Category: issues

The US State Department has long made use of American artists, writers, and musicians as “cultural ambassadors,” sending them around the world to (hopefully) improve the image of the larger country just by doing what they do. In recent months, the program has been focusing on exporting jazz, that quintessentially American musical form.

“With an expired lease and inability to handle rent arrears and an increase, the Madison Center for Creative and Cultural Arts has announced it has closed. The grass-roots arts center… stands virtually in the shadow of the [much larger] Overture Center,” a new performing arts center that opened two years ago to much acclaim.

Candidates for mayor of Salt Lake City had an honest to God discussion about supporting the arts. “Pledges ranged from saving downtown’s Utah Theater to building stronger bonds with the University of Utah to squeezing more cash from the often arts-averse Legislature.”

“Statewide, public schools are getting $500 million in one-time funds for visual and performing arts, music and physical education programs — an investment state officials have called a first.”

Provincetown’s Hawthorne School of Art, founded by Charles Hawthorne, is up for sale and “at risk of being swallowed by development” amid money troubles. “Some school advocates say the furor over its future reflects renewed concern in Provincetown about surging development and other threats to the artistic heritage of eastern Cape Cod.”

“The theme this year of the eight-day Burning Man bacchanalia is the environment, or Green Man. Yet while Green Man has inspired a lot of environmentally conscious talk and art projects – there’s a fellow driving around in a car powered by magnetic coils – it also has raised concerns about corporate contracts at this traditionally anti-corporate event.”

“Arts philanthropy is suddenly a hot topic. In two extraordinary days, three of our elite arts institutions announced donations worth $15 million.”

“It’s true that students involved in the arts do better in school and on their SATs than those who are not involved. However, correlation isn’t causation, and an analysis we did several years ago showed no evidence that arts training actually causes scores to rise. There is, however, a very good reason to teach arts in schools, and it’s not the one that arts supporters tend to fall back on.”

“In a rare joint appearance, the directors of the five main festivals, covering the international, Fringe, books, film and tattoo, said Edinburgh would lose its status as home to the world’s largest arts festivals unless public investment increased and strategic thinking and creative innovation improved.”

The British Museum is using its iconic reading room for other purposes these days. “Conversions to art galleries are all well and good: Tate Modern and London’s Wapping Project have made virtues of redundant industrial buildings. In Paris, the Musée d’Orsay transformed a railway station into a palace of impressionist art. But it seems to me that the fate of the Reading Room shouldn’t be sealed like this just yet. Can’t the British Museum devise a scenario based on what this iconic space symbolises?”