Category: issues

San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center is a different kind of arts center. “Inspired by the German Kunst- hallen, exhibition spaces that maintain no permanent collections, the center instead has focused on visual and performing arts that showcase emerging talent from across the town’s diverse cultural populations. Curators make a special effort to showcase Asian, Hispanic, and African-American artists.” Now Yerba Buena is ten years old.

“It has been called a godsend for the arts and a major disappointment, ‘the Lincoln Center of the West’ and ‘a conundrum in concrete.’ When it opened, in 1993, former San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto viewed the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as a pallid substitute for what might have been. Today, composer Paul Dresher dubs the South of Market complex ‘a great institution and invaluable resource.'” So which is it? Well, it seems to depend entirely on who you ask, and what their perpective is on the Bay Area’s exceedingly diverse arts scene.

Increasingly, cultural events in the US featuring Cuban artists(primarily in south Florida) are having to be canceled because the US is failing to issue visas. “We did everything on time, knowing all that is happening with the visa process – and nothing. Some big name writers have declined to participate in the Book Fair all together because they don’t want to endure the humiliation they are being put through in this process. This situation is creating tension, ill-will, and is hurting our cultural events.”

Cross-arts collaborations are all the rage in London. “Collaborations at their best can be energising creative moments produced by artists headed in unexpected new directions; about extraordinary melting pots of ideas. Or they can be a disaster, like the Steve McQueen and Jessye Norman encounter. They should also be undertaken with enormous care. Hitherto, there have been a few certainties about the capital’s artistic life: the Wigmore was the home of chamber music and song; the ENO was the home of opera in English; Sadler’s Wells was the home of modern dance. One might have found those certainties deadening or dull, but at least it was clear what those organisations were for. There’s a problem with mixing it all up: you can get all mixed up.”

In Canada, as in the U.S., battles over controversial images have often been waged with the definition of the term “artistic merit” at the center. Now, a bill is being debated in the Canadian Parliament which would remove the “artistic merit” defense from the federal law banning child pornography, in favor of a requirement that an artwork be proven to be a “public good.” Kate Taylor says the change would have a crippling effect on Canadian art and freedom. “The artistic-merit defence can at least be argued by bringing artistic peers, critics and academics into court, but how do you prove the public good of an individual art work — no matter how much you might believe in the public good of art in general?”

As Detroit continues a concerted effort to remake its image and turn its fortunes, the arts and culture have been playing a big role. But according to Karen Dumas, the city’s newly appointed Director of Cultural Affairs, what’s still missing is a sense of cohesion among Detroit’s arts groups. A marketing specialist, Dumas says that her goal will be to find ways to connect the area’s larger arts organizations, such as the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, with smaller, more flexible groups, in an effort to craft a cohesive arts strategy for a city on the mend.

The editor who killed a negative review of a book by one of her newspaper’s writers, defends the decision: “I didn’t kill the review because I disliked it (though I’ve been widely quoted saying that I did). And I didn’t kill it because I thought it was poorly done. A tamer version of the same review has since appeared in at least one newspaper, and I find no fault with that. I assumed the freelance writer would sell it elsewhere, and I wasn’t trying to protect Albom from a negative review. I decided not to publish it because that’s not how I want to treat any single employee, and because I think all our employees should be protected from, as one colleague put it, the ethical dilemma and no-win position of passing critical judgment on a colleague’s work.”

“For a long time, pop music acts have been selling T-shirts, videos, coffee mugs, beach towels and the like as a separate revenue stream. Now, increasingly, non-profit arts groups are getting into the act.” Want a piece of Disney Hall? It’s yours, for a price…

The arts are not generally on most people’s lists of hot political topics guaranteed to spark rousing debate between candidates. “But scratch the surface and you’ll find that, when elections roll around, Canada’s provincial politicians increasingly do have cultural policies. Partly that’s because many of them have started to buy economic arguments in favour of nurturing the arts; partly it’s because arts lobby groups have had some success in getting their issues seriously debated, even if they aren’t decisive on election day.”

You could make a fairly convincing argument that, even in times of economic downturn, there is always plenty of money in America that could be used to fund our perennially underfunded theaters, orchestras, and other arts groups. But for many arts groups, the central problem is finding a truly qualified professional who knows how to find that money and convince the people who have it to give it up. In fact the non-profit development director may be the most understaffed position in the American cultural scene at the moment. And that’s a dangerous thing, because, like it or not, money makes the arts world go round.