Category: issues

Hong Kong is trying to be a cultural hub. But are the government’s efforts to develop the city’s creative sector backfiring? Some critics say the state investment in culture lacks a long-range plan…

“The Ohio House Finance Committee made a change to the proposed state budget Monday morning that would allow cigarette taxes in Cuyahoga County to be raised by as much as 25 cents per pack to support a countywide arts and cultural district.”

“The new Calgary-based Institute for the Creative Process — or ICP@ACAD, for short — is being built on the belief that artists and designers should be making meaningful contributions to the real world beyond the design of a new Coca-Cola bottle or simple manufacture of product. The ICP will be working with businesses and various community groups to apply creative design solutions to everyday social and organizational problems. In addition to developing partnerships and thinking up new graduate-degree possibilities for the college, the ICP will be responsible for cultivating dialogue and research activities that directly address the nature and application of the creative process.”

“American universities — once the dominant force in the information technology world — fell far down the ranks in a widely watched international computer programming contest held this week. Asian and Eastern European schools have been scoring increasingly well in the world championship. A U.S. school hasn’t won since 1997, when students at Harvey Mudd College proved best.”

A new theme park/museum based on Abraham Lincoln opens this week. “The museum, which opens to the public April 16 a few blocks from the Illinois state capitol, is an architectural flop that turns Lincoln’s life into the storyline for a mawkish indoor theme park. It puts us on a slippery historical slope, where the unreal blurs with the real and ultimately upstages it.”

Boston is in the midst of spending more than $1 billion on new arts facilities. “The projects are varied, ranging from a contemporary art museum on the waterfront and downtown theaters to a pair of cultural centers slated for open space created by the Big Dig. ‘It’s staggering. Boston has always had a lively cultural scene, but I think we’re seeing the kind of arts renaissance catching up with the tremendous revitalization Boston’s undergone over the last 25 years’.”

Is a current review of Scottish arts policy currently underway just a front for killing off the Scottish Arts Council? A Government memo would suggest that it might be. “The secret memo confirms the suspicions of cultural policy insiders who believe the Executive has always had an agenda to scrap the arts organisation, which has been widely tipped for abolition in the forthcoming shake-up.”

Is the appetite of government to fund arts capital projects fading? “Minnesota arts groups were all but frozen out of the $945 million bonding bill passed by the Legislature this week, a halting step in what has been an awkward minuet between ambitious artists and a sometimes-skeptical state government.”

Steven Kurtz is an artist. That much, no one is debating. But Kurtz uses various legally acquired biological agents (read: farm chemicals) in his work, some of which also appear on an FBI list of chemicals frequently sought by wannabe terrorists. When Kurtz’s stash was discovered by authorities following his wife’s death, he was pursued, jailed, and charged with crimes which could net him 20 years in federal prison. Now the art world is coming together to defend Kurtz, and raise money for his legal defense.

New York City’s $500 million campaign to rebuild Ground Zero has officially kicked off, but buried in the celebratory press conference was a disturbing change of plans: “As originally planned, the $500 million would help finance a memorial and a museum complex as well as [a Frank Gehry-designed] performing arts center, to be shared by the Joyce Dance Theater, which specializes in dance, and the Signature Theater Company, an Off Broadway group. But now the performing arts center will be part of a ‘second phase.'” Worse, officials at the Joyce and Signature groups appear to have been left uninformed about the change of status for their new home.