Month: April 2005

The Arts Of Politics

Politicians are in a bind when it comes to talking about the arts. “Say nothing about the arts, and you outrage influential metropolitan liberals and buffet socialists, whose cocktail-party cri de coeur is the under-funding of their cultural playgrounds. Say too much, and you force diehards in the shires to join with chavs and “neets” to protest at taxpayers’ money going to fancypants bollocks that ought to pay for itself.”

European Dance Takes An Elitist Turn

A European festival of new dance shows a distinct experimental bent. “Europe, it would seem, there is a greater willingness to explore the outer reaches of conceptualism and politicization, layered with history and fraught with context. Theorizing aside, the dance was extremely elitist, for all its bows to popular dance (hip-hop) and political immediacy. This followed in the grand tradition of provocative European avant-gardism, influential and obscure. Work like this flourishes in a climate of still-generous public subsidies (at least from an American perspective) and a sympathetic dance intelligentsia, unmindful of such tawdry considerations as potential box-office appeal.”

NEA Awards $61 Million In Grants

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded $61 million in grants. “Just over $40 million of that amount will fund 64 grants to state and regional partnerships. The state partnerships provide support for state arts agencies’ basic plans to address local priorities, as well as funding arts education and local Challenge America initiatives. The regional partnerships provide basic support for regional arts organizations’ plans and for regional touring initiatives.”

Poetry “Watchdog Website Shuts Down

“This week the poetry world is atwitter over the closing down of an Internet site that for the last year dedicated itself to exposing what it calls fraud among the small circle of poetry contests that frequently offer publishing contracts as prizes. Alan Cordle, a research librarian who lives in Portland, Ore., has managed the Web site, www.foetry.com, anonymously since its inception a little more a year ago. He called his site the “American poetry watchdog” and aimed to expose the national poetry contests that he said “are often large-scale fraud operations” in which judges select their friends and students as winners.”

British Recording Industry Tallies Illegal Downlod Losses

The British recording industry has lost hundreds of millions to illegal downloading in the past two years. “The British Phonographic Industry said record labels lost £376m last year – up nearly £100m on the £278m they lost the year before – in the music business’s first attempt to quantify the financial cost of illegal downloads. A two-year study by research group TNS showed that music fans would have spent £1.5bn on recorded music between 2002-2004, but because of downloads spent only £858m.”

The New Walker, Brought To You By…

“There are a lot of good things you can say about the [Minneapolis-based Walker Art Center’s] reopening–not the least of which is that it has reopened. This past Walker-less winter was a reminder of just how much a world-class arts institution adds to the life of our little metropolis; without it, Minneapolis might as well be Houston. And it’s worth mentioning that, with a price tag of a mere $70 million… the Walker’s new addition was a relative steal. [But] everything in this new wing seems to be sponsored by some corporation or another. You walk from the General Mills Lounge to the Best Buy Arcade to the U.S. Bank Orientation Lounge. In its proliferation of corporate sponsorship, the Walker is less MoMA than [Mall Of America].”