Category: issues

Today’s UK is increasingly becoming racially divided. It’s important to take on political issues like this in art. But how to bring some clarity?

So often the talent or genius that burns bright as a prodigy, ends up burning out early. “We are stalled in a state of permanent adolescence; the economy relies on the avidity of teenage consumers who have to be tantalised with a fresher face every few months. Adolescent celebrities are obsolete by their early twenties.”

As New York’s Fall for Dance sampler demonstrates, there’s a big audience for dance if it’s priced and packaged right. But what are arts organizations doing to lure those people who might be interested but aren’t yet ready to commit major money to attending? “It’s understandable that theaters want to reward their devotees, especially as they typically constitute half the audience. But what’s keeping the venues from encouraging more people, besides students, to become devoted? Why, for example, are there no introductory offers?”

Mikhail Baryshnikov is getting close to opening his new arts center on Manhattan’s West Side. “I did not want something designed purely for dance. While we were planning, we went to almost every theater and studio space built in New York over the last 60 years and saw what worked and what didn’t. The specifics of the spaces, the adaptable walls, the height of the ceilings, the technical possibilities all had to make opera, cabaret or plays feasible, too.”

The Scottish Parliament has killed a report’s recommendations to dramatically increase funding for the arts. “The report won initial support in the arts community for its call for a massive increase in spending of up to £100 million, to cover a ‘deficit’ in Scottish arts and take it to a 1 per cent share of the Scottish Executive’s budget. Scotland’s culture minister said a new arts bureaucracy was a non-starter. She did not rule out a “radical overhaul” in the arts, but spoke out against “unnecessary bureaucracies, which are a drain on resources”. She continued: “I’m not convinced that the solution preferred by the commission is the right one.”

US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says the government has the right to deny funding for art of which it disapproves. “The First Amendment has not repealed the basic rule of life, that he who pays the piper calls the tune. When you place the government in charge of funding art, just as when you place the government in charge of providing education, somebody has to pick the content of what art is going to be funded, what subjects are going to be taught. The only way to eliminate any government choice on what art is worthwhile, what art isn’t worthwhile, is to get the government totally out of the business of funding.”

“Mayor R.T. Rybak says under the guidance of the new plan, the city will develop cultural leaders, double funding for public art, and promote Minneapolis arts and culture both locally and nationally. He says a key aspect of the plan is to support those small and mid-sized arts organizations that don’t have a large staff or wealthy boards. But this is the same mayor who drastically cut back his Office of Cultural Affairs four years ago in an effort to dig the city out of some major debt.”

Americans for the Arts has set up a new emergency relief fund. The organization “describes its new creation as a permanent fund developed to provide timely financial assistance to victims of a major disaster for the purpose of helping them rebuild the arts in their community. Americans for the Arts kicked off the fund with $100,000 and is overseeing donations. Robert L. Lynch, the organization’s president and CEO, said on Monday that outside donors had so far contributed close to $50,000 more.”

You can hardly turn around in America these days without bumping into a “house museum” or some such similar bit of preserved history, and some have begun to speculate that we are cheapening history by drawing attention to so much of it. This week, a gathering of public historians takes place in Pittsburgh, with participants set to tackle some of the more difficult questions of access, overexposure, and creative control. “How and why should history museums interpret the recent past? How can corporate historians balance thorough analysis with the pressures of maintaining a positive corporate image? And who should determine what history is: curators or the community?”

There will be many painful decisions ahead for those who must find a way to rebuild New Orleans, and none may be more taxing than deciding what aspects of the city’s famed architecture can be preserved, and which must get the wrecking ball. “New Orleans is a city where the grand and the debauched are often separated by feet rather than miles, and much of its treasured visual narrative remains intact. But the wind has torn away chunks of facades and the insides of many homes have been corrupted beyond description… a discussion about the virtues of the city’s vernacular architecture – shotgun shacks, Creole cottages – would seem to be a luxury now. Still, local preservationists believe that unless the bulldozers roaming New Orleans are used with care, the city that officials are trying to save will be lost.”