Category: issues

“Arts and business, once parallel worlds in Europe, are merging as never before. More companies than ever back the visual arts: Patronage has more than doubled in the past 15 years in the U.K. and more than tripled in France. The difference is that, where once companies funded the arts selflessly and on a whim — the chairman’s, or his wife’s — they now seek bang for their buck: their name in the show’s title, free museum access for staff and client parties, the right to advertise their sponsorship, and the right to run spinoff educational and social programs. And when all is said and done, they conduct studies to make sure it was worth it.”

Buffalo’s arts scene took a big hit last week when the state legislature scrapped $1 million in county-based arts funding. The city’s largest arts groups will still get their money, but 42 smaller organizations are scrambling to find alternate funds, having already absorbed several rounds of cuts. “The county rollback will disproportionately affect grass-roots organizations whose educational programs serve primarily urban families… By halving the $5.5 million originally budgeted for the arts and radically altering distribution of the remaining $2.7 million, lawmakers called into question the future of the volunteer Erie County Cultural Resources Advisory Board, which was formed 20 years ago to correct inequities in cultural aid.”

Kansas City’s plans for a massive downtown performing arts center are in danger of being scrapped or severely scaled back if new funding cannot be found. Organizers announced last week that they are suspending the PAC’s official capital campaign, and business leaders in the city say that the center cut off all contact with potential donors last fall after a proposed bi-state tax failed at the polls.

“The Netherlands is an intriguing case study in the debate over how much public funding should go to the arts. Though the infusion of government spending on the arts in the 1970s and ’80s created an arts mecca hailed around the world, it also attracted hangers-on and yielded warehouses full of artworks of dubious merit and zero value on the commercial art market. Ultimately, the Netherlands found there can, in fact, be too much of a good thing. The government-backed support structure for artists created a talent glut, and it collapsed under its own weight.”

Is Namibia’s fractured culture the product of a lack of national debate about culture? The country is currently debating a bill to support national culture. “The absence of a cultural discourse may be symptomatic of the multitudes of problems that we are facing as a country. The area of culture and values is dominated by various sub-groups that sometimes transmit contradictory values. Art plays an important role in transmitting values and helping individuals to eternalise them.”

It may not be the most socially responsible company on the planet, but WalMart has a profound understanding of the science of pricing and how it affects consumers. AJ Blogger Andrew Taylor suggests that arts organizations, which are forever being blasted for high ticket prices, could learn a thing or two from the world’s largest retailer: “It is interesting to consider what elements of price are in the minds of our audiences, and how we can scale our pricing (both up and down) to shape their on-going dance of cost and value.”

Arts advocates in Massachusetts have staged a rally at the state capitol to demand that the state’s arts council be restored to full funding after two years of draconian cuts. Massachusetts’s annual spending on the arts has dropped 56% since 2001, as lawmakers struggled to balance the budget. Meanwhile, demand for state grants is way up, with local arts councils receiving proposals totalling four times the amount of money available.

The Edinburgh Festival is abandoning its late night cheap performances. Why? Because they’re too cheap. The £5 ticket price for the series known as Royal Bank Lates, which last year featured such artists as singers Ian Bostridge and Simon Keenlyside, “undermines the value of the events”, according to a spokeswoman. “They are too cheap. There is a reasonable price for these things and it’s more than £5.”

“The long awaited opening of the Detroit School of Arts could not have happened at a better time. Financial troubles have so dominated the news coming out of the [Detroit school] district that it’s a welcome change to have a development truly worth cheering. The DSA is a big, shiny six-story reminder of the sort of modern-thinking focus the district needs to embrace if it’s going to compete and survive… The [school] comes complete with talking elevators, an 800-seat auditorium, acoustically efficient vocal and band rooms, a similarly designed recital hall, radio and TV studios, not to mention tons of security and surveillance systems.”

Minority artists earn less than other artists in Canada, says a new study. “The October study revealed a huge growth in the number of artists in the country; in fact, the growth rate for the profession expanded at almost three times the rate of the overall labour force since the early 1990s. Despite the popularity of the career choice, the pay was significantly lower for artists than for the average Canadian worker.”