Category: issues

In Washington, D.C., as in so many cities across the U.S., a battle for the soul of the region is being waged between those who live in the suburbs, and those who reside in the urban core. But the combatants may be missing the point: “There is a panache and prestige to being downtown — baseball owners nationwide have learned that, theaters and nightclubs have capitalized on it and retailers who fled cities after the 1960s riots are rediscovering it. And there is an ease and convenience to the burbs — as retailers, football teams and movie theater chains have long known.” In other words, cities and their surrounding areas have changed in the last 50 years, and both sides need each other more than they care to acknowledge.

The little town of Terezin, in the Czech Republic, is known throughout Eastern Europe by the strangest of descriptions: “best of the Nazi hells: a ghetto with a swing band, a concentration camp with shoe stores and cafes… At a time when Jews were banned from going to school, Terezin became their university: 2,430 lectures took place, on such topics as the Jews of Babylon, the theory of relativity, Alexander the Great and German humor.” For many, Terezin was merely a waystation on the horrible road to Auschwitz, and yet, its denizens have had an outsized impact on Jewish art and culture in the region.

The ongoing genocide in Sudan has gotten precious little attention from some Western governments, and even less from North American media outlets. In response to what they see as an outrageous abdication of national responsibility, a group of musicians and actors is mounting simultaneous live shows in six Canadian cities, featuring “live music and a mock debate of the UN Security Council using the actual minutes from recent UN meetings on Darfur.”

In the early 1960s, decades before the link between arts education and academic success was established, Cleveland educators turned a settlement house into an arts school. Now the Rainey Institute aims for another transformation, this time to expand its reach.

“Unlimited cultural choice might have evolved with utopian hope that all of us would be better and more diversely informed and entertained. But it’s devolved into a dystopia of cultural myopia, a place where you can find your own little silo of truth, oblivious to the cacophony of ideas blaring around you.” Getting out of the house to attend a live performance can shatter that complacency — and make us better citizens.

New York actors, musicians, and performers could keep their health care coverage even when they’re between jobs, under a new bill signed into law by the governor this week. The bill isn’t a panacea for performers – any individual making more than $19,345 per year isn’t eligible, for instance – but it’s being hailed as a major step forward in quality of life for performing artists in the state.

The Washington Post has pulled a week’s worth of installments of Aaron McGruder’s controversial comic strip, The Boondocks, and forbidden one of its editors from linking to the strips in an online forum. The strips in question depict rap mogul Russell Simmons introducing a new reality TV show entitled “Can A N***a Get A Job?” It’s not the first time the Post has pulled McGruder’s strip from its pages – a previous plotline which seemed to question the sexuality of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice was scrapped in 2003.

“There have been an unprecedented number of inquiries in the past eight years into aspects of the arts [in Australia] – inquiries that have produced tangible financial benefits. Yet what’s lacking has been any bigger picture or debate from either side of politics about the role of art in contemporary culture… There has been little public debate on the broader question of whom performing arts companies should answer to in an environment of shrinking public funding and increasing need for sponsorship dollars.”

Scotland has a new Parliament building, and amidst all the talk of cost overruns and such, some brave sould have dared to broach the subject of how the place ought to be decorated. An MP named Stone was placed in charge of “a committee to acquire art for the new building, and the results are now on view. It is not much. James Stone’s committee did ask the main committee… for £3 million. They were given a derisory £250,000 to spend. This mean-spirited decision was both a failure of courage and of imagination.”

All across the UK, opera companies, theaters, and orchestras are testing cut-price ticketing schemes designed to lure first-timers to performances they ordinarily wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. “So it is £10 at the National Theatre, £5 for students at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new Albery season, a third off for two operas or more at English National Opera, £5 at Welsh National Opera, and ‘pay what you can’ nights at the Bristol Old Vic.” Slashing ticket prices may smell a bit of desperation, but the strategy is working: the National Theatre had 50,000 new patrons last season, and a third of those have returned this year.