Category: issues

They’re incredibly grumpy about it (and who wouldn’t be?) but “scolding and grumbling about the past and expressing doubt about the future,” Miami-Dade commissioners voted to approve a plan to finish the Miami-Dade Performing Arts Center — 20 months late and $67.7 million over budget. Said one commissioner: “I feel like an abused wife who isn’t leaving a relationship even though she still may be abused in the future.”

Syracuse Universuty has announced America’s first degree program in arts journalism. “While a few general cultural reporting and some short-term mid-career enhancement programs exist throughout the United States, this is the first program from an accredited university to grant a degree in arts journalism.” It starts in the 2005-06 school year.

“Fighting to finish construction on Miami’s Performing Arts Center, only half-built, 20 months late and $67.7 million over budget, Miami-Dade County will seek county commission approval to hire a new project management firm at up to $150 an hour for five of its executives and more than $100 an hour for five more — for $2.3 million by year’s end.”

Composer Peter Maxwell Davies has lashed out at the Scottish Executive’s arts strategy, labelling it a jackboot in the face of Scottish culture. Sir Peter accuses the First Minister and the Cabinet of ‘absolute ignorance’ of cultural affairs, citing the recent £7 million restructuring of Scottish Opera as a prime example of the their ‘vicious’ attitude towards the arts.”

“Barcelona is host to a 141-day-long cultural fiesta comprising art exhibitions, pop and classical concerts, dance and theater performances and assorted other happenings. Costing $400 million, the festival, called Forum 2004, which began in May, hopes to draw five million visitors through Sept. 26. By then, the organizers say, the whole city should have benefitted.”

Only three months before construction on a $325 million redevelopment plan for Lincoln Center was supposed to begin, the Metropolitan Opera has raised objections. “The Met had agreed to the 65th Street plans in April, along with 11 other participating groups. But the opera now says a recent traffic study it commissioned indicates that plans to move a garage entrance would cause delays at curtain time, inconveniencing patrons.”

The British government has awarded £20 million of National Lottery money to be spent on cultural events throughout the country. “The European City of Culture competition stimulated the creation of a wonderful range of creative and ambitious plans in cities across the UK. The Lottery-funded Urban Cultural Programme will mean that many of those aspirations can become reality.”

“Last night Chicago threw a spectacular party to celebrate the opening of Millennium Park, an extravagant and stunning waterfront development that features two flamboyant new creations by celebrated architect Frank Gehry… And in a few years, another Great Lakes city hopes to celebrate its first Frank Gehry building. That city, of course, is Toronto. But Gehry, who was born here but left at the age of 18 for Los Angeles, recently he made it clear that Toronto has no right to consider itself architecturally on the same plane as Chicago… The problem with his home town, in his view, is that the mindset is too conservative, too timid, too restrictive.”

In a time of unusual partisan divide in the U.S., it’s no big surprise that some comedians are increasingly bringing their personal politics into their acts. But whereas political comedy has historically been focused on general themes so as not to appear to be overwhelmingly targeting any one ideology of individual, the new generation of political stand-ups are exceedingly personal. On the left, Janeane Garofalo and Al Franken rail against President Bush and the neoconservatives they believe pull his strings. On the right, Dennis Miller uses his CNBC talk show to ridicule the Democrats’ lack of toughness and original ideas. But is it still comedy, or just a new method of attacking the opposition?

“When the New Jersey State Council on the Arts convenes its annual meeting in Trenton on Tuesday, the highlight will be the awarding of annual grants — expected to be somewhere around $22 million, or some $6 million more than last year. Thanks to last year’s passage of a hotel-motel occupancy fee, the arts council has a dedicated funding source that brings its 2005 budget to $22.68 million — the largest state appropriation in the history of the agency. The infusion of money will allow the arts council to pump millions more into the state’s museums, theaters, dance companies and performing arts centers. [But] that doesn’t mean everyone will be happy.”