T-SHIRTS DON’T TALK THE TALK
We weren’t walking the floor during the AIA convention, but instead were here chained to our cubicle and relishing the thought of the juicy stories that would undoubtedly come back with our colleagues. Granted, San Antonio is no Vegas, but we thought that there were sure to be open bars, flaring tempers, overweening egos, and cutting remarks. But we have waited in vain, friends, in vain! Not a peep from Texas, unless you count the grumblers who sniffed that the free Guayabera shirts they received were made out of polyester and thus not very sustainable, and that the free guidebooks were tough to find and thus not very helpful. But there is a hope for redemption, and its name is the ICFF. During New York Design Week, the heady mixture of springtime, curvy organic forms, and free cocktails will surely produce some good stories. We’re counting on you!

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT
No one ever became an architect for the money, but even so, when you hear that the average salary of a practitioner with 10 years of experience hovers in the mid-60s, it makes you wish you’d considered banking or writing pulp mystery novels or being a curator…Yes, a curator! Our old pals Aaron Betsky andTerence Riley, directors of the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Miami Art Museum, respectively, are both relatively new to their jobs but got packages worth over $300,000. Not bad, gentlemen! In their May issue, the diligent researchers at The Art Newspaper (no relation, though we do like it quite a bit) compiled a list of the earnings of the directors of some major art museums, and it makes for good reading. Close to home, Paul Warwick Thompson of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum collects a tidy $250,000 for his labors there. The jaw-dropper in the list is Glen Lowry at MoMA, who gets $1.4 million a year, when you figure in his various perks and benefits. To their great credit (and our great delight), the editors at The Art Newspaper headlined the piece with: “Highest-paid US Director gets 31x salary of Uffizi director”, which puts things into perspective. However, we seem to recall hearing that Lowry had written his thesis on Islamic architecture, so there may be hope for us yet.

IN THE PINK
And lastly, to make up for all of the gossip we didn’t hear from the AIA convention: Which ubiquitous designer is said to have left his wife for his male lover? He has never been one to keep quiet about anything, as far as we can tell, and has been quoted as saying “Guilt is a buzzkill.”