Category: issues

The American Association of Performing Arts Presenters holds its annual meeting in New York. “The conference functions as something of a freewheeling art marketplace where those who program (buyers) and those who perform (sellers) can get to know one another’s work. The principal conduit for all that creative networking is more than 1,000 performances around the city, continuing through Tuesday, when the association’s members scurry back to their artistic homes to program the 2004-5 season and beyond.”

About $9 million in new security measures are being installed at the Sydney Opera House, to protect against terrorism. “NSW premier Bob Carr rejected suggestions the Opera House was the country’s prime terrorism target but added: ‘We live in an era where anything can be considered a target.’ About four million visitors entered the Opera House every year, making it difficult to protect.”

“Historical figures including Socrates, Charles Darwin, and Andy Warhol probably had a form of autism, says a leading specialist. Professor Michael Fitzgerald, of Dublin’s Trinity College believes they showed signs of Asperger’s syndrome.

New U.S. customs rules put in place by the Bush administration have the potential to severely limit the ability of foreign-born artists to tour North America, and Canadian organizations are worried that their cultural trade will be directly affected by the actions of the American government. Artists who were born outside of certain pre-approved countries “can expect to be detained [at the U.S. border] under the new U.S. Homeland Security regulations for digital fingerprinting, photographing and a short interview, even if their work visas have been pre-approved by U.S. authorities.” Many performers are unwilling to risk such humiliating treatment, and are cancelling planned trips to North America.

Even as America’s state governments slash their arts funding to the bone or beyond, Canada is moving in the opposite direction. “Government spending for the arts and culture has continued to rise, with Ottawa coughing up more than $3-billion for the first time during the fiscal year 2001 to 2002… all three levels of government contributed that year to the fastest rate of increase in cultural spending in a decade, with Ottawa, the provinces and cities together providing $6.8-billion in 2001-2002.”

Florida, California and Michigan are among the states that drastically cut public arts funding in the past year. But it could have been worse nationally. “Many other state arts agencies were expected to suffer comparable reductions this year, but did not. Sixteen states kept their cuts to less than 10 percent, and in 18 other states the arts budget actually increased or stayed the same.”

It’s getting impractical to book Foreign artists to perform in the United States. “According to many involved, the new security checks are downright Orwellian – delays last up to six months, applicants must appeal to a congressman to get an update during the process and there are no avenues of appeal. Moreover, administrators are overwhelmed by some 70,000 to 200,000 applications per year, with most of the backlog occurring at the FBI. The sweeping reorganisation of government branches under the Department of Homeland Security has also meant bureaucratic growing pains.”

As arts groups across North America struggle to find the funds to stay afloat, Kate Taylor notes that there is a basic fundraising problem which is largely to blame: “It is easier to get people to donate millions to build museums, concert halls and theatres than the thousands needed to keep programming in their galleries and on their stages… There is, however, some more cheerful middle ground worth examining, in the form of arts stabilization funds, schemes that can attract donors to activity rather than buildings by giving arts groups a different kind of capital.”

San Francisco has a new mayor, and the city’s cultural community is optimistic. “As Gavin Newsom takes center stage in City Hall with his swearing in Thursday, San Francisco’s panoramic arts world awaits the new perspectives and conceptual shifts that may come with a new mayoral administration. Fingers are crossed – with some eyes skeptically rolling at the idea – that a kind of arts renaissance could be in the works for San Francisco in 2004 and beyond.”

The stock market might be up and the economy shaking off the doldrums, but America’s non-profits won’t be seeing much relief any time soon. “The non-profit sector tends to lag the rest of the economy; it is slower to show the distress of a recession or the benefits of a recovery. Analysts say the sector could continue to be weighed down for years, largely by fiscal woes of state governments, including Illinois’, and the multiyear budgeting used by many foundations.”