Category: issues

Times are tough in the art world, and attendance has been slow for many organizations. So a group of Philadelphia arts groups have banded together to try out a very old-fashioned method of gaining new business: they’re offering half-price admission to everything from operas to plays to pop concerts to museums. But the discounts are a one-time event, since no arts groups wants to create a ticket base that gets used to not paying full price.

“People recall that distant age when the theatre began with nothing more than a lowering of the lights and the raising of a curtain, when the whole notion of pre-emptive audience rebuke was unheard of, but those days have passed into misty legend.” By now the reminder to turn off your cell phones, beepers and chiming watches — and to unwrap your candy now — is ubiquitous. Fortunately, it has also evolved into an opportunity for creativity and humor.

The University of Notre Dame is known for two things: Catholicism and football, not necessarily in that order. With a new, $64 million performing arts complex intended to be a presenting and teaching space, the university is seeking to become known for prominence in a third area: the arts.

France will officially become the first nation to allow owners of theaters and concert halls to install cell phone jamming equipment. The devices will still allow emergency calls to be made from the premises when necessary, but will block all other signals to and from the building during performances. Similar devices are explicitly banned in other countries, but the French decision could be a harbinger of things to come elsewhere.

“Inspired by the war in Iraq and the upcoming presidential election, painters, sculptors, graffiti artists, guerrilla poster makers and aspiring artisans have been showing an unprecedented level of political outrage… Nothing to date has been created on the scale of Pablo Picasso’s 1937 apocalyptic mural Guernica, considered one of the most powerful anti-war statements in modern art. But the amount of political art being produced recently has been unprecedented, even exceeding the anti-administration views displayed during the Vietnam War.”

“People may not always agree on what art is, but Kansas City area voters will be asked Nov. 2 to pay for lots of it. Residents of five counties will consider a quarter-cent sales tax to raise $500 million to $600 million for arts projects over the next 12 to 15 years, including $50 million for a downtown performing arts center… Arts supporters say the issue is quality of life. Does Kansas City want more and better theater, art galleries, museums, concerts and other entertainment?” But opponents are saying that the arts are no more culturally relevant than a tractor pull (seriously, someone said that,) and that tax money should stay out of the mix.

It’s a major year for the arts in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, and not a bad year for construction companies, either. The Guthrie Theater is putting the finishing touches on a massive new riverfront home designed by architect Jean Nouvel, and major expansion projects are well underway at the Walker Art Center, the Children’s Theatre Company, and the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. “Most of the institutions are expanding their missions or reaching for new audiences with their new facilities. And all are trying to redefine what it means to be a home for the arts.”

Canada prides itself on its willingness to pay high taxes to support a considerable social safety net, but according to some in the arts industry, the country has a long way to go to approximate the level of arts support appropriate for a developed nation. “The Canada Council’s grants for all cultural organizations across the country… totals $142 million — about half the annual subsidy received by Berlin’s three opera houses.”

The scholars who emerge every year or so to reassert that William Shakespeare didn’t write the plays attributed to him are not what you would call the popular kids in academic circles. But that’s never stopped the Shakespeare Fellowship Foundation from calling attention to itself, with its efforts focused mainly on the logical-sounding notion that an uneducated glovemakers’ son simply would not have had a wide enough world experience to write such worldly plays. But at its annual convention this month, the SFF has waded hip-deep into a new controversy, claiming that the man they believe to have written the Shakespeare plays was also the lover of Queen Elizabeth I.

“Living the actor’s life often means uncertainty. Your job, working environment, and level of income are constantly in flux. While most actors are happy to choose this sometimes thrilling, sometimes terrifying existence over the grind at a fluorescent-lit cubicle, the very nature of it also means that certain necessities aren’t a given. Like rent money. Or health insurance. The process of getting and maintaining reliable coverage is a chief worry for the working actor.”