Category: issues

Virginia arts organizations have been frustrated in recent years trying to get the state legislature to allocate money for the arts. “Thanks to a surplus now hovering around $1.2 billion and an economy that is humming along, lawmakers are once again sounding more agreeable to arts funding. However, some restrictions still apply.”

Welcome to the Culture Wars, Part 36. Writes Frank Rich: “Public television is now so fearful of crossing its government patrons that it is flirting with self-immolation. Having disowned lesbians in the children’s show “Postcards From Buster” and stripped suspect language from “Prime Suspect” on “Masterpiece Theater,” PBS is editing its Feb. 23 broadcast of “Dirty War,” the HBO-BBC film about a terrorist attack, to remove a glimpse of female nudity in a scene depicting nuclear detoxification. Next thing you know they’ll be snipping lascivious flesh out of a documentary about Auschwitz.”

“What’s startling about American culture in wartime today is how much it resembles American culture in peacetime. If earlier wars soaked deep into the fabric of the nation, Iraq has become a sporadically demanding background, popping into the nation’s consciousness at times of extreme carnage, and then politely making way for other stories, from natural disaster to the foibles of teenage celebrities.”

Philadelphia mayor John Street says “arts and culture groups in the region need a new revenue stream that he estimates would be between $50 million and $100 million each year, and he is working quietly on a mechanism for putting that funding in place.”

“New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented a preliminary budget last week, forecasting a $1.4 billion overall surplus and proposing a Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) cut of some $20 million.” The arts budget cuts weren’t a surprise. Bloomberg had told arts groups in December of his intentions.

Virgina’s culture groups have hit on a creative way to try to fund their projects after the state legislature cut them off. “The proposal’s sponsors are respected organizations. Their projects will be a boon to Virginia. The annual cost of what they’re seeking, $6.8 million in debt service, is a modest sum, a footnote in the state budget. Their claim on state funding is valid and their strategy, in a difficult legislative environment, creative. But instead of backing cultural organizations into the corner, Virginia should recognize their value in regular appropriations from general funds.”

A new online database launched this week by the U.S. Department of Education is aiming to make it easier for prospective students seeking online or correspondence degrees to distinguish between accredited online schools and deceptive diploma mills which essentially trade worthless degrees for cash. “The white-list database could be a useful tool for would-be students and prospective employers who do not know how to distinguish between Hamilton University, a diploma mill in Wyoming, and Hamilton College, a small, distinguished and legitimately accredited liberal arts school in New York.”

The UK intends to throw its weight behind a pan-European clampdown on digital piracy. Piracy costs about £11 billion a year in Britain, a fifth of the annual £53.4bn worth of the UK’s creative industries.

Turkey is trying to join the European Union. How to get member countries to vote yes on admittance? Through traveling shows of Turkish culture. “Before Europeans hold referendums on whether to admit Turkey, they must better know a people whose popular image is still largely shaped by the clichés of warriors, harems and immigrants. Certainly, few Europeans today recognize Turkey as a modern secular state with a rich and sophisticated past. So, yes, if “Turks” travels around Europe, as proposed, it should prove something of a revelation.”

Plans have been announced to spend £35 million to redo an urban corridor in London that is home to one of the biggest concentrations of cultural institutions in the world. “On and around the road are institutions including the V&A, Science and Natural History Museums, Imperial College, the Royal Colleges of Art and Music, the Goethe Institute and Institut Français, the English National Ballet, and the Royal Geographical Society.” The street needs to be made more accessible, turning it into “the most significant intellectual highway in Britain”.