Category: issues

“A team of psychiatrists and literary scholars reports that it could not find a single account of repressed memory, fictional or not, before the year 1800. The researchers offered a $1,000 reward last March to anyone who could document such a case in a healthy, lucid person. None of the responses were convincing, the authors wrote, suggesting that repressed memory is a ‘culture-bound syndrome’ and not a natural process of human memory.”

Abu Dhabi’s breathtakingly ambitious plans for a major new cultural district make for great visuals, but there are serious issues to be considered as an Arab country attempts to embrace Western-style art and culture. The first question, writes Kate Taylor, ought to be who expects gto benefit from this massive cultural push. “Will the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi be a tool of cultural imperialism, or of diplomacy? Or will it be neither?”

There was much rejoicing last month when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced an overhaul of the city’s arts funding system, under which the constant need for arts groups to grovel at the feet of local politicians would be eliminated. But “while some arts groups are likely to benefit from [the change], those that fared well under the old system may face significant losses.”

The city of Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, is planning a major cultural building boom, with designs underway for a Guggenheim outpost, a performing arts center, and at least two other museums. “With once-proud cities like Beirut and Baghdad ripped apart by political conflict bordering on civil war, Abu Dhabi offers the hope of a major realignment, a chance to plant the seeds for a fertile new cultural model in the Middle East. It’s easy to be skeptical. But judging by the designs released so far, the buildings promise to be more than aesthetic experiments, outlining a vision of cross-cultural pollination.”

Abu Dhabi isn’t messing around with its plans to become the culture capital of the Persian Gulf: it has signed up several starchitects to design its signature buildings, and all of them will be built on a single undeveloped island off the coast. From Zaha Hadid’s swooping performing arts center to Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim, the designs reflect the truly unusual opportunity that has arisen from a city wishing to build a cultural district entirely from scratch.

Miami’s new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts has been winning rave reviews in its opening months. But “one wonders how the Center will be filled. With the new opera house the Florida Grand Opera has modestly increased its season from five productions to six. But following the disbanding of the Florida Philharmonic in 2003, Miami has lacked a professional orchestra. Can a city that won’t even support an orchestra supply an audience for the new facility?”

“The Smithsonian paid 42 of the 90 trust executives (or 46 percent) more than the maximum basic federal pay rate of $165,200 in fiscal year 2006, and 19 of these trust executives (or 21 percent) were paid salaries greater than the $212,000 salary paid to the Vice President of the United States.”

How could a local London council cut funding for its biggest cultural asset? Cut off Battersea? “The truth is that this scorched-earth approach in Wandsworth – which also extends to closing the Wandsworth Museum – is not a blip. The emergence of a cuts agenda is the great unreported development of London politics.”

“The Internet has turned what was once primarily a one-way communication into a dialogue — or maybe a melee. From a cultural perspective, the new democracy of voices online is a wonderful thing. But writers have an odd and ambiguous relationship with their readers, and the reader revolution is having massive consequences we can’t even foresee.”

A new report says the city of Ottawa needs to invest more in its arts. The report says arts festivals bring in $13 for every dollar invested by the government. “Ottawa ranked last in provincial arts funding at $2.56 per capita, second last in Canada Council for the Arts funding at $3.95 per capita, and second in Canadian Heritage funding at $2.27 per capita.”