Category: issues

Wondering about the winners of this year’s arts Pulitzers? Here’s an archive of reviews and features about the play, music and writing that won.

Canadian Heritage Minister Liza Frulla says her government intends to inrtoduce tough new copyright laws later this year. “Frulla expressed her intention to toughen Canada’s ‘antiquated’ intellectual property laws through proposed new copyright legislation to be tabled in June. ‘We’ll also be addressing the peer-to-peer issue. It will give the tools to companies and authors to sue’.”

Theatre and pop singers are big in Vegas right now. “Pop superstars and Broadway hits with their own dedicated theaters are the town’s new royalty. Resorts without such anchors are scrambling to catch up. And outside of town — most notably in New York — jaws are dropping at the huge sums now staked on wooing such entertainment.”

Confusion surrounding unemployment tax law in Oregon has forced the cancellation of at least one summer music festival, and is putting many other nonprofit music organizations at risk. “The issue revolves around whether musicians hired for concerts are independent contractors, responsible for paying their own unemployment taxes, or regular salaried employees, with their employers responsible for such taxes.” The nonprofits have always paid their musicians as independent contractors hired for a limited period of time, and relied on them to cover their own tax burden, but the state is now claiming that the musicians are salaried. For many groups, there simply isn’t any extra money in the budget for unemployment tax, making the dispute a potential life-and-death matter for a few organizations.

The arts scene in Portland, Maine, is experiencing an almost complete turnover, the likes of which have never been seen before. The creative heads of the city’s leading theatre company and symphony orchestra are departing, the curators of two prominent museums are leaving as well, and the city’s college of art and public library will shortly be headless, too. “Collectively, these changes constitute the most significant loss in arts leadership in decades and are cause for concern. The arts community is vulnerable in the best of circumstances. Take away a significant number of leaders, and the institutional knowledge that goes with it, and those vulnerabilities become more acute.”

NEA chairman Dana Gioia testifies to Congress in support of an increased NEA budget. “Having spent the past two years rebuilding and renewing the agency — internally and externally — the NEA has entered a new phase of its history.”

The UK has set up a research council to study the “cultural and creative industries.” “With an annual budget of £75m the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is still a minnow among the other six research councils that dispense funding to scientists and social scientists – the Medical Research Council, for example, gives out more than £400m a year.”

Former NEA chairman Bill Ivey says it’s time to rethink about how we think abou the business of arts in America. “Look at record companies — they’re almost all for-profit. Museums are almost all nonprofit. Theatre is unusual because some institutions are in one world and some are in another, and that makes you wonder about the value of nonprofit status. Some parts of the arts system — like design, architecture, and, for the most part, book publishing and fashion — lack much of a nonprofit presence yet are vigorous parts of the cultural landscape, which they retain without getting grants. So it would be interesting to back up and look at the system without the old assumptions.”

Product placement took a giant leap forward this week with McDonald’s announcement that it would pay rap stars royalties in exchange for lyrical mentions of the Big Mac burger. But such guerrilla marketing tactics have been worming their way into unexpected corners of national culture for years, and the practice is likely to get bigger as traditional advertising becomes steadily less cost effective. “Last year, British ‘chick lit’ writer Carole Matthews [signed] a deal with Ford to mention its cars prominently in several of her works.” And now, Britain’s TV watchdog organization has offered a significant policy shift which could open the door for products to be inserted into the storylines of UK television programs.

The UK government has promised that “within 10 years every school-leaver will have had access to live arts and culture, including taking part in public performances. But it gave no indication of how this will be paid for. The new proposal has been dubbed Creative Sparks, and Culture.”