Category: issues

John Leighton, director general of the National Galleries of Scotland, cautions that “Edinburgh risks losing its supremacy as the UK’s major festival city unless funding for the August events is boosted.” Meanwhile, “Jonathan Mills, the director of the international festival, warned this week that the festival could shrink if funding was not increased. Salzburg festival receives £10m in subsidy, whereas Edinburgh international festival gets £4m.”

Boston’s Citi Performing Arts Center (formerly the Wang,) struggling with financial losses and an anemic slate of performances, is looking to partner with other arts groups in the city in an effort to get back on its feet. “Under the plan, the Center will become what it calls a ‘virtual performing arts center.’ The idea is to reduce financial risk by relying less on revenue from the Center’s hard-to-fill theaters while spreading the Center’s brand across a swath of revenue-generating programming elsewhere in Boston and Massachusetts.”

As government subsidies for the arts plummet around the world, private companies are frequently stepping in to fill the funding void. But companies need to be able to show some return on every investment, and are looking to promote themselves through their philanthropy, as European arts groups used to public funding are discovering.

The primary attraction of video-sharing sites like YouTube and social networking sites like MySpace has been their near-complete openness to all points of view, and their accessibility to anyone with a camera and a computer. But should YouTube allow anorexic teens to post videos encouraging other teens to adopt an increasingly cult-like and toxic lifestyle? Where is the line when it comes to “harmful content”?

“The Chinese artist behind Beijing’s spectacular new Olympic stadium has said he wants nothing to do with the propaganda for which it will be used during next year’s games. In an attack on the ‘disgusting’ political conditions in the one-party state, Ai Weiwei told the Guardian he would not attend the opening ceremony a year from now, or allow himself to be associated with either the government or the games.”

Some in the Toronto arts community might celebrate if Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda is shortly moved out of the job, as rumor has it she could be. But Val Ross says that, while Oda isn’t perfect, her replacement in the conservative Harper government could be far worse. “Although she has been described as a lacklustre non-entity, Oda has managed to quietly deliver more in real dollars to the Canada Council than the Liberals.”

Rupert Christiansen says the UK’s National Lottery is neglecting its considerable role in funding the country’s arts and culture. “The Lottery’s achievement is considerable, but, as the Cassandras prophesied when its guidelines were originally being drawn up, the problem it leaves unresolved is the dearth of cash – either from the Treasury or from ticket-buyers – to sustain the day-to-day running of [the] splendid edifices” it has built over the last decade.

“Poland has rejected calls for it to return German cultural treasures, including original manuscripts of Goethe, Beethoven, Mozart and Bach held in Polish archives since World War II, calling such demands ‘entirely groundless.’ Any mention of German claims from World War II is a sore point in Poland, which was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1939 and subjected to a brutal five-year occupation in which 6 million Polish citizens died.”

The battle between Carnegie Hall and its soon-to-be-evicted tenants seems to be genuinely paining the hall’s executive director, Clive Gillinson. But “Gillinson said the hall had explored every other option before arriving at wholesale eviction. He noted that all rent-control tenants have been promised accommodations at least as nice as their current studios, with any rent differential to be paid by the hall.”

“A top Smithsonian official has resigned after he destroyed records from a key Smithsonian Board of Regents meeting. James M. Hobbins, 64, executive assistant to the secretary of the Smithsonian, has acknowledged destroying transcripts from a meeting in January when regents discussed then-Secretary Lawrence M. Small’s compensation, housing allowance and travel expenses.” Hobbins had been with the Smithsonian for forty years.