Category: issues

The Hong Kong government has put plans for one of the world’s largest cultura; centers on hold. “The decision is a setback for several major museums. The Georges Pompidou Center in Paris and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art in New York had been vying for the right to run museums at the cultural center, which was to be several times the size of Lincoln Center.”

Budget proposals pending before the House of Delegates and the state Senate would strip $4.5 million of the $8.5 million appropriated last year for the planned performing-arts center in downtown Richmond.

American viewpoints are still scarred by the 1990s National Endowment for the Arts grant debacle, when radical art exhibitions and abrasive performance artists came under fire for using government money. That’s one reason American arts organizations would rather do with less than depend on the government. Still, it’s hard to argue with the stimulating, government-subsidized stuff that greeted me at every turn earlier this month in Paris. Is what we’re missing important? Is America stunting its own artistic growth?

“Does art incite violence? Hardly; it’s the ideas espoused in the art that get people so worked up. But art magnifies those ideas. It focuses them, gives them a sharper point and the velocity to drive that point home.”

Canada’s new cultural agenda under culture minister Bev Oda? “Ottawa spends roughly $150 per capita on Quebeckers for culture, and less than $75 per capita on provinces from Manitoba west. But Oda will not be drawn into any facile promises to change that situation.” And the CBC? “People are starting to question, if nobody’s watching CBC Television, English-language, then does it justify the utilization of those dollars in that way.”

Toronto’s big six – the Royal Ontario Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Canadian Opera Company, the National Ballet School, the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art and the Royal Conservatory of Music – have major building projects going, and $500 million to build them. One problem: as construction moves along, costs have gone up and…

“Protests have erupted in an arc stretching from Europe through Africa to East Asia and, at times, the United States. About a dozen people have died in Afghanistan; five have been killed this week in Pakistan. Muslim journalists were arrested for publishing the cartoons in Jordan, Algeria and Yemen. European countries have evacuated the staffs of embassies and nongovernmental organizations, Muslim countries have withdrawn ambassadors, and Danish exports that average more than $1 billion a year have dried up in a span of weeks.”

The city of Minneapolis has long prided itself on maintaining a highly livable and green-intensive urban environment, with dozens of parks, lakes, and the Mississippi River serving as the primary selling points. But a downtown population boom has developers champing at the bit, and high-rise buildings have begun to spring up all over the city, much to the dismay of some observers, who were hoping that Minneapolis would stick to its original vision.

Since the Atlanta College of Art announced plans to merge with the Atlanta branch of the Savannah College of Art & Design, students and faculty have been up in arms, trying to galvanize public support for keeping the schools separate. Now, six students at ACA have filed a lawsuit asking for the merger to be blocked, and for damages to be paid to students who will see their tuition jump at the combined school.

So UK Culture Minister David Lammy thinks Arts Council England needs reform. “We must reform the Arts Council,” Lammy said. It’s got “to slim down”, “get smarter” and prove that it is “more than a passive cash machine”. But what exactly is he trying to accomplish, asks Rupert Christiansen?