Category: issues

No one teaches marketing in art school. Most students studying line drawing don’t get much of an education in fiscal self-management, either. A new web site aims to give artists a head start on making their profession pay, and it all begins with a realistic lesson in Selling Yourself.

Is Lincoln Center too devoted to high culture? Deborah Solomon thinks so, and argues that, in the wake of the New York Philharmonic’s planned departure a few years down the road, Lincoln Center would do well to start embracing a bit of moneymaking pop culture. “What is art? Philosophers have debated the question for centuries, but at Lincoln Center the answer is clear. Art is anything that loses money… The greatest threat to the institution comes not from within, but from without, as it struggles to sustain a 20th-century, Rockefeller-style conception of high culture in the populist, mass-everything 21st century.”

Detroit has had its share of bad times. But a new flurry of arts-related development in the city’s dismal Woodward Corridor has even cynical observers speculating that we could be seeing the rebirth of one of America’s most notorious urban failures. “Expansion of [multiple local arts] organizations will increase the already huge economic impact of the arts, which in 2002 pumped $700 million and 11,755 jobs into the Detroit economy. And that doesn’t count the spinoff from those facilities,” which looks like it will be considerable.

It’s time again for the MacArthur Foundation to begin handing out its so-called “genius grants” – $500,000 gifts with no strings attached, awarded to the “most promising creative thinkers” in America – and this year, the city of Boston is home to no fewer than six of the recipients. “It is not surprising that Boston, with its top-tier universities and hospitals, would attract geniuses. But the Boston winners also represent something else: the triumph of synergy as people cross the traditional boundaries that divide one field from another.” The Boston winners include composer Osvaldo Golijov, female circumcision activist Dr. Nawal Nour, and Xiaowei Zhuang, a Harvard physics professor.

Last week, Fort Worth’s mayor Mike Moncrief suggested axing his city’s public art program. But in the face of opposition from his city council, he’s backed off the idea. “This was an appropriate discussion to have. But we need to move forward and close the debate on public art funding.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger has brought the big Hollywood machine approach to dealing with the media to politics. Not that the movies and politics haven’t been keeping time together for some time. But this is a whole new level. “If Schwarzenegger wins, he will have done so by studiously and stealthily avoiding the traditional news media, supplanting newspaper interviews with softball entertainment TV appearances along the way.”

“While many companies jockey for the naming rights to large sports stadiums, General Motors Corp. during the past few years has set its sights on cultural institutions. And this fall, the company is partnering with the mother of them all. When the General Motors Hall of Transportation opens at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History on Nov. 22, it will be the largest one-time financial contribution the company has ever made to a cultural institution. It will also add fuel to the ongoing controversy of the Smithsonian’s acceptance of corporate gifts in exchange for naming rights.”

The board in charge of building a $304 million performing arts center in Kansas City has fired Russell Johnson as acoustician, and replaced him with Yasuhisa Toyota of the Japan-based Nagata Acoustics. Johnson is known as the world’s preeminent acoustical designer of large concert halls, and consulted on the new Disney Hall in Los Angeles, the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, and the renovation of Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall, among others. The board cited rising costs as a major reason for the change, and also expressed concern with Johnson’s tendency towards using “expensive sound chambers and movable panels” in his recent projects.

John Weeks applauds attempts to “bring art to the masses” by explaining it in simple terms. “We’re all familiar with those books like ‘Auto Repair for Dummies’ and ‘Computers for Dummies,’ and it seems like there is a growing movement to accommodate dummies of all kinds. Apparently, the trend has finally spread to the arts world. This is exciting. Art truly can extend its reach if it makes itself more accessible to America’s largest demographic group, namely idiots. Now, when I say ‘idiots,’ you know I don’t mean you and me. Well, yes I do, but I mean it in a loving, affectionate way.”