Category: issues

“City officials and artists who call New Orleans home announced Tuesday that they would team with Habitat for Humanity to build a village for musicians chased from their homes by Hurricane Katrina. The alliance, which includes the Marsalis family and Harry Connick Jr., will use $1 million in seed money generated by two recent concerts in New York to launch the development. Plans call for as many as 200 homes surrounding a cultural center named for Ellis Marsalis — a patriarch of New Orleans jazz and the father of three accomplished musicians: saxophonist Branford, trumpeter Wynton and trombonist Delfeayo.”

The Christmas season may be a boom time for retailers and a joyous occasion for families, but it’s become a giant headache for public schools. Vague court decisions and virulent disagreement over the extent to which religion must be kept out of schools have resulted in a patchwork of rules governing what is and is not allowed in a school’s “holiday” concert and celebratory display. “Schools often fall into two camps: They quietly avoid religious songs in favor of more generic tunes such as Frosty the Snowman and Jingle Bells. Or they offer a sprinkling of songs from different religions and fill much of the concert with secular holiday songs.”

Newspapers are in a tizzy about declining circulation. But maybe part of what’s wrong is that newspapers “drive readers away, either through clueless attempts to woo people who have no interest in newspapers at all, or by mocking community standards that most of its customers hold dear. Television and celebrity coverage is a waste. People who prefer television simply watch more television — they don’t and won’t read papers. Why chase them?”

New York’s Carnegie Hall and City Center are forming a partnership “that will lead to a $150 million fund-raising effort to renovate City Center, and give Carnegie Hall’s increasingly ambitious programmers access to a dance and theater space.”

The Getty Trust expands its board from 12 to 16. “The newcomers — Stewart A. Resnick, William E.B. Siart, Mark S. Siegel and Peter J. Taylor — bring a long list of financial and educational credentials at a time when critics have accused the trust’s sitting board of inattention. But the newcomers’ lack of arts expertise and diversity prompted board member Ramon Cortines to step down from his role on the board’s nominating committee.”

UK arts are getting more funding from private sources. “A report released today by the charity Arts & Business reveals that private support for the arts has leapt from £393m to £452m in the last two years. However, there is concern within the industry that the figures could be seen by the government as an excuse to slash public arts subsidies.”

America’s Gulf Coast is rebuilding. But a battle has broken out about what rebuilding will look like. “The idea that New Urbanists may be helping to write plans for the new Gulf Coast has horrified many architects and left-leaning cultural critics — revealing, in the process, quite a bit about the ambitions and anxieties that mark contemporary architectural practice in this country.”

Arts education in New York City schools is still a spotty thing. The system suffers from “a lack of such facilities as art or dance studios, an inadequate supply of basic material and equipment such as musical instruments, and a shortage of arts teachers. Some 150 public schools –- more than one in ten — still have no full-time arts teachers of any kind.”

A study says artists have more sex? “Don’t expect honesty from artists at any time. Massive delicate egos and a myopic view of reality don’t make for any kind of study. The truth is that artists aren’t that special. People just like to think so – especially artists. They don’t deny it because the industry thrives on this very premise (and it makes them feel loved and important). It is the same argument all the time. They expect you to lead a rock’n’roll lifestyle, but the truth in my case could not be more different: a boring day in the studio, then home to wife and kids and the occasional clean-up-after-puppy-poo-athon.”