Category: issues

Arthur Robins was spending a leisurely afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when suddenly he found himself being interrogated by several cops from the Joint Terrorist Task Force of the NYPD. According to the cops, Robins had been fingered as the man who had been surreptitiously hanging cartoonish paintings of President Bush in major museums up and down the Eastern seaboard. That night, the investigators showed up at Robins’s apartment for more questioning. Here’s the kicker, according to the suspect: “Out of 90,000 street artists in New York, they picked the one who doesn’t despise Bush.”

The voices speaking out against the official plans for the WTC site are growing ever louder, and those calling for a strict rebuild of the original Twin Towers are gaining ground. The obvious argument is visceral, of course – you knock our buildings down, and we’ll just put ’em right back up! – but there is more to the increasingly popular movement than simple defiance. “We are replacing a symbol of world peace and human cooperation with a self-absorbed salute to America,” says the man who is leading the charge, adding that Daniel Libeskind’s design is “tone deaf to a monumental degree.”

“Pledging to reinvigorate cultural life in Lower Manhattan, state and city officials yesterday announced the selection of arts groups devoted to dance, theater and drawing, along with a museum celebrating freedom, as the cultural anchors for the World Trade Center site… The Signature Theater Company, the Joyce Theater, the Freedom Center and the Drawing Center” were the lucky winners in a process which had been roundly criticized by arts leaders as insufficiently open to public scrutiny.

A new study notes cuts in funding for US state arts agencies in 2003 and suggests that the cuts are not an aberration. “The reason for these cuts is not just a one-time fiscal crisis, but the political weakness of state arts agencies that has arisen because of a growing mismatch between their roles and structures and the cultural and political realities they face. A shift in the arts agencies’ focus and funding may be a solution, but it cannot take place until important conceptual and practical issues are resolved.”

“Freedom to express opinions is a cornerstone of our liberties, and if one has the right to bravo noisily, one must stand up for the right to boo noisily too. In any case, as a critic, I suppose I rank as a professional booer (and cheerer too, on occasion), so it would be hypocritical of me to argue on the side of politesse. Nevertheless, there are complexities and contradictions in our attitude to booing.”

Perth, Australia has a big shortage of performance space. “Why has the same urgency rarely been felt about the lack of decent dance and theatre venues that has plagued the Perth International Arts Festival for at least two decades? And why have actors been told they must wait until 2008 for a new theatre, the first major performance space in 30 years, to open its doors?

What cultural projects should be grown in Lower Manhattan around the site of the former World Trade Center? A report is critical of the process so far. “We have a vision of Lower Manhattan as an arts mecca,” reads the executive summary, “with clusters of new and existing cultural groups connected by streets identified as arts corridors and signified with public art.”

Where is the next generation of top leadership in the arts going to come from? A new program in the UK spots talented young arts managers on the way up and tries to embue them with just a little extra…

San Francisco’s mayor says that to deal with the city’s deficit, he wants to combine the area’s two major art funders. “But in moving the Grants for Arts program under the Arts Commission umbrella, many say, the mandates of the two different agencies could clash and endanger a fragile arts ecology in San Francisco.”

Five thousand performing arts professionals are converging on Pittsburgh this week in the first-ever joint meeting of America’s performing arts organizations. “The idea behind the project was to give performing-arts people across the country a chance to share their thoughts on important industry problems and pool their strength. There were real, fieldwide issues that were not subject to solution by any single art form. I had the feeling that we would always be minor-league players while we operated in our silos.”