Category: issues

“Anti-administration politics are busting out of their usual homes in music, books, fine art and standup comedy, and crossing easily over into feature films, theatre, and even mainstream television shows in the run-up to this November’s U.S. presidential election. At the same time, many of the flag-waving, administration-friendly movies that Hollywood rushed to produce in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, either foundered in development or are bombing at the box office, including the current The Alamo.”

Australia’s most venerable stuffy cultural institutions have found new life in the past decade. “Some call it “a renaissance”, others “a revolution”. Either way, many of our most august institutions have reinvented themselves. The walls that once protected their vast collections of artefacts and books from the ravages of the outside world have become porous. Why? In short, they have been rejuvenated by the internet.”

The failure of a major initiative to fund arts in Cleveland came down to some very old issues left over from the culture wars of the 1990s: “The reluctance to approve government-administered money for the arts might be due to the two deep-rooted and opposing fears that the Mapplethorpe battle caused: Would the grants pay for art that the public finds incomprehensible, unattractive, obscene or blasphemous? And would the government place restrictions on artists’ freedom of expression as a direct or indirect condition of the grants?”

Utah arts groups are struggling. But voters have recently approved bonds for several big cultural building projects. Indeed, there’s a building boom going on in Salt Lake City as about $500 million in new cultural facilities are contemplated.

“After two years of budget cuts totaling about $4 million, the New Jersey arts community has something to celebrate: a proposed increase of $6.6 million in state funding for arts organizations and projects.”

What’s happened to Mickey Mouse? Once one of America’s most-loved cultural icons, the Mouse doesn’t cut it in today’s culture. “Boring,” “embalmed,” “neglected,” “irrelevant,” “deracinated” and, perhaps most damning, “over” are some of the adjectives that cropped up in recent interviews with people in the cartoon, movie and marketing businesses. And strangely for such a well-known figure, Mickey doesn’t even have a back story: no clearly defined relations, no hometown, no goals, no weaknesses.”

The culture of immigrants who passed through Ellis Island in the 20th Century has reverberated through the city’s popular culture. But the culture of a more recent waves of immigrants is only slowly seeping into the city. “Nearly 1 million immigrants have settled in New York since 1990, and today 36% of city residents (or 2.9 million) are foreign-born, a figure rivaling the previous high of 41% reached in 1910, according to U.S. census statistics. The borough of Queens, where once-deteriorating neighborhoods have been revitalized by a flood of newcomers, is now thought to be the nation’s most ethnically diverse county.”

Barry Hessenius has resigned as director of the California Arts Council. “During his tenure, Hessenius has overseen Arts Council budgets that reached a high of $30.7 million in 2000-01 and a low of $1 million for the current fiscal year, a drop of more than 97 percent in funding for the arts by the state. The money had been awarded as grants to more than 4,000 of the state’s arts endeavors, large and small, rural and inner-city – everything from artists in residence in schools to major orchestras.”

In France, the peculiar type of civic modernization often referred to as “progress” by politicians is frequently met with anything from skepticism to outright hostility, and the construction of a huge new bridge over the Tarn River is the latest battleground. “The project is paradoxical. Nobody can dispute that it is going to be one of the most beautiful bridges in the world… But the bridge will do much more than lop two hours off the journey from Paris to the southwest coast. It is proof that in one of the most centralized countries in Europe, a bureaucrat in Paris can draw a line on a map and, at a stroke, bypass any local objections.”

For the first time in decades, art museums are making a concerted effort to cater to the needs of children, and the museum field trip may never be the same. “The once-a-year docent-led sprint through the galleries is being replaced by more sophisticated strategies. Children are being invited to write labels, dress up in the period costume of a particular painting, and act as docents themselves.” One Boston museum is even embarking on a year-long study to discover just what children get out of the museum experience, and what information they retain.