Category: issues

A few years after it was built, managers of Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center are asking the audiences that use it what they would change…

“There is overwhelming demand from customers and members for coverage of celebrity, movies and music. According to PQ Media, the market for outsourced entertainment news content is set to rise by 77% by 2011 to $960 million. So, increasing our entertainment coverage provides an opportunity to give them more of the content they want and to increase revenue at the same time.”

“Some of Southern California’s major cultural institutions are bleeding because of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, with combined losses of more than $3 million — and mounting — since February, when their seemingly safe and innocuous construction bonds turned into fiscal leeches.”

“Proponents of Ottawa’s controversial tax bill have pointed to the upcoming Canadian film Young People Fucking as a reason to curtail public funding for movies some deem offensive, while opponents of the bill from all sectors of the arts community are accusing the government of censorship.” None of this, of course, is hurting the film’s publicity efforts.

“More than 200 arts and cultural organizations in Philadelphia have been awarded grants totaling $2.1 million through the city’s Cultural Fund.” The grants are unrestricted, designed to fund general operations, which is frequently one of the hardest areas for cultural organizations to raise money for.

“Last month the Danish police arrested two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan descent on charges of plotting to kill [Kurt] Westergaard, one of the 12 cartoonists whose pictures of Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten sparked protests, some of them violent, by Muslims around the world in 2006.” The arrests shocked many Danes, who had been trying to forget about the controversy…

“The proposed law would allow pet owners in Tuscany to take their cats, dogs and other animals to any sort of public place – including museums, cinemas and even theatres. If approved, it would open up new possibilities for millions of holidaymakers who descend each year on the museums of Florence and Siena.”

“Have you considered ‘indie’ of late? It’s a sad sight. Staggering around on its last legs, finding employment to describe just about anything in the cultural sphere. It’s ubiquitous and meaningless. Brutalized and disfigured. Omnipresent and bereft of any, let’s see, independence. Let’s euthanize it.”

Nationalism hasn’t always produced bad art. In fact, it has created some of the very best.

The CEO of Ticketmaster “was presented a grand opportunity to make a case for Ticketmaster as a company that doesn’t deserve its reputation for gouging consumers and kicking back the spoils to its clients. But his responses were the equivalent of a carefully tailored corporate press release that pretends to say something profound while in reality thumbing its nose at the recipient.”