Category: issues

A 17th Century Ming-era theatre is being bulldozed in Beijing to make way for a new theatre. “We intend to build a modern, professional venue like those on Broadway in the United States, where regular shows are offered all year round and high-end performances can also take place.”

“Universal Studios is seeking a deal with Rowling to build a $500m Harry Potter mini theme park in Florida. Rowling is believed to have been in negotiations with Universal Studios since 2005 over potential sites and the park’s contents. Earlier talks with Disney, which has a Disneyworld in Orlando, are understood to have fallen through because the giant American leisure corporation wanted total control of the project.”

New York governor Eliot Spitzer has signalled he will take an active role in planning a new performing arts center at the site of the World Trade Center. “Many of those involved in planning Lower Manhattan now wonder whether the center, to be designed by Frank Gehry, will become the focus of a long tug of war.”

“Both Manchester and Melbourne are busy reinventing themselves. At heart, both are great Victorian cities that, following economic slumps, have been rapidly modernising. They are centres of sport and culture, their populations comprise a rainbow of backgrounds, and they boast impressive tram networks (trams make city centres special). Yet both cities have been what you might call just a little bit provincial in their commissioning of new architecture over the past 20 years. Now, though, they are clearly benefiting from importing design talent from one side of the world to the other.”

“There is a spectacular lack of logic in using money earmarked for the arts to plug the holes in the Olympics bills. The money raided from the lottery will largely affect small, innovative, experimental organisations and individuals who are the lifeblood of creativity in the UK. Pulling the carpet out from under them and nobbling their money is undermining the future of our major arts institutions.”

“Artists, arts lovers and nonprofit arts organizations long have bemoaned the low level of public funding for, and awareness of, the arts here. Georgia ranks 46th in state per capita funding of the arts, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. Atlanta also is below average for American municipalities in public funding for the arts, according to a 2006 report by Americans for the Arts.”

Ontario artists are protesting the provincial government’s failure to keep a promise on arts support. “Buried deep inside the phonebook-sized budget bill tabled last month was a 3-page Status of the Artist Act that does little to help performers other than a weekend celebration in June. ‘They said they would produce meaningful legislation on status of the artist and they have not done that’.”

Michigan artists protest in “the capitol in Lansing to protest Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s moratorium on $7.5 million in state grants and a $3.6 million funding cut approved by the Senate that would slice state support for arts and culture to its lowest level in decades. If the Senate cuts stand, the budget for arts grants would drop to $6.5 million — down 73% from its recent peak of $24 million in 2000. Meanwhile, the grant freeze, which took effect two weeks ago, has robbed arts groups of 75% of the $10 million awarded by the state arts council.”

“Lawrence M. Small, the former secretary of the Smithsonian, rarely used his Northwest Washington mansion for institution-related entertaining in the past four years, despite receiving a housing allowance totaling $1.1 million since 2000 to make his residence available for official functions, institution records released yesterday show.”

“Unlike the world’s other great capitals, we are not an exporter of ideas. People come to Washington to do their local business, to refashion the nation and the city to their own image. Ideas are imposed from the outside. Washington is intellectually passive about its sense of self. So many of the arguments we have here about city planning are about balancing the demands of people who don’t live here. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that.”