Category: issues

Norman Lebrecht: “In Australia the arts are still regarded as a fragile plant perpetually threatened with extinction or maybe a child with mild disabilities … But if the arts are going to survive in Australia they have to be robust. They have to be able to look after themselves.”

Boston’s Citi Center has been mired in difficult financial troubles. Now “the attorney general’s office is looking into practices at the Citi Performing Arts Center in light of recent Globe reports on the nonprofit organization’s spending.”

He’s Thomas W. Gaehtgens. Over the years, the institute has evolved into an ever more complex organization that has broadened its collections, engaged in community outreach, collaborated with local institutions and provided services for the public as well as credentialed scholars. Many of the materials in the library are available to students and the public.”

Steampunk has its roots in science fiction literature, where it describes a corner of the genre obsessed with Victoriana and the idea that the computer age evolved alongside the industrial. Steampunk stories, which started appearing with regularity in the 1980s, eschew clean and orderly visions of the future in favor of gas-lighted streets, steam engines belching toxic smoke, and dastardly villains inventing strange technologies.

“As arts and cultural nonprofits around the country grow and change, so too do the responsibilities of their boards, often made up of well-heeled fundraisers.” So what are the responsibilities of arts boards?

City Pages has cut film editor Rob Nelson and his job. “Nelson, who has been with the paper since 1994, has won numerous awards for film criticism, including several from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and a Page One Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.”

“Over the past five years, the economic impact of the arts has grown by 25 percent. Nationally that figure is 24 percent. It also says over the past five years, employment in the arts have grown 26 percent, with 9,000 direct jobs.” But “according to the Giving USA Foundation, over the past decade, the portion of corporate donations dedicated to the arts has dropped by more than half.”

“For years, artists and arts activists have bemoaned Atlanta’s bottom-of-the-barrel arts budget. Proof of the city’s underfunded cultural scene became more pronounced earlier this year, when a national Americans for the Arts study showed the wide disparity between what Atlanta contributes to its arts and culture organizations and what other, similarly sized cities and counties do. Only Anchorage, Alaska, and Orange County, N.Y., give less.” So now a proposal to quadruple the city’s arts funding.

Minnesota librarians hope “a new after-school program that brings together video games, computers, tutors and books will attract teens who often socialize at the library and expose them to technology — including how to e-mail and use a digital camera — that they might not have at home. And while they’re at the library, the hope is that maybe they’ll pick up a book or two.”

“Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué will stage his new performance piece in Paris, Rome and the capitals of Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt. But he will not present it in Lebanon, for the audience with whom it might resonate most.” The country’s Interior Ministry has banned the piece.