Tuesday reads

It's been a couple of days. I'm still on the Spending Smart beat, which runs to the end of the month. But that's no justification for blog neglect. Jeremy Eichler sat down with BSO maestro James Levine, who has a new contract to take him through 2012. I'm not a big fan of the Oscars but I did appreciate Ben Stiller's riff on Joaquin Phoenix. It is hard to imagine this tip is going to lead to a recovery of the stolen Gardner art. Iraq's National Museum reopens and it's hard to tell if that's a good thing, at least if you hear what former director Donny George Youkhanna has to say about it. CBS News on Shepard Fairey. The New Yorker isn't quite so taken.