Category: issues

This weekend Atlanta’s new performing arts center opens. “With so many other performing arts venues already in Atlanta, the Cobb center has set itself a modest first-year goal of 85 performances. That means its seats will be empty more than three-quarters of the year, although it may still earn money from rehearsals and private events during part of that time.”

“In a move hailed by arts leaders across Massachusetts, the state’s new Cultural Facilities Fund yesterday allocated an unprecedented $16.7 million worth of grants for building projects to more than 60 arts and cultural organizations throughout the state. But noticeably absent from the list of recipients was the Citi Performing Arts Center.”

Comedian Steve Martin, singer Diana Ross, film director Martin Scorsese, Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson and pianist Leon Fleisher are this year’s honorees.

She’s Olga Viso, 41, currently director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. “She will start her new job in Minneapolis in January, replacing Kathy Halbreich, who leaves Nov. 1 after 16 years as director.”

“We applauded, but also looked with envy, when the PM announced an additional £100m for sport in schools recently, because we knew that an equivalent sum to encourage new talent in the arts would yield extraordinary returns. We have seen 10 years of spectacular achievement by artists and writers and steady progress in making their work available to new audiences. It would be tragic if all this were to be threatened, even squandered, for want of the modest sum that it would take to maintain the real value of current support for culture and the arts.”

Atlanta’s new Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre is opening. “Yes, the play, or the opera, is the thing. But the performance hall plays a role, too, and not just in the critical functions of acoustics and sight lines. Its architecture and interior design set the stage, so to speak, for the experience, visually and psychologically. Unfortunately, the execution goes awry. A building with ‘arts’ in its title (below) should do better than knockoffs.”

“When Pavarotti died this week something very unusual happened. The death of an artist – no. It was that the death of a classical practitioner of an elite art form led many news bulletins here in Britain, and no doubt around much of the world. All right, Pavarotti was a special case, someone who transcended the rigid categories which divide music. … But the ability to command the news headlines is unusual. When was the last time it happened in this way?”

Comedian Eddie Griffin was pulled from the stage at a Black Enterprise magazine event in Miami mid-routine this week, after organizers became incensed by his repeated use of the word “nigger.” Black activists have been campaigning against the word in recent months, following a series of high-profile incidents in which white comedians and DJs came under fire for making racially insensitive remarks.

The debate over “net neutrality” – the idea that internet service providers should have to provide equal access to all web sites, and not charge a fee for certain sites to be more accessible than others – is a hot topic all over the world these days. This week, the US Justice Department weighed in, saying to the Federal Communications Commission that any rule attempting to enforce net neutrality would “hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks.”

Research shows that less than 10 percent of the money Americans give to charity addresses basic human needs, like sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry and caring for the indigent sick, and that the wealthiest typically devote an even smaller portion of their giving to such causes than everyone else.” So how do you justify giving money to the arts? And why should donors get tax breaks?