BIZWATCH

By BERNARD BAUMOHL, JOHN GREENWALD, THOMAS MCCARROLL, VALERIE MARCHANT, JOSHUA COOPER RAMO AND RICHARD WOODBURY

STILL LIFE WITH PROFITS

Those art lovers packing the big Cezanne show in Philadelphia this summer are participating in the latest rite of American commerce: high culture as a profit center. With urban jobs and tax revenues shrinking, cities like Philadelphia eagerly seek blockbuster art shows to bring in the dollars. Major exhibits like New York City's 1992 Matisse retrospective can raise more moola than a Super Bowl or presidential convention. Chicago's four-month Monet show last year attracted nearly a million viewers and pulled $140 million into the area, surpassing the $109 million that Super Bowl XXX fans brought to Arizona last January when the game was held in Tempe.

Philadelphia's goals are more modest. The city expects 500,000 aesthetes to spend some $60 million while they admire The Large Bathers and other works during the show's three-month run. Local businesses see the show as a portrait of potential customers. Financial-services company Advanta underwrote the show, and 15 hotels are offering package deals that include VIP admission to the exhibit. In a broad bow to popular culture, Sandra Horrocks, the Philadelphia Museum of Art's vice president for marketing, will throw out the first pitch when the hometown Phillies play host to the Florida Marlins on the Fourth of July. Her spheroid: a vibrantly colored, vinyl-covered ball with Cezanne's signature on it that the museum is selling for an impressive $9.50 a pop.

JUST WILD ABOUT YOU

When a baby gorilla named Cenzoo flew first class to Denver last April, it was no accident that reporters swarmed the tarmac to meet the plane. The Denver Zoo had trumpeted the airborne ape's arrival as part of a publicity blitz for the July 30 opening of its Primate Panorama, which will house 200 animals on seven nature-like acres. Denver isn't alone in putting its best paw forward to lure more visitors. Attendance at the nation's animal houses has posted meager gains of late, as rival amusements have drawn customers away. So zoos are stressing such celebrity attractions as gorillas and bears. "They are putting their star animals on pedestals," says zoo consultant Scott Schultz. The strategy is paying off. For 1995-96 the Denver Zoo expects to reap $700,000 from sales of T shirts and other items based on its popular polar bears. No word yet whether new star Cenzoo has retained an agent.

GATES' NETSCAPE-GATE?

The debut of SLATE, Microsoft's much awaited webzine, got plenty of attention from netizens last week, and not just for its catchy name. Seems the 'zine kicked some versions of Netscape Navigator, the Web's most popular browser, into an unrecoverable crash--and added grist to the Microsoft-wants-to-rule-the-world mill. Instead of seeing Slate's snappy commentary on politics and culture (excerpts of which also appear in TIME), Netscape 1.0 viewers were treated to a page of gibberish followed by a shutdown. Was the snafu a sign of incompetence, or was it, as conspiracy buffs asked, a glimpse of a Microsoft plan to destroy Netscape?

Neither, it turns out. The problem is the Web itself, which has grown so quickly that older browsers (old in Net time being about four months) can't understand new commands that control the design of Web pages. "It's just the nature of the Web," says Slate's publisher, John Williams. "Our interest is in creating a great reader experience, not a technology showcase." Indeed, one showcase Microsoft did create didn't do much better. A day after the debut of a high-tech newsroom, the company's MSNBC news service blipped off-line, the result of a bureaucratic snafu over a $100 registration fee. The plan for world domination still has some bugs to be worked out.

YOU'RE FIRED--ER, HIRED!

With companies downsizing their payrolls by 3 million jobs since 1990, a labor shortage would seem to be corporate America's most unlikely problem. Yet, from engineer slots at Raytheon to bankteller positions in Chicago, thousands of jobs are going begging. U.S. employers are having so much trouble filling openings that they are offering big bonuses, lowering standards and even stealing workers from competitors to get more help.

According to the Labor Department, more than 1.1 million new jobs have been created so far this year, including 350,000 openings in May. In addition, many of the major corporations that cut their payrolls to the bone during recent years are starting to rehire. After slashing a combined total of 250,000 jobs since 1993, Sears, AT&T, IBM, Boeing and Xerox have now separately announced plans to add nearly 50,000 workers this year.

The upsizing of some segments of the job market comes just as the presidential campaign intensifies. But economists are warning Washington not to get too carried away. Many companies are still trimming payrolls, says John Challenger, executive vice president of a Chicago outplacement firm. Still, layoffs are being overwhelmed by the number of new jobs created. Says he: "We've turned the tide on corporate downsizing."