Category: issues

Plans for Kansas City’s huge new performing arts complex stalled recently after the city manager proposed moving the center’s parking garage one block east. The center’s backers claim that the new location, which is down a steep hill from the entrance, will be a major inconvenience for patrons, and several outside experts are now claiming that the move wouldn’t actually save the city any money, either. “Some arts leaders are feeling like the poor cousins of downtown development: Making the garage more convenient to sports and entertainment and less convenient to the arts, they say, points to the city’s relative lack of interest in the role of the arts in downtown’s resurrection.”

The former executor of the estate of violinist Isaac Stern paid himself outlandish fees, sold off assets without authorization, and effectively cut the Stern family out of the estate, according to a $2.25 million lawsuit filed by the late performer’s children. The suit further claims that the executor worked in collaboration with Stern’s third wife to deprive the family of their rightful inheritance. “The court documents open a window into the troubled affairs of a man known largely for his musical achievements.”

Artists are protesting the Northern Ireland government’s plan to slash arts spending next year. “The government has proposed funding will be cut by more than 10% over the next three years. That would mean spending being slashed from £14.5m per year to £13m per year by 2007. The Arts Council believes if the cuts go ahead many artists and organisations will not survive.”

“A report released by the Australia Council shows the Melbourne Theatre Company topping the list of the 10 biggest ticket-sellers in 2003, with 322,000 tickets sold. Opera Australia came second, with 284,000 tickets, and the Sydney Theatre Company third, with 274,000. Last year’s report on 2002 ticket sales had Opera Australia at the top of the list, with 263,000, and the MTC second with 251,000.”

Attempts to transform South Africa’s culture since apartheid have failed, says the country’s culture minister. “These problems were attributed to the legacy left by apartheid plus a skills shortage. Dismantling the legacy of apartheid had taken a lot of time and energy.”

In Pennsylvania and elsewhere in America, culture wars are heating up in schools. A drive to include creationism in textbooks is emboldened by the recent election. Some schools also propose censoring school reading lists of “immorality” or ‘foul language’ and to allow the distribution of Bibles in schools. “In Texas, the nation’s second-biggest school textbook market, the State Board of Education approved health textbooks that defined abstinence as the only form of contraception and changed the description of marriage between ‘two people’ to ‘a lifelong union between a husband and a wife’.”

Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has made arts education a priority of his administration: “It’s a critical part of the education of any child. A part of what I feel like I have to do is help superintendents, school chiefs and other governors realize that they’ll be leaving a lot of children behind if they don’t put a focus on arts education.”

Three New Jersey arts groups split $1.2 million from special allocations determined by members of the state legislature. The grants did not go through the traditional arts funding process. “The politicians conferred with members of the Treasury’s Division of Administration to decide the grants. The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the state agency that already distributed $22.7 million to arts organizations this year, was not consulted.”

A new appropriations bill is set to be approved by the U.S. Congress without an $18 million special allotment to the National Endowment for the Arts that President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush had specifically lobbied for. “‘American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius,’ was meant to be a chance to reacquaint people with the best of American dance, theater, jazz, classical music, literature and other arts, extending the NEA’s reach into communities all over the country, giving members of Congress bragging rights about how they were bringing home artistic pork and insulating the agency from political critics.” But Congress has allotted only $2 million for the project, which will have to be scaled back considerably.

The city of Richmond, Virginia, is contructing a beautiful new performing arts center as part of an effort to revitalize its downtown. But not everyone is happy about the project – two local writers have created a weblog called SaveRichmond.com, which takes aim at the PAC as an expensive plaything for the elite, and asserts that the city “should work with its artists, musicians and entrepreneurs to build a vibrant and diverse ‘street-level’ arts scene.” The critics also claim that the planners of the PAC don’t know anything about arts administration, and accuses the center’s board of using “dodgy finances” to hide its inability to raise money.