Category: issues

From 1959 until two years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle painted its Sunday arts section pink. “The Pink” was a beloved Bay Area tradition that the Chron, in a wave of house-cleaning, did away with, much to the unhappiness of long-time readers. Now the paper has reinstated its distinctive salmon-colored section…

Construction of Miami’s new $260 million performing arts center is well over budget and way behind schedule. An audit of the project shows that contractors have not been careful about quality control. And the budgeters didn’t plan enough to pay for inspections. Indeed, the quality control program will “run out of the $900,000 earmarked for it about 13 months before the scheduled completion date.”

French artists, aggrieved over a strike last summer, are increasingly making public protests. “They’ve driven a popular reality show from the air for two hours, taken a news show hostage for a minute of free advertising, and on Wednesday stormed a televised Parliamentary session. The new tactic is Act II of an uprising that started this summer when part-time show business workers shut down music and theater festivals across France.”

Tuitions have been rising faster than the rate of inflation. So some in the US Congress want to limit increases somehow. But those increases haven’t been the result of higher-education spending sprees. “From New York to California it’s the same story. The proportion of public-college budgets supplied by the state has dropped precipitously. Someone has to pay for public colleges. Should state colleges take the heat when the legislatures purposely shift the burden from taxpayers onto students and their parents?”

Some high-profile disputes about how recipients of philanthropy have spent money given to them have been in the news recently. “Not surprisingly, such public disagreements are starting to erode confidence in the nonprofit sector. A recent survey commissioned by Charles Schwab & Company, showed just 10 percent of affluent Americans age 45 and older are now planning to leave all or part of their estates to charities, universities, and other nonprofits. More than five times that number – 56 percent – said they plan to leave nothing to such organizations. Of those, 21 percent said they don’t think the money would be well spent if given to charity.”

The city of Cleveland is trying to get voters to support the idea of putting public money into the arts. But even in a city which which desperately needs to reinvigorate its cultural scene, that sort of ballot measure is a tough sell, and the levy which arts supporters are seeking to bring before the public seems to be stuck in a complex set of negotiations over timing and budget priorities. Specific levies for individual projects are common in Ohio, and the arts levy may have to wait its turn behind levy requests for schools, parks, and a convention center.

A new report from Switzerland’s national arts council has concluded that there are not nearly enough women with prominent roles in the country’s cultural scene. “Women artists have not yet caught up completely. Numerically speaking, in fields such as literature where they are well represented, they account for one-third, while the proportion of women orchestra musicians is no more than about one-fifth.” However, the authors of the study say that the tide is already turning for female artists, and suggest that the problem will likely take care of itself in time.

“Over 100,000 protesters are expected at next week’s Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Miami. In anticipation, the city is considering an ordinance that would, according to Reuters, ban “glass bottles, slingshots, signs on wooden sticks and giant puppets.” Can Miami really ban giant puppets?”

Eight audience members who plunged twenty feet into an orchestra pit while participating in a sing-along performance of The Sound of Music are suing the theatre which produced the show. “Several ‘nuns’ and others dressed in lederhosen suffered a variety of serious injuries after being invited on to a temporary stage set up over the orchestra pit for the Sing-a-Long Sound Of Music show. It is understood that the victims intend to claim damages for the psychological trauma of being involved in the ‘horrific’ incident, as well as their physical injuries.”

In the mid-90s, Newark built a shiney new performing arts center in the middle of its blighted downtown with the hope of rejuvenating the area. Many cities have tried this. Terry Teachout reports after a visit this week that while the hall is a great place to attend performances, it seems to have done little to kick-start downtown. “Lincoln Center has its crippling flaws, God knows, but it did succeed in transforming New York’s Upper West Side almost beyond recognition. As of today, I’m still skeptical that NJPAC will do much more than make it possible for suburban New Jerseyites to see Miss Saigon without having to drive all the way into Manhattan. Somehow I doubt that’s what its founders had in mind.”