Category: issues

In Australia “about 6 per cent of all business sponsorship money goes to the arts, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That added up to $29.2 million in 1996-97, the last time such figures were collected.” And where does the arts money go? Mostly to established traditional arts ventures. “Other parts of the arts miss out because their works are too confronting and edgy for sponsors, art figures say.”

“Can an individual with a talent for writing, drawing, photography or music use the internet, not to create millions, but to make enough to live comfortably and do what they want to do professionally? The answer may well turn out to be a hesitant yes. Six years on from the start of the popular web explosion, people are adjusting to paying for content on the internet.”

Groundbreaking on the massive rebuilding project at Ground Zero in New York may be delayed by a peripheral fight over money. There had already been reports that architect Daniel Libeskind and developer Larry Silverstein had been at odds over various details of the project. Now, Silverstein’s personal financial battles with the Port Authority and his mortgage company are putting the construction timetable in doubt. “Each of the three warring parties has significant say over how insurance proceeds from the twin towers are used. But Silverstein is insisting that the timetable for the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower will be delayed unless his lender – GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp. – is bought out, sources said.”

A new German television show, which allows viewers to vote on the “greatest Germans” of all time, has incurred the wrath of Austrians for including several Austrian-born individuals on the list. Chief among the disputed candidates is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was actually from Salzburg and spent the bulk of his career there and in Vienna. Other great Germans of dubious Germanic heritage include Joseph Haydn, Sigmund Freud, and Copernicus. The Germans say that there were bound to be compaints, because, as the show’s producers tactfully put it, “Germany’s borders had changed so often.”

“Advocates for the arts have long made a strong case that the local economy benefits from museums, theaters, orchestras, galleries, and similar institutions. Yet looking at the art establishment and its events misses much of the positive economic impact from the arts,” says a new study. “The larger business community benefits from the presence of a vibrant arts community, not only because it helps firms recruit skilled workers to the region but also because it provides a pool of talent for them to draw upon for special design, organizational, and marketing efforts.”

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York has been a popular summer destination for decades, hosting the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York City Ballet for several weeks each summer. “However, while the ballet and orchestra were at the core of SPAC’s creation in 1966 and have become a SPAC tradition, they are not money-makers. Each lose about $1 million a year.” At the same time, Clear Channel, the 800-lb gorilla of concert promotions, pays SPAC handsomely for the right to book summer shows at the venue. It’s a dangerous equation, and SPAC is now openly discussing the possibility of scaling back or dumping the ballet and the orchestra.

“Should festivals be educational? Directors of Edinburgh’s mighty assemblages of acts have often been drawn to communicate their own ideas and enthusiasms.” These passions have often resulted in artistic experiences not to be duplicated anywhere else (and sometimes the big fat floperoo).

America is going on a culture offensive in the “War on Terrorism.” Singer Toni Braxton is “in a new kind of army, standing at attention with Celine Dion, Eric Clapton, Ace of Base and the rapper Coolio, making up a Trojan-horse brigade drafted to seduce young Arab adults into admiring the United States. Their staging ground is Radio Sawa, a Washington-based Arabic-language radio network heard in most Middle Eastern countries. This is the funky side of America’s war on terror.”

A new study by Ann Markusen and David King argues that the arts are a core piece of a local economy. “Good schools, parks, recreation and housing are important, but also lively streets and ample opportunities for entertainment and artistic enrichment. It’s not surprising, then, that cities with high concentrations of artists – San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis-St. Paul – tend to be better economic performers than cities with lower concentrations – Dallas, Cleveland, Pittsburgh. Markusen is right to suggest that nurturing clusters of artists is a sound investment for governments, foundations and other donors.”

Arts organizations have often struggled to draw diverse audiences, and it can be even more difficult to achieve true diversity within the ranks of performers and managers. Ordinarily, this is one of those problems that everyone talks about from time to time without really doing anything to solve it. But in San Diego, where the city takes the diversity of an arts organization into account when divvying up available funds, the lack of ethnic and racial diversity on area arts boards is becoming a big financial problem, particularly for the city’s celebrated Old Globe Theatre.