Category: issues

It’s bonding bill time at the Minnesota State Legislature, and for Twin Cities arts groups, that means it’s time to hit up the state for extra cash for special projects, expansions, and the like. But there’s only so much money to go around, and for those lobbying at the Capitol, it winds up being a zero-sum game, with definite winners and losers.

Ontario’s government announced its legislative agenda this week. And despite lots of previous talk, there wasn’t any mention of the arts, or money to support it. Is that really a surprise?

The City of New York is opening an office to “aggressively pitch New York City around the world as the nation’s art and cultural capital by helping nonprofit organizations, especially those in the arts, cope with the high costs that threaten their survival.”

Legislators in Minnesota are planning let voters decide “this fall whether to raise the state sales tax by .375 percent. That would bring the tax up to 6.875 percent. The dedicated funding would go to hunting and fishing resources, parks and trails, clean water programs and the arts.”

What are arts people making in Los Angeles? “Among the city’s most visible arts outfits, the drift of leadership salaries is up, up and up. If you lump together salaries for the top executives of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles Opera, the L.A. Philharmonic and the Center Theatre Group from 2002 to 2004, the average increase was 28%, while inflation was rising 5%.”

” ‘Bodies … The Exhibition’ features 20 whole cadavers, preserved using a technique known as ‘plastination,’ made famous by the anatomist Gunther von Hagens. It will open at Earls Court later this month. Human rights organisations have attacked the booming industry in travelling exhibitions featuring human corpses. They warned that the bodies, which are from China, could include those of executed political prisoners.”

“I have yet to see a performing arts museum that fires the theatregoer’s imagination. Vienna’s House of Music and London’s Handel House Museum are thin stuff for a rainy day and St Petersburg’s Museum of Performing Arts is positively soporific. Digital interaction might help but the only way to put on a show about the performing arts to involve a showman.”

Citizens of the UK lead all nations in per capita spending on arts and culture. “In the UK, the average household spending on recreation and culture as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) is 7.9%. This figure, which has risen from 6.5% in 1991, puts the UK at the top of the table of OECD countries, ahead of countries such as France and Germany, who spend 5.2% per household and 5% respectively, and above even the leisure-loving Australians, who come in second at 7.2%.”

“With six months to go before the October grand opening, the Miami Performing Arts Center and the four South Florida arts groups slated to be its principal residents have yet to come to terms over basic issues such as rental fees, terms of payment, box office services and concessions… To date PAC leaders have signed just two licensing agreements: one with Clear Channel Entertainment, the presenters of the Broadway in Miami series, and the other with the Cleveland Orchestra.” No South Florida arts groups have been able to reach agreement with the center on terms of use, although representatives from both the PAC and the groups expected to be anchor tenants say they expect agreements to get done soon.

The arts (or, at least, large concentrations of artists) are usually considered an urban phenomenon, centered in and around cities and often reflecting in their local vibrance the overall quality of life in the region. But a new study by a Minnesota group shows that one of the state’s highest concentrations of arts and culture is in the mainly rural northeast “arrowhead” region. “Arts organizations bring a lot of outside money into the Arrowhead, according to the study. Nonresidents make up about one-third of the audience for nonprofit arts events in the region, and out-of-towners tend to spend more.”