Category: issues

“Alan Rich, among the most highly regarded music critics in the U.S., has been let go from LA Weekly. The newspaper, which will discontinue regular classical music coverage, is among the 16 outlets owned by Village Voice Media, which earlier this month ‘laid off’ the staff film and dance critics from its flagship, The Village Voice.”

Jonathan Jones says that the clamor for Chinese art in the West should be tempered by a serious consideration of the Chinese government’s abysmal record on human rights. “Isn’t it a bit rich that a regime once more revealed, by the outrages in Tibet, as what it has never actually denied being – an authoritarian mono-cultural state – is being so assiduously courted by so many museums and galleries?”

There may not be a country better at promoting and bolstering the arts than Denmark. “Even in this age of cutbacks (and its conservative-liberal government has made those of late), Denmark makes a point of taking art more seriously than most.” And the enthusiasm for culture starts at the top: the country’s queen is famously supportive of homegrown art.

“New York State’s top economic-development official has proposed moving the performing arts center planned for the former World Trade Center site and building it atop a vast subway station planned for downtown at Fulton Street and Broadway.”

The viciously anti-Islamic film released this week in Europe by Dutch politician Geert Wilders does not need to be answered with censorship or fear, says Timothy Garton Ash. “Too many Dutch and international leaders have leapt to deplore Wilders’ film without first excoriating those who threaten him with death.”

“Some of the biggest guns in Canada’s creative community… are heading to Ottawa tomorrow to protest against a controversial provision on film and TV tax credits now before the Senate banking committee.” According to critics, the bill could cripple the country’s homegrown film and TV industry.

“There was a time when critics were our arbiters of culture, the ultimate interpreters of intellectual discourse. When I was growing up, eager to write about the arts, it was just as important to read Pauline Kael, Frank Rich and Lester Bangs as it was to see a Robert Altman film, a David Mamet play or listen to the latest Elvis Costello album. Critics gave art its context, explained its meaning and guided us to new discoveries. As a flood of stories in recent weeks has shown, those days are going, going, gone.”

The far northern city of Edmonton, Alberta has long been seen as the province’s cultural capital. True, its neighbo(u)r to the south, Calgary, has been looking to strip the title in recent years, but Edmonton’s arts leaders don’t really buy the effort. “In Edmonton, culture is very much a part of the fabric of life for everyone… and I think in Calgary, it’s being driven in fact by money rather than community.”

Hartford’s performing arts center, constructed in the 1980s to bring several of the city’s top cultural groups together in a single home, now stands dilapidated and abandoned by nearly all of its onetime tenants. The building is up for sale, and for the most, part, Hartford’s arts scene has moved on without it. “Let us note for the record that it was fun while it lasted.”

“With money flowing from oil-rich companies, and employees flowing into the city, Calgary could finally break out from under Edmonton’s shadow as a cultural hub for the West… There exists a tremendous spirit of collaboration among arts organizations, which are fighting, en masse, the Cowtown reputation that does little for the city’s cultural cachet.”