Category: issues

Austin, Texas, came in 2nd in the Urban Institute’s ranking of American cities hosting arts festivals. But the same study also found that Austin ranks 51st in public support for the arts. Why the disparity? “The answer may lie in one of Austin’s biggest drawing cards: its youth. Philanthropy is not just a function of wealth but age — the older, the better.”

Despite a significant drop in attendance for performances by the Philadelphia Orchestra and New York City Ballet, upstate New York’s Saratoga Performing Arts Center will finish 2006 with a $200,000 operating surplus. SPAC, which underwent a major board upheaval two years ago in the wake of a fiscal mismanagement scandal, has run in the black for the past two seasons, and this year retired its accumulated debt by spending down its endowment.

“Americans will spend nearly 10 hours a day watching television, surfing the Internet, reading books, newspapers and magazines and listening to music this year, the U.S. Census Bureau said on Friday.”

The proposed new Orlando Performing Arts Center has taken a big step towards getting built. “The $25 million from the Orlando-based charitable group boosts the amount raised privately for the center to $45.5 million — almost halfway toward the stated goal of $100 million.”

“In a country like Cuba, where the state has its hand in just about everything, it is perhaps not surprising that there is a governmental body that concerns itself with rap music. Alarmed by the number of young people in baggy clothing and ill-aligned baseball caps rapping around the island, the government created the Cuban Rap Agency four years ago to bring rebellious rhymers into the fold. … Not surprisingly, most rappers, who are by definition a rebellious lot, are averse to joining forces with the government, even as they struggle to spread their rhymes on their own.”

One of Boston’s leading arts presenters loses a major sponsor as Bank of America withdraws its support. “The move means the Celebrity Series, which puts on roughly 50 classical music and dance performances a year in Symphony Hall, Jordan Hall, and a host of other sites, will lose about $600,000 of its $7 million annual operating budget. The bank’s name will be dropped from the title of the series.”

A new study suggests that foundations supporting the arts ought to rexamine how they think about that support. “The debate has been too narrow,” it says, and “suggests grantors and grantees might better discuss the amount and duration of grants, rather than whether they are for operating or program support.”

“In the fast-shifting sands of New York’s moneyed classes, the explosion of hedge fund wealth has created a new financial pecking order… Institutions like the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum and Lincoln Center are making a push for the newest money on the block as they try to lure hedge fund executives to join their boards. This effort has dovetailed with an emerging tendency by hedge fund moguls to spread their wings a bit in greater New York society.”

When Charleston, SC lost a university (it moved), the city’s leaders went looking for a replacement. It contracted with a company that runs art institutes across America. “Charleston’s recruitment of the Art Institute is a particularly vivid example of the link that civic and state officials see between postsecondary education and local economic development, and it shows the extent to which one city’s leaders went to keep that higher education presence strong.”