Category: issues

“Seven organisations representing the vast majority of employers, performers, artists and technical staff are pressing Brown to address as a “matter of urgency” the precarious financial situation for the arts, which is set to lose an extra £137 million to the 2012 Games. They warn that the cuts, along with an expected poor funding settlement in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review, amount to a ‘return to the stop-go approach to arts funding that proved so damaging during the nineties’.”

“The Irish Arts Council has launched a public debate on the value of the arts as the opening salvo in its bid for an increase in annual funding from central government to €100 million (£68 million) in 2008.”

“Straddling the line between journalist and fan, arts bloggers are a growing part of the conversation about theater, painting, music and other disciplines. Some are artists themselves, and primarily use their sites to promote their own work. Others practice straight reporting and criticism that could appear in a newspaper or magazine. A few don’t write much themselves, but act as facilitators, providing forums for other arts lovers.”

“The recent cut of 35% in Grants for the Arts – down from £83m to £54m for the year 2007-08 – has been no laughing matter. But a group of artists are getting together on Saturday May 26 on Hackney Marshes to draw attention to the ways artists will be affected at a grass-roots level by the redirection of lottery money to fund the 2012 Olympics. … Grunts for the Arts brings together live artists, theatre-makers, designers, fine artists and sculptors for what is being described as an artists’ sports day that will include events such as handbag hurling, durational knitting, the invisible discus and the high-heel 100m sprint.”

“The Sun-Sentinel is transferring resident film critic Phoebe Flowers to another writing assignment and will not be running in-house movie reviews in the future. Instead, they’ll be running retreads from Tribune Company heavyweights like the L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, and Newsday. And there are murmurings that this could be a Tribune Company-wide trend that could kill local movie coverage in a number of Tribune newspaper towns.”

“The House subcommittee that approves funding for the federal cultural agencies yesterday voted to reprimand the Smithsonian Institution by cutting $26 million from its proposed fiscal 2008 budget.”

On the job just three months, new Getty president James Wood talks about his plans for LA’s largest cultural institution. “The biggest danger for an institution with a mandate like the Getty’s is you become responsible for the ongoing operations of more and more things and you can’t be innovative anymore.”

“The revamp, conceived by top editor Julia Wallace and due to be complete by July 1, will do away with posts now held by classical music critic Pierre Ruhe, book editor Teresa Weaver, and visual arts critic Catherine Fox – among others. Eleanor Ringel, the film critic who had become synonymous with the AJC after nearly 30 years, was one of about 40 senior staffers who accepted a buyout offer. Two cultural writers, theater critic Wendell Brock and food critic Meridith Ford, will keep their current gigs. Everyone else, including such workhouse types as pop music critic Nick Marino and film critic Bob Longino, as well as their editors, was required to reapply for jobs which may – or may not – be similar to their present assignments.”

Consumer groups in Italy are protesting Barbra Streisand’s upcoming concert in Rome. “Prices, ranging from 150 euros (£100) to more than 900 euros (£600), were absurd and shameful. The 24,000-seat stadium is public property and cannot be used for immoral deals that are shameful to a civilized country.”

Mark Halprin argues a case for a kind of infinite copyright. “Congress is free to extend at will the term of copyright. It last did so in 1998, and should do so again, as far as it can throw. Would it not be just and fair for those who try to extract a living from the uncertain arts of writing and composing to be freed from a form of confiscation not visited upon anyone else?”