Category: issues

In 15 years, a Denver tax initiative that set aside .01 percent of sales collections for cultural groups has pumped more than $300 million into arts and culture…

“In a postliterate age the New Yorker Festival stands as the maypole of a dedicated and ferocious demographic, fanatics who view the author Zadie Smith as far more dynamic and adorable than J.Lo…”

Two of Canada’s largest banks have announced plans to make major contributions to a number of Ontario arts organizations. The Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum will each get CAN$2.25 million from the bankers, and the National Ballet School of Canada will get CAN$1.5 million.

America’s non-profit corporations, including many arts groups, are being forced to make painful cuts in the face of declining public funding, stagnated individual giving, and tumbling foundation spending, and the situation may not improve for quite a while, even if the economy continues its current rebound. Government funding is the second-largest source of revenue for non-profits, and at the moment, with states strapped for cash and the federal government charting a course which does not include much state aid, the public subsidy situation is dire.

“The Senate approved a resolution Tuesday to repeal media ownership rules critics say could lead to a wave of mergers and ultimately stifle diversity and local viewpoints in news and entertainment. Defying a White House veto threat, the Senate voted 55-40 to undo changes to Federal Communications Commission regulations governing ownership of newspapers and television and radio stations. Those rules already have been placed on hold by a federal appeals court.”

North Adams, like many towns and cities in America, has tried to revive itself by developing an arts industry. And there are signs that opening the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art has proved to be a big boost. MASS MoCA is drawing about 120,000 visitors a year, putting it in the top tier of modern art museums outside New York. There’s a little frontier spirit here; there are opportunities for people, like the early days of SoHo. You don’t want it too perfect. Artists are small business operators; each new mill building that’s renovated for artists brings about $1 million into the local economy. If a few more buildings are done it will make this a very interesting town.”

More than 70 cultural groups have proposed setting up homes in the World Trade Center project. “The development corporation has not set a date by which a decision would be made. Site plans include a museum, a performing arts center and smaller cultural spaces. The proposals will be evaluated by the corporation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.”

Iraq’s artists are feeling energized. “In the theaters, at least, young actors have embraced a measure of new freedom. The dozens of young actors and directors at the National Theater scrambling to ready plays for a festival next month have seized with enthusiasm an artistic freedom unknown for 25 years in Iraq. Their palpable energy is echoed elsewhere in the fine arts, where a cadre of younger Iraqi painters and sculptors have emerged from the shadows of a generation of state-funded artists who lived comfortably under the old regime – so long as they hewed to a narrow and apolitical path. For the artists discovering a new space in post-Hussein Iraq, liberation from a totalitarian government has wrought a cultural revolution.”

“Over the last two years, many commentators have accepted the premise that Al Qaeda attacked the United States because it believed the country was weak. Where they disagree is over the accuracy of the terrorists’ presumed perception. Was the United States, as the president implied, merely a sleeping giant which, once roused, would demonstrate a fearsome power? Or was the United States in fact tired, decadent, adrift – its military might only a hollow shell, inside of which its vaunted economy, culture, and political system were rotting? Even during the booming `90s, doubts about America’s future were widespread.”

Cultural groups are vying to relocate to downtown New York at the site of the World Trade Center. “Why are established uptown entities like New York City Opera and the 92nd Street Y now willing to consider a downtown location? Why are prominent theater people urging that a national theater be built there? The answer can be found in part in Bilbao and Barcelona, Spain, and Manchester, England, as well as in Los Angeles and Detroit. By giving new urgency to notions of transformation, the destruction that took place on Sept. 11, 2001, has brought home to downtown Manhattan the phenomenon of urban renewal through culture.”