Joannou’s wedding. Among those upset by this somewhat unusual—but also somehow emblematic—arrangement was William Powhida. Then a lesser-known artist, Powhida detailed the whole back-scratchy affair in a drawing

culture March 15, 2013

The Art of Making Magazines edited by Victor S. Navasky and Evan Cornog

I'm typing onto a computer screen; you're reading from one. No trees have been killed. Are we in a magazine? I'm asking because I don't honestly know.

If you're reading this, it's a safe bet you read magazines. Technically, you may even be reading one now—though I'm not sure if bookforum.com really qualifies. The ".com" might denote precisely what isn't Bookforum. I'm typing onto a computer screen; you're reading from one. No trees have been killed. Are we in a magazine? I'm asking because I don't honestly know.

For now, let's say we aren't. If a magazine still is what it's been for almost three centuries—an ink-on-paper "storehouse" of writing, published on a regular schedule—then the "media industrial revolution" (to use Tina Brown's