Category: issues

The London-based The Economist Intelligence Unit has ranked 130 cities worldwide for their quality of life, “using 12 factors including housing, education, recreational activities, health, climate and terrorism. The (EIU) survey ranked Melbourne, Vancouver and Vienna as the best cities for expatriates to live, with Perth fourth and Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney equal sixth.”

“Michael Eisner’s Disney has been a case study in poor corporate governance. Over the years, the board was disproportionately stocked with insiders, professionals who had dealings with the company, people whose children or relatives worked at the company, and others who were ill-equipped to exercise oversight over Eisner. One of Eisner’s main deficiencies has been an inability to manage key relationships and heed advice.” And now Eisner may be fighting for his job…

“More than three-fourths of metropolitan Boston residents took in a performing arts event in 2002, according to the results of a new national survey to be released today at City Hall. In fact, more Greater Bostonians attend performing arts events (78 percent) than professional sports events (56 percent) each year, according to a report by the Performing Arts Research Coalition.” And in Boston, home of some of the country’s most rabid sports fans, that’s saying something.

The music program at the Detroit High School for the Performing Arts is one of the best in the nation, and has been widely praised for its work in bringing the arts to an inner-city population which might otherwise have been economically frozen out of such opportunities. But the program has apparently also become a favorite target of area vandals, with more than $200,000 of damage caused to instruments and equipment in the most recent break-in. Desiree Cooper is dismayed by the vandalism, but wonders if such rebellions without cause are actually further evidence that Detroit’s youth desperately need a chance to experience the arts.

American Kristy Edmunds, a “38-year-old artist, playwright, curator and institution-founder from Portland, Oregon, was announced yesterday as director of the 2005 and 2006 Melbourne festivals.

In Seattle, the company that makes Lucky Strike cigarettes has become a patron of the arts. The company spreads money around, promoting Luckys in subtle ways – such as hiring attractive young people to sit in bars passing out tickets to alternative arts events (and talking up smokes). “Instead of battering the brain of the target audience, Lucky slides neatly into consciousness, trailing clouds of glory gathered from discreet arts funding. Credit spreads by word of mouth, making the product — which was launched as a brand in 1871 — appear modest and friendly.”

A few weeks ago playwright David Hare blasted The Guardian for topping its critics’ reviews with stars. Now readers weigh in about the shorthand practice…

Overall, Denver’s arts organizations saw declines in attendance, membership and fundraising in 2003. It was the second year in a row of declines…

“From musicians to Hollywood studios, and from network executives to owners of newspapers such as this one, the creators and purveyors of arts and letters are realizing that Americans increasingly are unwilling to sit down, shut up and consume their culture in the time-honored fashion of grateful passivity.”

So George Bush is proposing that the National Endowment for the Arts get a big increase in funding. Roger Kimball writes that while there’s still plenty of room to debate whether the arts should be publicly funded, the NEA has reinvented itself into an institution that suddenly matters. “After a couple of decades of cultural schizophrenia, the NEA has become a clear-sighted, robust institution intent on bringing important art to the American people.”