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Can Philly Find A Stable Arts Funding Source?

Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center budget woes points up the need for some sort of stable public funding, writes the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial page. “Mayor Street hopes to revive that important conversation with his proposal to raise a sizeable endowment to supplement ticket sales and other grants. No single funding source has been identified. The mayor proposed at least one idea – selling off the naming rights to the Pennsylvania Convention Center – that, while well-intentioned, had the drawback of commercializing the center’s identity.”

Arts Bundling – Charlotte Tries For More

Charlotte (NC) arts leaders are struggling to keep $147 million worth of arts projects bundled in a request to the state for funding. “The wish list encompasses a 1,200-seat performance hall, a museum for an art collection owned by Andreas Bechtler, a relocated Mint Museum of Art, a new home for the Afro-American Cultural Center, rehearsal space for the N.C. Dance Theatre and renovations at Discovery Place.”

Theatre Naming Rights Fail To Translate Into $$$

Winnipeg’s historic (but ailing) “Walker Theatre was in rough shape at the turn of the century. The 95-year-old building was saddled in debt and close to being shut down. It was renamed the Burton Cummings Theatre for the Performing Arts in August 2002, in exchange for an agreement that Cummings would perform five free concerts to raise funds for the theatre. At the time, newspaper reports heralded the yearly concerts as having the potential to bring in over $1 million. So far, however, only one of those concerts has happened, back in April 2003. That concert brought in a profit of $55,000.”

Oscars: Of Entertainment And Community

Th Oscars are about more than just entertainment, writes Michael Wilmington. “Citing the need for even higher numbers for one of the world’s top-rated programs (41.3 million viewers in this “off year”) would be an idiotic excuse to wreck its meaning. The Oscars, of course, are a show producers hope will draw huge numbers. But they’re also a great communal binding event for the industry itself: an annual celebration of the fact that it takes many different talents and many kinds of artists to make great movies.”

Pulitzer From Beyond: Psychics Look At The Music Prize

The rules for this year’s Pulitzer in music have changed. What does it mean? Marc Geelhoed visits a group of clairvoyants, plays them some new music, and asks their advice. “According to the assembled clairvoyants, this year’s committee is not going to be a happy one. “The judges are concerned with the competition between them,” said Castro. Klobucnar saw “dueling factions, one of which sees serious music as being about complexity, about structure. For them to agree to give it to someone who’s not really complex, it has to be a small move, incremental, having some of the attributes they like, but maybe not all of them. They like that they can apply some of their criteria to jazz.”

Andre Previn, Composer

Andre Previn is better-known as a conductor than a composer. But he’s working on changing that. “Temperamentally, Previn is probably unique among American composers in that he has nothing to prove. Thanks to all those years on the Hollywood treadmill, he writes with speed and fluency. Whatever the reason, some of Previn’s music is wonderful, and some of it meanders. You could wonder to what extent Previn knows the difference – or if he takes his composing life seriously enough to revise more rigorously.”

Showdown At Guarantee Corral

Pop concert promoters run a risky business. They have to judge demand and specify guarantees. Often the two don’t meet. “Ticket prices have spiraled out of control as artists demand higher guarantees. Every year promoters pledge to say “no” to those acts, but they never do. This year might be different.”

Classical Music Radio Decline Says Something About The Taste-Makers

So Washington DC loses another classical music radio station. “Once upon a time and long ago, bringing classical music to the airwaves was an image-enhancing operation, a programming decision, in the words of music historian Russell Sanjek, to “win over the custodians of public taste and appease the Federal Communications Commission.” These days, it’s bad taste even to mention public taste, and the FCC is appeased just by keeping a wardrobe functioning. What the classical fade-out tells us more than anything is that the “custodians of public taste” have left the building.

Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Needs Emergency $100 Million

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation is in major disarray. “An Arizona Republic examination over the past year revealed that the foundation is beset with legal and financial mayhem, clashes over its mission and revolving-door leadership. The situation is so dire that the foundation’s board of directors recently endorsed an emergency proposal to raise $100 million as part of the solution, a considerable challenge given that it has raised less than $2 million in donations over the past five years.”