Category: issues

“In the romance of the Western imagination, art is proverbially fashioned in solitude, the writer scribbling away, forlorn in his garret, the painter at work in his atelier. But the exceptions touch some of our most beloved arts: movies, TV, rock music and theater. They’re all concocted by that notoriously ill-fated process: the committee.”

Pennsylvania’s Mountain Laurel Performing Arts Center was supposed to become the state’s next big cultural destination, nestled in the beautiful Pocono mountains and featuring a full slate of summer concerts by the Pittsburgh Symphony. But the center ran out of money almost before it opened, and was a colossal bust in its first season. Still, there are signs that things could be turning around for the center. “In its third season this year, Mountain Laurel, which started with millions in public money, finally opened without debt because the foundering center was bought by a well-heeled residential developer.”

San Antonio’s new arts fund mailed out its first checks this week, providing 24 cultural organizations with a new source of public funding that civic leaders hope will stabilize what has sometimes been a precarious arts scene. “Applications for additional funding recipients are not being accepted. Whether the application process opens up again will depend on how theFund grows.”

New York state’s two-year-old probe into illegal payola practices by record companies has yielded over $13 million in legal settlements thus far, and the money has become an unexpected windfall for the state’s arts organizations. “In all, 153 nonprofit groups statewide were chosen to receive from $15,000 to $750,000 in last week’s first round of payouts from the New York State Music Fund, established as a repository for the payola settlement money.”

The Getty Trust, which has been embroiled in staffing and governance issues in the past year, says it will publish detailed finance and governance information online. “Part of our intent is to increase the transparency of the Getty, to make sure people understand that the Getty is committed to being a leader among non-profit [organisations] in terms of governance,”

“The Metropolitan Kansas City Performing Arts Center has made its most important personnel decision since selecting architect Moshe Safdie to design the facility in 2000. On Tuesday the center’s board announced the appointment of Jane Chu, 48, as president and chief executive officer of the facility… Locally Chu is known as a fund-raising powerhouse with research-based knowledge of performing-arts facilities. Toward her doctoral dissertation she is examining the finances and staffing of nearly 100 centers around the United States.”

America’s public universities are in a bind. What is their greatest calling? “Public purpose is the defining characteristic of all public universities, but what does it entail? A review of the external demands on state universities reveals a long and daunting list. They must become more…”

Reading, Pennsylvania is getting a makeover. “This once-gritty city is morphing into an arts hub, where a Keith Haring exhibit is drawing thousands at the local museum, blues and jazz acts tour through and a downtown coffeehouse features poetry readings and acoustic music. Not bad for a city better known for factories than high art.”

“It may feel as you walk past the multiplex and into the chain bookshop where Katie Price’s bestseller is stacked up, and then home to pick up the television schedules dominated by reality shows, that we live in an age when there is little room for anything but the blockbuster, the bestseller, the audience-chaser, the top celebrity. But if you listen to some of the voices out there, it turns out that this isn’t what is going on at all…”

Across Australia small and medium-sized theatre and dance companies are struggling to attract sufficient funding to produce new work. This lack of resources will be “felt by generations to come…”