Category: issues

“Does spending tax dollars on the arts give the local economy any more of a boost? Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) residents will vote in March on Issue 31, a property-tax levy that would raise nearly $21 million annually to help local industries, including the arts. If it passes, what can the voters expect in exchange for their higher property tax?”

Tony Brown writes that it’s all well and good for George Bush to propose budget increases for the National Endowment for the Arts. But if he really wanted to do something, he should privatize the agency and give it a real endowment that could sustain its funding for years to come.

“In Western culture the question of how to picture divinity has a history longer than Christianity’s. Plato chewed on it while his Greek contemporaries had no qualms about personifying deities in statuary and vase painting. Eventually Christianity, Judaism and Islam all codified their own prohibitions against imaging divinity, though all tolerated breaches of the rules at various times for various reasons. Over the centuries disputants in the matter filled libraries with esoteric arguments for and against likenesses of deity.”

In 2001 Americans for the Arts learned it was getting a bequest of between $80 million-$120 million. And what will AFA do with the money? “The first installment in January 2003 topped $3 million, and a comparable cheque arrived last month. The board is handling the funds with great caution. Newly established committees for investment and planning decided to put most of the income into an endowment to extend the value of the donation beyond 30 years, with a target of $100 million.”

A new book paints an unflattering picture of Americans: According to statistics the author has collected, only 48 percent of American adults understand that the earth orbits the sun yearly. A mere 15 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 can find Iraq or Israel on a labeled map, and 11 percent can’t find the United States. Americans consume a ton of ice cream apiece in the course of a lifetime, spend more on fast food than on higher education, discard 20 billion diapers annually, and develop 9 square miles of rural land every day.”

A report on cultural spending paints a sour picture. “From the building of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre to the restoration of the Royal National Theatre, the Commons Public Accounts Committee report highlights a series of publicly funded projects that went wrong. The report criticises Arts Council England and urges it to spend less cash in London – even though it is the nation’s artistic and cultural hub.”

A parliamentary report says British lottery money is nbeing wasted – pointing to two funded institutions – the National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield and the Dovecot Arts Centre in Stockton-on-Tees – which closed for lack of visitors. “And it says another £78m spent by Arts Council England is tied up in five projects facing cash problems.”

A new report for British MP’s criticizes the way lottery money is awarded to arts groups. “It attacks Arts Council England for wasting lottery and taxpayers’ money to bail out venues such as the Royal Opera House and Sadler’s Wells in London, and for not putting enough cash into working-class areas or attracting more diverse groups to theatres.”

For 50 years after World War II, South Korea banned Japanese culture from the country. But in 1998, some of the restrictions were lifted. Since then, “Japanese movies, video and computer games, songs and albums are not sweeping through the Korean Peninsula like a tycoon, but are seeping in through cultural osmosis brought on by gradual market integration.”

George Bush proposes increasing the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts by $18 million. But in arts circles, “suspicion of Bush’s motives, however, is widespread. Why in the world is this president offering a palm frond to the arts, even a modest one, while cutting other domestic programs in a $2.4 trillion budget that’s heavy on defense and military spending and simultaneously aimed at deficit reduction?”