Category: issues

“Private contributions to US charities declined last year for the first time in 12 years, according to an annual survey of the 400 largest charities in the country. The report, compiled by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, indicated that donations in 2002 fell 1.2% (adjusted for inflation) compared with an average gain of 12% during the previous five years. The total dipped to $46.9 billion from $47.5 billion the previous year.” And how’d the arts do? Down 26 percent, says the report, but the drop is exagerated because of big one-time gioftes recorded the year before.

Canada has a new prime minister, and Paul Martin’s choice to head the nation’s Ministry of Canadian Heritage is already causing arts groups to wonder about the intentions of the new government. “A first-time cabinet minister, Hélène Scherrer is largely unknown among Canadian arts groups… The heritage minister is responsible for a broad range of issues and agencies, including arts and culture, citizenship, multiculturalism and sport.” Scherrer’s background is almost entirely in sports, and her spokesman has already said that the ministry will no longer be the “bank” for the arts that it was under former minister Sheila Copps.

A recent summit meeting of Minnesota nonprofit companies was a fairly dismal affair, with executives from the state’s biggest arts groups bemoaning the downturn in public and private financing. But at least one corner of the nonprofit sector is raking in the dough – in Minnesota, HMOs and other health care companies are non-profits, too. It makes for an interesting contrast, since the skyrocketing cost of health care is one of the factors causing so much suffering at the state’s larger arts groups.

Increasingly, it seems as if the current generation of teens and young adults is getting its moral guidance in the form of entertainment, rather than from religion. In fact, the line between Christian theology and secular moralism seems to be increasingly blurry, with blockbuster movie franchises like The Matrix and Lord of the Rings presenting morality plays not dissimilar from the ones you might find in the Bible. Some Christians see the pop culture moralists as a threat, of course, but increasingly, non-denominational Christian churches are embracing secular pop as a way to draw in the next generation of devout churchgoers.

A new initiative from the Rasmuson Foundation will create a 10-year, $20 million arts funding program in Alaska, with money from the foundation going to develop a cultural scene as unique as America’s northernmost state. “Over the years, arts groups in Alaska have struggled for money. At the apex, 1982, the Alaska State Council on the Arts received nearly $5 million in state money, handing out more than $4 million in grants… for 2004, it is about $460,000.” Alaskan arts groups have relied mostly on private donations to survive, but it can be hard to solicit donations to cover day-to-day operations. That’s where the Rasmuson program comes in.

Clive Hibbert is the president of Christians Against Ridicule. He writes that “over the last few decades there has been a shift in the way that Christianity is portrayed in the media that needs to be challenged. Rarely a day goes by today without underhand and insidious mockery of the Christian faith. It’s nothing specific or too damaging in its own right, but the cumulative effect is more harmful than any one-off headline grabber. It is as if Christians have become the convenient and silent whipping boy for the sound-bite generation.”

Historically, Washington DC government has not funded the arts in much of a significant way. But DC recently approved $20 million towards a new downtown home for the Shakespeare Theatre. The city’s mayor wants to dramatically increase cultural funding – “despite the city’s general fiscal troubles – by pitching theaters and galleries as economic development projects and arguing that they should be funded through sources that do not directly compete with routine city services.”

“If art had often tried to protest prejudice, encourage compassion and console the grieving, it had never tried to provide safe-sex information, lower drug prices and stimulate the development of antiretroviral therapies. I remember thinking, early on, that this was not only unseemly in some way but also too much of an agenda for poor little art to shoulder.”

The new Zagat guide rating culture has some flaws when it comes to classical music, says a letter writer to the New York Times. “Classical recordings, unlike those in other categories, are usually identified by at least three criteria: composer’s name, title of the work and performer’s name. In the Zagat guide, classical albums are typically listed alphabetically by composer name, perhaps followed by title, with little or no indication of performers. But a recording of a Tchaikovsky piano concerto with Van Cliburn as soloist is listed under “V.” I suspect that this is a little joke. Or perhaps not.”

“While bombs rip through buildings, rival factions assassinate each other’s leaders, and increasingly brutal occupation and resistance forces duke it out, Iraqi artists are playing it safe. This is in contrast to the art scene under sanctions, when poignant tableaux spoke of the suffering of a populace under siege, playwrights pushed the political envelope with veiled criticisms of the ancient regime’s corruption, and composers wrote angry orchestral anthems with damning titles like “To the U.N.” (which was, after all, the embargo enforcer).”