Category: issues

Launching big public initiatives has never been easy in Minneapolis, where a weak mayor-strong council system forces every new idea to be subjected to the will of dozens of elected officials and bureaucrats before becoming reality. The gridlock has particularly affected the arts, since nearly every bold proposal eventually falls victim to the endless bickering of the committee process. The city’s current mayor is hoping to galvanize support for any number of public design projects to complement an ongoing downtown boom, but wary of the failures of past administrations, even his pitches are vague and seemingly designed to accomodate the nitpicking that is certain to follow.

Damon Wayans has been trying to trademark the “N” word. “Wayans wants to dress customers in 14 kinds of attire from tops to bottoms, and use the controversial mark on ‘clothing, books, music and general merchandise,’ as well as movies, TV and the internet, according to his applications. But, so far, his applications have been unsuccessful.”

Hong Kong’s Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Ho says the giant cultural center planned for Kowloon is not dead. He said the new plan will “balance demand and supply. Some consultants have informed the government that in planning for cultural venues and artistic venues, it is frequently supply-driven rather than demand-driven. But then again, we believe it is prudent to listen to the voice of the community in their artistic aspirations.”

Why more arts funding? So asks Giles Auty: “Hurling money at art has, of course, been a popular pastime in Western countries for as long as I can remember. It is the process, in fact, once memorably described to me by an English painter, Bryan Wynter, as ‘paying for van Gogh’s ear’. No other brief description encapsulates so wonderfully the notion that guilt-ridden rich societies ought to discharge a fiscal and moral debt to a group of mysterious people they may have unconsciously wronged or ignored.”

“Can there be a weirder, more alienated place than [Tijuana’s] Avenida Revolución on a Saturday night? The dark side of the moon, perhaps? Yet Avenida Revolución also is the pulsing subconscious of an exciting and restless city — one of the world’s busiest, most notorious border towns.” There is plenty of illicit “fun” to be had in the new Tijuana, as you might expect, but surprisingly, the backbone of the city’s dramatic reinvention has been its embrace of contemporary art, and of the arts in general.

New York’s city government is asking developers to submit proposals to revitalize and redevelop Governors Island, a 175-acre parcel of land that sits just south of Manhattan, and which has been virtually abandoned since the Coast Guard pulled up stakes ten years ago. “In asking developers to take the lead, government officials risk quashing creativity at the outset. More broadly, their appeal raises questions about how American cities — New York in particular — are approaching large-scale urban development these days, handing over enormous swaths of public land to private interests.”

The lack of racial diversity in major arts organizations is one of those nagging issues that no one ever seems to know how to address, and the lily-white quality of many on-stage productions registers immediately, even in a lily-white city like Duluth, Minnesota. “Arts administrators and artists of color gave myriad reasons why diversity in arts is lagging behind diversity in the local population: Socio-economics. Image. Lack of arts education in schools. Most discouraging, the lack of diversity appears to feed itself.”

The UK lottery has transformed the country’s culture, building many significant projects. So what should be next?

What does Harvard president Larry Summers’ resignation mean? “Some look at him and see a textbook example of why trustees need to pay attention to what professors think. Others think he’s a textbook example that faculty members have too much say in what goes on at their campuses. Some think his biggest legacy in higher education will be unprecedented national discussion of women in science — an issue on which he didn’t intend to set off a public debate. Others think the collapse of his presidency may scare boards from hiring presidents who want to speak out on any controversial issues.”

It will cost $65 million and remake the landmark theatre where Ella Fitzgerald once sang…