Category: issues

High gas prices in America are hurting the touring business for bands. “If I have an act that’s about to go on a 40-day tour and they’ve got five trucks and five buses, and a 40-day tour could be over 20,000 miles, that’s almost an additional cost of $6,000 a vehicle. So if I have 10 vehicles, that’s an additional $60,000. That money comes directly out of the artist’s bottom line.”

“Yes, it’s that nerve-racking time of year again: benefit-auction season. For the last three months New York has been awash in raffles, auctions and other fund-raisers where donated artworks go on the block to benefit all manner of causes. For the institution, the money can be a significant source of funds. For attendees, it can be a chance to acquire a work under market price… But for artists, many of whom spend the season fielding requests, it is not exactly a win-win proposition.”

“With approximately 3 million visitors streaming into the place last summer, with gospel and jazz and highbrow music set to sing again from its main stage starting next weekend, Millennium Park has become our town square, our meeting place, our focal point for the arts — at least when the winter winds aren’t howling.”

California still ranks last in per capita arts funding. But the proposed new state budget includes some good news for arts education. “A spokeswoman for the California Arts Council said the overall state budget revision proposes an increase of $66 million in the Proposition 98 general fund to expand the arts and music block grants to a total of $166 million.”

Minnesota arts groups were hoping to get a measure on the fall ballot that would propose allocating a piece of the state sales tax to arts funding. The state legislature didn’t quite get there, but it did approve money for some arts construction projects.

“San Francisco, long famed for its freedom of expression and encouragement of art and entertainment, is no longer making a line item for fun in the budget. Events that have become annual traditions for San Francisco — SF Pride, Carnaval, Comedy Day, the How Weird Street Faire, the Haight Ashbury Street Fair, the North Beach Festival — are having a hard time putting on the show this year. Some even say they’re ready to call it quits…”

There’s a new budget. But “the curious delay in detailing its content confirms what people have feared: the mineral bonanza that has delivered a record $2 billion surplus and a healthy budget has effectively delivered nothing new to the arts. In fact, the word arts has appeared almost nowhere in the Carpenter Government’s plethora of budget releases, and in only a few pages of the budget’s thick tome.”

“The State of Qatar has restructured its National Council for Culture, Arts and Heritage (NCCAH), the organisation which oversees all cultural activity in the energy-rich Gulf state. The move follows the arrest last year of the NCCAH’s former chairman Sheikh Saud Al Thani and our revelations of his misappropriations of public funds.”

Plans have been unveiled in Orlando for a massive new performing arts complex. “Drawing on the best features of arts centers around the world, planners envision three performance halls of varying sizes, as well as classrooms and offices. The center would sit on a large courtyard where outdoor concerts and shows would be staged. It would be flanked by private development valued at an estimated $500 million, including offices, hotel rooms, residential towers, restaurants and shops.”

“By proving just as immune to hostile reviews on the screen as on the page, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code raises the question of whether printed and broadcast opinion matters at all. Has our culture now created a sort of genetically modified turkey – the critic-proof product?”