Category: issues

“London is bursting with world-class symphony orchestras, and one of the best ballet companies in the world. If Tate Modern cannot compete with the endless ranks of Matisses and Rothkos in MoMA, it beats it on inclusiveness and vibrancy – plus entrance is free, rather than an eye-watering $20. The British Museum houses an extraordinarily humane and encyclopedic vision of the world in one building – and is also free for anyone to enter. London’s experimental theatre scene is second to none; and it contains an outstanding concentration of brilliant young artists and composers. One hardly need mention the primacy of British pop music.”

“Revising and expanding Percent for Art, Brady’s plan suggests, would create a $45 million annual ‘dedicated funding stream’ for arts and cultural groups in the city. That amount – together with $15 million to $20 million produced by the city’s annual budget appropriations to the arts and private contributions – would be close to the $60 million cited by a Rand Corp. report Friday as the amount Philadelphia needs to spend on the arts and culture annually to be competitive with other major cities.”

“Robert Lynch, head of the Washington-based advocacy group Americans for the Arts, said he will request at least $176 million for the NEA in the 2008 budget, up from $127 million in the current fiscal year. President George W. Bush has proposed $131 million for the NEA in 2008.”

Los Angeles’ mayor wants to make the city wireless. Proponents of the idea envision an interactive playground. “The plan’s most intriguing aspects have to do with the way we think about the various borders that define the city and its limits. Even as wireless access could make architectural boundaries less important — since networks will no longer have to be contained, as most are now, within the space of four walls — it promises to draw civic ones more indelibly.”

“As the music, film and publishing industries struggle to adapt to the challenge of content proliferating on the Internet, Gilberto Gil has emerged as a central player in the global search for more flexible forms of distributing artistic works. In the process his twin roles have sometimes generated competing priorities that he has sought to harmonize.”

Six months after opening Segerstrom Concert Hall: “Although Orange County-based performing groups report blossoming attendance in the Costa Mesa venue, the county’s leading importer of classical music talent has been disappointed. Musicians are delighted with its intimacy and tailored acoustics, but concertgoers have griped that some seats have poor views of the stage.”

“The old days are gone of business sponsorship, where the corporation wrote a large cheque in return for access to the royal box or the corporate name on a poster. Company shareholders are much more demanding than they once were about corporate spend; those working in these enterprises also want more from the relationships with arts organisations than a night at the opera. The ethos of corporate social responsibility means businesses want to see their contribution make a difference to the wider community as well as the quality of the arts.”

“According to the study, state and local support per full-time equivalent student was $6,325 in the 2006 fiscal year, a 5.1 percent increase over the previous year. Measured in constant 2006 dollars, the high point since 1980 was 2001, when per student support was $7,371.”

John Tusa, who has remade London’s Barbican, says “the arts world must reject further attempts to judge what we do by criticisms of the social make-up of our audience, the composition of our staff, or any other quota-based criterion. These words should be nailed above the doors of the department of culture and the Arts Council.”

“For me the whole process of stimulation through books, plays, films, works of art; the delight in design, in architecture, in crafts: all of this enlarges a country’s capacity to be reflective, interested and bold. Dynamism in arts and culture therefore creates dynamism in a nation.”