Parthenon

• CedarCreek Systems , a reseller specializing in Procure-to-Pay (P2P) solutions for the club and resort industry, has taken legal action against BirchStreet Systems in Orange County Superior Court.
• The lawsuit centers on a breach of their reseller agreement by BirchStreet Systems, the market leader in P2P software for the hospitality industry.
• The lawsuit was filed today by famed attorney Robert Shapiro, who will represent CedarCreek Systems in the case.
• CedarCreek Systems aims to uphold the integrity of their agreement with BirchStreet and ensure that adequate support is provided to sustain their role in the P2P solutions market.

• The theft is suspected to be an inside job that took place over a period of twenty years.
• This is not the first time the Museum has come under fire and its custodianship has been questioned.

The Duveen scouring

• There can be little doubt that the most notorious of them is the Duveen scouring scandal, so-named after Joseph Duveen, an ultra-rich art dealer of dubious ethics and benefactor of the British Museum.
• The marbles were later placed in the Duveen Gallery, named in honour of the man responsible for the damage to their historic surface.
• The Duveen scouring was not the only cleaning of the marbles to cause consternation.
• It is probable that, if these early warnings had been headed, the Duveen cleaning could have been avoided.

Other controversies

• During a 1999 conference in the museum, a sandwich lunch was served in the Duveen Gallery, and the delegates were encouraged to touch the ancient sculptures.
• Many among those present found the gesture so inconsiderate that they walked out of the gallery.
• A controversy of a different kind concerns contested objects in the Museum’s collection that are the object of repatriation requests.

The Museum’s current troubles

• About half of the Museum’s 8 million items are uncatalogued and this lack of an inventory has certainly facilitated the thefts.
• The fact that it took so long to discover the thefts also raises the question of what else might have gone missing without a trace.
• Yet one can’t help but wonder: Do the Museum’s current woes have other museum directors fretting with anxiety?
• What if some of the identified stolen items are contested items that have been the object of restitution requests?

Crisis as an opportunity

• Every crisis is an opportunity, and here too there is an opportunity.
• After the resignation of the director Hartwig Fischer, an interim director, Sir Mark Jones, has been appointed.

• In the months before King Charles III was crowned on May 6 2023, Westminster Abbey announced that the public would be able to see its fabled Cosmati pavement up close – in their socks.
• The 13th-century mosaic floor had been covered up by thick carpets to protect it for as long as anyone alive could remember.
• The Cosmati pavement, of course, played a stellar role during the coronation ceremony.

Intricate patterns

• You explore the complex, bewildering patterning with your feet as well as with your eyes.
• These stonework patterns are what make the pavement the most fabulous thing.
• This floor, when first laid, would have shimmered and moved, almost like a silk carpet (but not as soft).
• None of the patterns are quite the same: there is surprisingly little uniformity.

Centuries of wear

• There have been various interventions and restorations, most notably by Sir George Gilbert Scott between 1859 and 1871.
• The pavement around the high altar is Scott’s work (and design).
• The central rectangle of the eastern border is also Scott’s work.
• It is good and thoughtful restoration, with considerable effort taken to match the stones.
• As Simeone points out, however, Scott cut the stones too thinly and so they will work loose.

• Parthenon Therapeutics , a precision oncology company discovering and developing a novel class of therapies that reprogram the tumor microenvironment (TME), today announced that the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (JITC) has published results from a collaboration between Parthenon Therapeutics, The University of Texas Health Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) and George Washington University, demonstrating that PRTH-101 potently inhibits the adhesion of collagen receptor discoid in domain receptor-1 (DDR1)-expressing cancer cells to collagen substrates and DDR1 autophosphorylation induced by collagen.
• The article entitled, “A highly selective humanized DDR1 mAb reverses immune exclusion by disrupting collagen fiber alignment in breast cancer,” describes the humanization of PRTH-101 and the mechanism by which the drug candidate binds to its target to inhibit DDR1.
• The publication is now available online on the JITC website .
• “This study reinforces the development of PRTH-101 as a cancer therapeutic, and also sheds light on a new therapeutic strategy to modulate collagen alignment in the tumor ECM for enhancing antitumor immunity.”