Category: issues

In Singapore arts events have to be licensed by the government’s Censorship Review Committee on an event-by-event basis. Arts groups proposed doing away with licensing altogether. But the CRC has rejected the pleas, instead suggesting “that theatre groups apply for licences every two years instead of before every event.”

A long-planned arts center in Vancouver is in danger after the British Columbia provincial government said it might want to use the land set aside for the center to expand the city’s convention center.

The ‘Burning Man’ Festival, held each year in the desert north of Reno, Nevada, is a celebration of free spirits as much as it is an art festival, but this year, spirit was trumped by tragedy as a woman attempting to ride a giant “art car” was crushed beneath it. Burning Man’s founder insists that the accident will not cast a pall over future editions of the fest: “Some see photos of people attired in giant rat costumes doing wildly unconventional expressive things and assume this means we’re in some way irresponsible. Nothing could be further from the truth. This isn’t an irresponsible party; it’s a model city. If there are lessons to be learned from this that will improve public safety, we will implement them.”

“The case of an Oklahoma teen who was charged with a felony for writing a violent short story about attacking his school has been dismissed by a judge who ruled that prosecutors failed to prove the teen actually intended to commit the act… Now, after tens of thousands of dollars spent fighting the charge, Brian Robertson is free, but the accusation that he broke the law will stay with him. Under Oklahoma law, if a case carries on for more than a year, a felony charge remains on the defendant’s record, even if the case is dismissed. The felony gets expunged from the record only if the defendant is acquitted following a trial.”

If London wins an Olympic bid it will transform the city. “If the Olympics were to come to east London it would never be the same again. At the moment, it is a very difficult area to grasp and get any sense of. The scale of the land holdings and their industrial use mean it is difficult to penetrate. The Olympics could bring great structures, miles of waterways and new open spaces to the east. Seen from new railways and fast roads, they will give an amazing new image to east London. This kind of scale of development is what it needs to define its own topography.”

Later this year, Ticketmaster plans to start auctioning off tickets to the highest bidders. “With no official price ceiling on such tickets, Ticketmaster will be able to compete with brokers and scalpers for the highest price a market will bear. ‘The tickets are worth what they’re worth. If somebody wants to charge $50 for a ticket, but it’s actually worth $1,000 on eBay, the ticket’s worth $1,000. I think more and more, our clients — the promoters, the clients in the buildings and the bands themselves — are saying to themselves, `Maybe that money should be coming to me instead of Bob the Broker’.”

A new palace of culture is to be built at the site of the World Trade Center. We don’t yet know which culture will be represented there, and jockeying for position is already intense. But “this much is certain: institutions that take the dare and locate themselves at that haunted, contested place will find that a lot more is asked of them than the usual dose of edification and diversion.”

How are America’s arts groups dealing with a down economy? They’re cutting back. “Among those groups trimming programming, the Brooklyn Museum of Art closed its doors for two weeks in August and canceled some exhibits, the Boston Ballet cut twenty performances to save $1.6 million, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra replaced a planned three-act opera with a one-act. Some groups have had to put aside artistic integrity to survive financially.”

Conservation-minded entrepreneurs across America are taking old theatres on the main streets of America and “turning historical movie houses into “cultural destinations.”