“One of the questions that perhaps needs to be asked of all projects that put non-artists at their heart is who gets the greatest benefit. Is it the artists (who may be able to work on a scale that would be impossible without community involvement), or the community (who are giving up their precious time for rehearsals and performances when they could be watching Dr Who)?”
Category: issues
The World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals
A ranking by Prospect magazine, with an invitation to vote…
What’s Wrong With A List Of The World’s 100 Top “Public Intellectuals”
“The real problem, of course, is the magnificent double oxymoron inherent in the enterprise. First, you should not rank ‘public intellectuals’, whatever they might be, in the manner of one of those television top-40 countdown programmes… It is the most quintessentially anti-intellectual notion.”
New Arts Council England Chief Outlines Priorities
Alan Davey “said that ACE would focus on strategic touring, international import and export of work, the body’s relationship with its regularly funded organisations and the way the arts council makes funding decisions. The last of these priorities will encompass a new form of peer review and self-assessment.”
Fewer Critics, More Reviews
On the web, everyone’s a critic. So while there are fewer and fer critics employed at newspapers nd traditional publications, the number of reviews is growing…
Beseiged British Council Arts Boss Steps Down
British Council director of arts Venu Dhupa, whose proposed shake-up of the organisation’s creative departments was met with protests from UK artists, has quit after less than a year in the post.
How Europe Receded Into The Past
The standard account of Europe’s twentieth century is in turns anguished, relieved and elegiac. Shadowed by the departed Golden Age, it recounts the travails of an older and calmer civilization torn apart by the barbarians within, and able only to survive after 1945 at the cost of losing its global primacy (and thus its claim on the title of civilization itself).
Ontario Gives A Big Boost To Arts Funding
“That means that for its 2009-2010 operations, the provincial arts council will have almost $60 million to distribute to hundreds of individual artists and cultural organizations – the most money it has ever been allocated. It’s a signal that Queen’s Park is interested in all parts of the creative community, not just the flashy players such as the Royal Ontario Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario and Luminato, which got a $75 million bonanza earlier this month.”
Modernism As A Narrative
“There is no doubt that Modernism is often compelling. And its central thesis – that modernists were characterised by ‘the lure of heresy’ – does capture not just the widespread interrogation of artistic convention, but also its subjective counterpart: the sovereignty of the artist.”
A Plan To Encourage UK Art Donations
A “national giving day” is being planned that will acknowledge the biggest donors to major cultural institutions. One aim, according to the manifesto, is to provide greater incentives for donors to give “gifts” of artwork while they are still alive rather than as a bequest after death, in order to bolster the nation’s collection of contemporary artworks.