Category: issues

A scathing SEC report on the activities of the leadership of Hollinger International Incorporated has concluded that chief executive Conrad Black and his right-hand man David Radler looted the company of more than $400 million in profits to which they were not entitled, all with the tacit approval (or at least, without objection from) a board which included such high-profile names as Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle. The money appropriated by Black and Radler frequently found its way to organizations favored by the two men, and one of the biggest beneficiaries was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, “which received a total of $436,164 from 1996 to 2003.” There is no suggestion that the CSO knew that the source of the donations was unlawful.

Cultural forces in Pittsburgh are teaming up to turn a 26,000-square foot vacant warehouse into an arts center in the heart of the city’s business district. The center would house a theater, a coffee shop, and studios for various local artists. The partners have already come up with $800,000 in community funding for the project, but are estimating that the renovation will cost $4 million overall.

This year’s edition of the Arts Electronica festival, which focuses on the connection between technology and art, is taking a hard look at all the technological innovations of the last 25 years, and asking the question: are we actually any smarter or more creative as a result of the digital revolution? Or is it possible that all the instantly available information is only making us more confused and polarizing our society?

Media giant Clear Channel is getting into the arts in a big way. “Starting next year, Clear Channel Communications Inc. plans to send a large wooden version of the Trojan horse on a tour of U.S. museums as a frontispiece to an exhibition on ancient Greece and Troy. Clear Channel’s empire-building in the arts extends further — to touring Broadway musicals, where its omnipresence as a producer and presenter can mean trouble for competitors and cause wariness even among its partners. Cultural gatekeepers, including art critics and museum directors, have begun sounding a warning: Beware of a conglomerate bearing art.”

Brazil’s Minister of Culture has challenged the 35 member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS) to include culture on the list of basic policies to promote economic development and foster social inclusion. “Government policies for culture can no longer be secondary, fragile, peripheral. They represent the social and infrastructure policies of the 21st century.”

As the Republican convention opens in New York, “political fervor is being translated into art in mediums that range from painting and sculpture to Web art to political ephemera. At the moment, President Bush and the G. O. P. are the chief art-world targets: no one seems to have a critical word to say about the failings of the Democrats.”

Is Scotland’s culture in crisis? Certainly following the fortunes (and, more often, misfortunes) of the country’s arts institutions of late gives the impression of a culture in difficulty. But is it really? Or is something more fundamental going on?

No region has ever attracted as much capital or created as much wealth as Silicon Valley in the 1990s. But unlike great historical centers of money and creativity, San Jose has not developed its culture. “If San Jose is to realize its destiny as one of America’s major cities, cultural development needs to be taken as seriously as economic development. The potential of local organizations is enormous. What they lack is the sustained private investment and unabashed ambition for greatness such funding allows.”

Aiming to bring more lower-income senior citizens through its doors, London’s South Bank Centre has begun a pilot program that gives the over-60s discount only to those seniors who can prove they need it. Britain’s largest pensioners’ group, unsurprisingly, is not amused.

This summer the Globe Theatre in London produced Shakespeare using the original olde English pronunciations. And at the Proms, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment performed Wagner in period-instrument configuration. “Both were revelatory. Both pointed toward new ideas for staging Shakespeare and Wagner, and both perhaps suggested new ideas about the very nature of spoken and sung drama today.”