Word: australian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Gogh's Irises, 1889, known to the trade as the Curse of the Outback, has found its permanent home in the Getty Museum in Malibu, Calif., which bought it for an undisclosed sum last week. Acquired at auction in November 1987 for $53.9 million by the Australian conglomerator and promoter Alan Bond, Irises was the most expensive work of art ever sold. Its price created an artificial euphoria that bulled the world art market and helped save it from the October ( '87 Wall Street crash. The name of the underbidder was never revealed, raising suggestions -- indignantly denied by the auctioneers...
Sotheby's, understandably terrified of the results if Irises had to be auctioned again, repossessed the painting and began seeking a private buyer for it at $65 million, saying that though Bond "owned" it, they "had control" of its whereabouts. (Some Australian museum officials now believe, though they have produced no evidence publicly, that the picture exhibited as Irises on a tour of Australian state galleries in 1989 was a new copy, protected from close inspection behind double glass.) Efforts to sell it at the high price failed. Since informed art-dealing sources concurred late last year that the right...
Cable is increasingly becoming a player as well. ESPN, the all-sports channel launched in late 1979, began by shoveling hours of fringe sports at hard-core fans, everything from dart throwing to Australian-rules football. Now, with an audience of more than 55 million homes, it is aggressively bidding for major sports like pro football and baseball. So is Ted Turner's TNT. HBO, meanwhile, has become the dominant network in boxing; it currently holds the exclusive rights for Mike Tyson's heavyweight fights...
...father's roots, Germaine Greer reveals that the ancient motto of her family is Memor esto, or "Be mindful of your ancestors." In her case, obsessed might be a more accurate adjective. Until he died in 1983, a wasted shell of a man after serving in the Australian army during World War II, Reg Greer had rebuffed inquiries about his past. Germaine's mother seemed not to care. But after her father's death, Germaine, best known as the author of the 1970 feminist treatise The Female Eunuch, embarked on an arduous three-year investigation of the man she never...
Most Allied and Federated stores are likely to stay in business no matter how Campeau ultimately fares. The chains are far better merchandisers than B. Altman, a declining retailer shuttered last year by George Herscu, an overleveraged Australian raider who acquired the company in 1987. The problems at Allied and Federated stemmed from no fault of their own but were caused mainly by the audacious price that Campeau paid...