A new report says that Scotland spends less than a half per cent of its public funding on the arts. A review of the government’s arts funding is underway.
Blog
The Public Radio Dilemma – Ratings Or Service?
“For more than a decade now, a culture war has raged within public radio over whether public stations exist to serve the largest possible audience, or to serve smaller audiences whose desires are not fulfilled by commercial radio. The maximize-the-numbers crowd has won in most cities, accepting the view of public radio’s most influential consultant, David Giovannoni, that any station’s job is to attract the most listeners. Opponents argued that public radio should sound more like it did from the birth of FM through the 1980s, with a mix of news, talk, classical, jazz, folk and other kinds of music that you can’t otherwise hear on the radio. As government funding for public radio declined, Giovannoni won the day.”
The Culture Wars? Artists Get A Pass This Time
In a year when cultural warriors could have been attacking the National Endowment for the Arts, where’s their attention? On TV and obscenity. “It’s great to see huge media corporations in the hot seat instead of a handful of artists and an arts endowment that deserves more robust federal support. And it’s wonderful to see at least the rudiments of a public debate over a culture awash in images of sex and violence, not to mention spam e-mail.”
How Globalization Is Killing Pop Music
“Put bluntly, Anglo-American popular music is among globalisation’s most useful props. Never mind the nitpicking fixations with interview rhetoric and stylistic nuance that concern its hardcore enthusiasts – away from its home turf, mainstream music, whether it’s metal, rap, teen-pop or indie-rock, cannot help but stand for a depressingly conservative set of values: conspicuous consumption, the primacy of the English language, the implicit acknowledgement that America is probably best. Even the most well-intentioned artist can’t escape.”
Broadway’s Healthy Season
“Pundits will tell you it hasn’t been a banner year on Broadway. What they mean, mostly, is that there hasn’t been a blockbuster musical that promises to run forever. Actually, much of the Tony Awards season that officially ended on Wednesday was quite healthy.”
Changing Times, Changing Meaning
“Classics don’t change depending on the nightly news or the morning papers. Our perceptions change, not the playwrights’. Wartime, such as our own time, makes certain plays rattle around in your head a little differently. Often it’s a war that places the play in the writer’s head in the first place, getting the conversation going at gunpoint.”
Can Creative Architecture Lead To More Creative Science?
“To the delight of many architects and scientists, the lab-in-a-box is losing favor. In recent years, more science buildings have begun to feature flexible work spaces, large common areas, fancy atriums, irregular shapes, and other relative extravagances once unseen in the workaday laboratory. These changes are not just ornamental. Increasingly, they come from the drawing boards of architects who have been pondering how scientists think and work.”
NYCB – Another Week Of Celebrating Balanchine
Tobi Tobias awards NY City Ballet’s current rendition of Balanchine’s Liebeslieder Walzer best-in-show. “At the premiere of Liebeslieder, in 1960, they took the house lights down to half for the extended pause between the two sections. I remember sitting in the hushed twilight and thinking, This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I’ve had little cause to change my mind since, despite casts subsequent to the original one that were not quite as wonderful. To my mind, the company’s current rendition is the finest—the most coherent as an entity, and the most moving—since the ballet’s first season.”
Spain Opens A “Cultural Olympics”
Barcelona has opened a five-month-long festival of international cultural programs. “Organisers say they expect more than five million visitors to the 2004 Forum of Cultures. It is being promoted as part-festival, part meeting-of-minds on broad themes such as peace, cultural diversity and sustainable development.”
Low-Cost London Opera Experiment To Close
London’s new Savoy Opera, born only a month ago, and dedicated to presenting opera with affordable tickets, has decided to close. “We just haven’t sold enough seats, and it’s impossible under those circumstances for us to continue. But the experiment is not by any means over. We intend to review the situation. We are looking at why we were not selling enough and whether there is any way forward.”