Category: issues

The world’s major entertainment companies are piling in to Dubai, which is building the massive Dubailand, a 3 billion sq. ft. development designed to help make Dubai a global tourist destination.

Liverpool is undergoing a noticeable renaissance, and some are attributing it to the city’s year as Europe’s Culture Capital. But would the turnaround have happened anyway? “You get much affirmative, but generalised, confirmation that while these projects were in train before the Capital of Culture bid was won – the accelerated and coordinated nature of the projects has much to do with this year.”

A few weeks ago most of the staff of the Regina Performing Arts Center resigned when the center ran out of money.

It happens all the time. Take, for example, the Muhammad cartoons. “We live in the defining age of the image and the picture; how can it be that the whole point of an entirely visual story can be deliberately left out?”

The new law seeks to clarify Russia’s collective rights management system, which under the previous legislation was a confused and opaque tangle of overlapping authorities.

So George Bush proposes cutting the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts only months after its budget was increased. “Let’s face it: These aren’t the best of times for arts funding, regardless of recent gains, nationally or locally.”

I’d like to put forward Teachout’s First Law of Artistic Dynamics: “The best way to make a bad work of art is to try to make a great one.” That law was inspired at least as much by Orson Welles as by Leonard Bernstein.

“An Abu Dhabi license plate sold for 52.2 million dirhams ($14 million) at auction today, setting a world record and demonstrating the exceptional personal wealth in the United Arab Emirates’ largest sheikhdom.”

“Teachers welcomed the concept of giving children the opportunity to visit more museums, art galleries and the theatre but said funding was ‘inadequate’ and the school day too full to meet the new target. Schools already have to ensure pupils receive two hours of sport a week. On top of that they are under pressure to make sure pupils reach attainment targets in reading, writing and maths.”

A woman named Jane started a blog and said whe was going to kill herself in 90 days. She got a web following. Turns out, the blog is a kind of “art” project… “It was meant for me and
(what I ignorantly thought would be) a small number of people who
might find it on BlogSpot.”