Category: issues

The new Strathmore Music Center in a Maryland suburb of Washington DC is an ambitious undertaking for a suburb. Benjamin Forgey writes that “the $100 million center is a traditional urban institution in a fast-changing suburban setting. It’ll contribute most significantly to the cultural life of its home county, of course, but, with the Baltimore Symphony treating it as a ‘second home,’ it’ll add choices for many music lovers in the metropolitan area. The architecture itself will be an attraction, eventually. In an age of prominent, in-your-face, innovative civic architecture, the center is a deceptive exception.”

Protests over SpongeBob, complaints over gay being shown on a PBS cartoon, books that even mention homosexuality being taken off library shelves in Mississippi. What’s going on? “If you are a recently re-elected president with a strong conservative Christian base, and some elements of that base are throwing hissy fits over a sponge and a bunny or what’s on a university library shelf, it takes unwanted attention away from larger, more politically challenging matters relating to same-sex marriage bans, or free-marketing Social Security, or strengthening the anti-abortion movement — a movement that, as President Bush vowed on Jan. 24, ‘will not fail.’ The culture wars aren’t won on the battlefield. They’re won by playing a good shell game.”

As a new management team begins to rebuild the mess left behind by the previous administration at upstate New York’s Saratoga Performing Arts Center, details are emerging that paint a bleak picture of SPAC’s previous management practices. Still, the center’s new treasurer is already hard at work sketching a new path for SPAC’s fundraising apparatus and fiscal management, and like the rest of the new leadership team, he talks a great deal about bringing a new “transparency” to the organization.

There’s a proposal in Virginia for the state to borrow $86 million for arts and cultural projects. But officials in Hampton Roads and the mayors of Norfolk and Virginia Beach said their cities are being shortchanged since 35 percent of the funds go to Richmond. Then there is the state legislator who attacks the funding plan as “vulgar.”

Another Seattle arts group is facing a crisis. 911 Media Center has laid off three of its five staff, and is cutting back after a costly move and a downturn in fundrasing. “The immediate problem is money, but the real problem is a crisis the organization survived two years ago, when a four-person board out of touch with the membership fired a popular and effective director and triggered a membership revolt.”

The Canadian government plans to name Toronto the “cultural capital of Canada” and give the city $500,000 for that designation, effective this September through August, 2006.

The UK’s Office of Fair Trading says that ticket resellers are often gouging customers with fees up to 600 percent of ticket face value. “Some reputable agents add 67 per cent to the face value of pop concert tickets bought on the internet while additional charges of 40 per cent are not uncommon, the report found. One in three people surveyed by the OFT during its seven-month investigation complained that booking fees for concerts, theatre and sports events had been higher than expected.”

A new law before the British Parliament institutes new fees for outdoor performances. “Events attracting audiences of 5,000 people or more will be required to make a one-off payment of between £1,000 and £64,000 on top of their public entertainment licence, which will cost between £100 and £635. While organisers of large commercial programmes will be able to incorporate the extra costs into the price of their tickets, industry figures have warned that large-scale community and not for profit events will no longer be able to function when the additional charge is incorporated into their budgets.”

A new study says that the Edinburgh Festival generates £135 million for Scotland’s economy and generates 2,900 full-time jobs. So the Festivals will try to make a case for more public investment in the annual arts fests…

Christian “outrage” over the BBC’s broadcast of Jerry Springer, The Opera is cynical. But no one comes out of these debates well. “If the religious thrive on a feeling of persecution, so do artists. They have shouted censorship in response to what in some cases is no more than a consumer boycott. (Violence and intimidation are a different matter, of course.) On Millian grounds, no liberal society should forbid behaviour that is offensive to others without causing any actual harm, and to that extent the BBC’s decision to show Jerry Springer must be right. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the controversial elements of the opera are present only to produce a lazy frisson in the audience. In a society as secular as the UK, mocking religious pieties has power only parasitically.”