Category: issues

A new Denver-area arts center aims to demystify a topic that many in the urban-centered cultural world would rather ignore: namely, “what is the relationship between culture and the suburbanization of America?”

Richmond(Virginia) mayor Douglas Wilder says he isn’t prepared to give $25 million towards renovation of the city’s performing arts center unless the city gets some ownership stake in the project.

“Daniel L. Ritchie was unanimously approved Tuesday as the Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ new chairman and chief executive. And he wasted no time announcing an agenda that includes seeking relief from the city’s 10 percent seat tax.”

These days it’s impossible to avoid service charges for buying tickets. “Confused? No wonder. And leaving aside the chaos of all this, in what parallel universe is it remotely justifiable to charge audiences an extra £2.50 per ticket?”

“When the first Chinese, their suitcases filled with cash, arrived in the early 1990s and leased their factories, the Italians laughed at them. But now that their numbers have quadrupled and they own a quarter of the city’s textile businesses, where they make ‘Made in Italy’ fashion at ‘Made in China’ prices – often illegally – the newspapers are full of op-ed pieces about the “yellow invasion,” low-wage competition and the Chinese mafia.”

Over the past several weeks controversies have erupted on American college campuses. Scholars who endorse dissenting views about 9/11 have been challenged, a decision to invite former Iranian president Khatami to speak at Harvard has been opposed, and an art show by a convicted muderer has been shut down in Maine…

The case most important to its major donor Eli Broad is economic. “We must show cultural tourists on the East Coast, in Europe and Asia that they could have a similar or better cultural experience here in Los Angeles.” Broad suggested that a $10 million annual advertising budget would have a payoff “of probably 5-10 times that much.”

“Almost from the minute the black smoke and human dust cleared, people began to talk about how to commemorate the event, how to impose a sense of meaning and logic on a moment of blood, fire, chaos and death. Abraham Lincoln had done it in 1863 with just 272 words at Gettysburg, another scene of American destruction, memorializing the dead and challenging the living in a speech that has outlived memories of the battle itself. In this postindustrial and postmodern age, we are using granite, steel, glass, cyberspace, music, film and, sometimes, our own bodies to remember September 11.”

“This is the first year in history when more than half of the world’s population is resident in cities. A century ago that figure was 10 per cent and in 20 years it will be 75 per cent. This escalation is almost entirely attributable to the rapidly developing economies of Asia, Africa and South America, where a vast exodus from the countryside is underway.”

It’s been several months since control of Scotland’s national cultural organizations passed from the national arts council to the Scottish Executive. This made many in the arts quite uneasy: “No government is immune from politics, and politics and the arts make uneasy bedfellows.” Still, the new arrangement seems to be working well so far.