Category: issues

Teachers at Australia’s universities have gone on strike. “Classes were cancelled and libraries closed as staff picketed outside universities to protest against government moves to link higher education funding to industrial conditions.”

“The Oakland City Council is considering spending $13 million to renovate the long-shuttered Fox Theater downtown, with $5.5 million of the public money helping fund a new home for Mayor Jerry Brown’s arts charter school.”

“A Row between Scottish Ballet and Scotland’s visual arts community showed signs of being defused yesterday, following what was called a ‘positive’ meeting of the two parties. The meeting was the first sign that Scottish Ballet may be willing to compromise on its plan to take over Glasgow’s Tramway arts venue.”

Orange County arts groups introduce an arts card. “The OC Arts Card, sponsored by Arts Orange County, will provide 10-40 percent discounts at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, South Coast Repertory and about 40 other local arts institutions. Discounts will range from savings on admission and tickets to reductions on classes and gift-shop items. Proceeds will support arts education in the county and help fund arts grants.”

A donor who gave Princeton’s business school $525 million to help train talent for the US government, is demanding the money back. “Princeton has known for decades that the goal of our foundation is to send students into federal government, and they’ve ignored us. Princeton has abused the largest charitable gift in the history of American higher education, and that’s embarrassing. They will lose the money.”

“The indigenous content of the 2004 Adelaide Festival was a vexed question given the emphasis put on it last year by Los Angeles’ modern opera impresario Peter Sellars before his spectacular resignation over disagreements with the Adelaide Festival board. Seemingly to avoid the issue altogether, artistic director Stephen Page, an indigenous man and artistic director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre, has programmed a strongly European festival in the conventional arts mode.”

Two Minnesota theatres are going out of business. That’s sad, writes Dominic Papatola, but not really. “I’m a believer in what one arts consultant calls the ‘limited life organization.’ Not every arts group that pops up should grow into a major institution. To be brutally honest, Minnesota’s historically generous philanthropic support for the arts has kept some groups on life support longer than would be considered merciful elsewhere. We live in a new age of artistic Darwinism: Some groups will expire as the energies of their founders fade. Some will not earn audience support. Some will not have the hustle it takes to find funding and endure.”

Leaders of Hartford’s arts institutions get together to talk about the challenges their organizations face. “I think I see a widening complacency on the part of a big chunk of our audience. Not the best of our audience, which remains smart, risk-taking and just as ambitious in their own way as we try to be as the leaders of arts agencies. But I see a creeping complacency. Maybe it’s a taking for granted of the uniqueness of so many wonderful institutions in this town. Increasingly I fear that our audiences don’t know how good they have it, living in a place like this. I don’t think [the public] gets it the way they used to in the 1930s [up until the] early ’80s. That’s what I’m worried about because that will affect all of us.”

The MacArthur awards have been announced for this year. But Seattle alternative weekly The Stranger decided to give out its own “genius” awards. While winners get a much smaller prize ($5,000 rather than the MacArthur’s $500,000), there’s a lot of honor that goes along with them. Organizers say they’re “steering a middle course between the MacArthur Awards and Publishers Clearinghouse. All the hugging and kissing between critics and award winners brought a disclaimer of sorts from editor Dan Savage. “None of our critics has slept with any of the award winners. Not yet. Maybe it’s time they paid up.”

Michigan’s governor says she wants to make her state so cool that people will be drawn to it. “The governor said she mailed letters to 200 Michigan mayors encouraging them to organize ‘cool commissions’ to make their cities attractive enough to keep young adults in the state. ‘More than 33,000 young adults ages 25-34 left Metro Detroit between 2000 and 2002, according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report. It was the biggest loss of that age group in the country, an exodus that could put the area’s long-term economic outlook at risk’.”