Category: issues

The Kimmel Center has an impressive list of board members, all with money to burn and a desire to dupport the arts. So shouldn’t the center’s finances be all too stable? Actually, it’s a lot more complicated than that: “Many of the Kimmel board members serve on other boards, which also tap them for time and money… No less than nine Kimmel board members are also members of the [Philadelphia Orchestra’s] board.” Philadelphia also is home to far fewer big corporations than some other major cities, limiting what the center can reap from that potential revenue stream.

Outwardly, Hollywood and the TV networks which incessantly cover its every move are wringing their hands over this year’s Oscar host, comedian Chris Rock, practically begging the star not to step over the line of good taste and subject the broadcast to sanction from the newly activist FCC. In reality, of course, everyone involved with the awards show is thrilled to pieces that Rock is hosting, since it allows the show to be promoted to jaded viewers as spontaneous and potentially rule-breaking, when in fact, it will be as scripted and sanitized as ever. It’s just one more bit of evidence that Americans love to watch the same supposedly indecent programming they later fight to have removed from the airwaves.

Naples, Florida, according to a new book purporting to rank the top 100 arts metros in the country. Naples is tops in the category of cities with a population of less than 30,000. The city’s beautiful Philharmonic Center for the Arts appears to have been the major factor in the strong ranking…

Philadelphia Mayor John Street is urging state officials to sell off the naming rights for the city’s convention center to generate a sizable new revenue stream. The mayor’s plan is for the estimated $3-$5 million per year to be earmarked for specific arts groups serving the metro area.

BAC’s Scratch nights offer new experimental productions. Jerry Spring the Opera went the Scratch route. But “the defining cliche of Scratch culture is that, in it, artists are offered “a safe space to fail”. But a safe space isn’t the kind of “risk-taking” environment that Scratch proponents espouse, of course: it’s the reverse, a neutralised zone in which (necessarily) risk-averse organisations can release beta-versions of new products without exposing themselves commercially.”

How did the arts fare in this week’s proposed Canadian budget? There is one arts initiative, but it’s big. “Ottawa announced it would spend $688 million on its Tomorrow Starts Today program – $172 million a year for five years. Tomorrow Starts Today is a Canadian Heritage Ministry scheme to help develop the arts in Canada. It supports a variety of other arts groups, including the Canada Council, which receives $25 million annually from the program.”

UK cultural luminaries have been bitterly complaining about a funding freeze in cultural funding proposed by the government. But Culture Minister Tessa Jowell has “strongly defended the Government’s record of increasing spending on the arts by 60 per cent in the past six years. ‘You would have to be living in a parallel universe to say that is going back to the bad old days. It’s just a denial of reality’.”

The troubled Miami Performing Arts Center is wending itse way towards completion. But what will go in it? Well, the Cleveland Orchestra, for one. And now the MPAC has announced a program asking “local performing artists to submit ideas for development, minor funding and perhaps eventual performance in the PAC’s 2006-07 opening season. The $412 million center, with symphony hall, ballet opera house and performance theater, is set to open in October 2006.”

Minnesota artists and their supporters gathered at the state capitol in St. Paul this week for an annual day of organized lobbying designed to bring legislators around to the idea that cutting the arts to balance a budget is not a good way to run a state. But even as organizers declared the day a success, some observers are wondering whether such efforts make any real difference. Two years ago, when Minnesota was in the throes of a budget crisis, more than 1,000 people participated in Arts Advocacy Day, and the legislature still slashed the arts budget by 32%.

Australia’s federal Arts Council is preparing to undergo a major restructuring which would see grant money parceled out based as much on an applying group’s business plan as on its artistic product. “The council itself would decide on funding for strategic projects, rather than leaving it to the boards of individual art forms. The council has faced outrage from staff and arts organisations about the lack of consultation on the changes,” and now, the revolt is gaining some serious momentum.