Category: issues

What’s $150 million here, $500 million there? Philadelphia’s trying to do it all, with some major fundraising projects that challenge the city’s big money to make serious commitments…

San Antonio’s city council now has an arts plan that includes 38 strategies. “Public funding for the arts is about $2.78 per capita. That figure is about half of what other major cities allocate for the cultural arts. Yet, the economic impact of the local creative sector was $1.2 billion in 2003.”

The National Arts Journalism Program has closed at Columbia University, and the timing is not auspicious. NAJP director Andras Szanto says that for arts journalism, “it’s the best of times and the worst of times. It’s the worst of times in the uncertainty, anxiety, insecurity, and dislocation facing arts journalists in institutions that are being staffed by outsourced freelancers with pay scales that are comparable to artists. Within news organizations, they’re trying to keep up with an arts world that is being marginalized.”

One out of every thirteen working people in the state of Illinois is employed by a non-profit organization, according to a new study. ” In 2003, the report says, 441,814 people worked for hospitals, schools, cultural institutions, social-service agencies and other Illinois groups organized under section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code. That was more, for example, than the 406,300 workers in metal and machinery manufacturing or the 312,900 in finance and insurance.”

Why are there so few architecture critics in America? “For a long while now mainstream architectural journalism has been mostly synonymous with architectural criticism — with reviews of significant buildings. But you don’t have to browse through too many Arts or Entertainment or Weekend sections to see that critiques of buildings are an odd, uneasy fit amid all the reviews of movies and plays and TV shows, of music and dance and literature — of arts that are easily accessible and (often) widely distributed, arts that you can affordably experience simply by visiting a local theater or gallery, buying a book or CD, or tuning in HBO.”

“What critics have trouble doing is developing their own robust, well grounded taste. “Taste” is an antique concept but an irreplaceable one. Most people, even cultural theorists who would not grant the concept any credence in their academic work, exercise taste all the time in their non-academic life. Just ask them about the last movie they saw, or (even better) the music their kids are listening to. But because taste is something of a taboo topic in academia, many well credentialed critics do not feel very confident of their own judgment, which makes them vulnerable to being swept up by one or the other side in the so-called culture war.”

“Why does Harvard continue to dominate its rivals, at least in terms of reputation? It’s not as though its degrees guarantee great jobs. According to research from the University of Pennsylvania, the percentage of top executives at Fortune 100 companies who were Ivy League undergrads dropped from 14% to 10% from 1980 to 2001. A study by Spencer Stuart, the executive search firm, shows that as of 2004, Harvard no longer owns the No. 1 ranking as the university attended by the most CEOs of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies (just under 4%). The school that caught up to it: the University of Wisconsin.”

A big official government report on the future of Scottish arts is due out soon. But speculation and rumor are running wild ove what the report’s recommendations will be. “In a last round of consultations with arts bodies, some details have begun to leak out. There is mounting speculation in the arts world over not just what the report contains, but how it will be received.”

Managers of the International Space Station are commissioning art for the station. “People associate the space station almost exclusively with scientific work,” said Nicola Triscott, director of the science-art agency The Arts Catalyst, which has been commissioned by the European Space Agency to make a six-month study of practical proposals for art in space. “But the agency believes very strongly that the cultural world should have a say in the future of space exploration.”

John Carey’s new book “What Good are the Arts?” argues that the majority should not have to pay for the entertainment of the educated minority. “What, he explains, really gets him about Covent Garden, is the ‘luxury’ of it. He also feels it’s wrong that the majority should pay for the pleasures of the educated minority. When there is no way of proving that so-called great art has any transcendental value, Carey feels, it is hard to argue that it should be made available at the tax-payer’s expense, as in his view it offers no demonstrable moral or spiritual benefits to society. This even leads him to question the state subsidy that makes the National Gallery entrance free of charge.”