Category: issues

The union representing performers at America’s opera and ballet companies says it is ready to help managements address ongoing budget problems within their organizations, but says that pay cuts should not be on the table. According to union officials, too many companies think that their fiscal woes can be solved simply by slashing payroll, and do not have an adequate long-range plan for financial success.

“Not long ago, consumers of ‘smut,’ as it was derisively called, were considered to be, well, amoral sleazebags. The word ‘porno’ elicited seedy images of ‘peep shows’ and dilapidated video stores in beastly parts of town, where chain-smoking, raincoat-wearing deviants congregated behind papered-up windows amid the stench of vicarious stimulation. Today, right or wrong, ‘adult entertainment’ has lost most of this depraved veneer. Somehow the explicit has shed the illicit; the marginal has assumed the centre. The fornicating freaks are welcome on Main St. Call it ‘carnal chic.’ Or ‘gutter glam.’ Or, maybe, ‘pop porn’.”

In an effort to find new strategies for local arts funding, San Jose’s mayor recently proposed that the area’s arts groups opt to switch the source of their funding from a hotel-occupancy tax to the city’s general fund. But the deal didn’t look too good from the artists’ perspective, and the mayor’s proposal will likely be officially rejected this week. “Three coalitions of arts organizations and the San Jose Arts Commission unanimously agreed that such a change in funding would put their institutions in competition with critical city services for the same funds.”

Arts leaders in California are in shock this week after the state legislature slashed arts funding from $18 million to $1 million “leaving state arts spending at less than 3 cents per person and ranking California dead last in per capita arts spending among the 50 states.”

Are the so-called “flash-mobs” springing up in cities around America a serious movement or a quick-to-pass fad? “Whether one views them as part of a serious social movement or a form of quirky entertainment (or both), flash mobs are perfectly appropriate for this town. Historically, San Francisco has been rife with pranking and performance art organizations. Loosely organized groups of merrymakers – including the Amateur Press Association, the Church of the SubGenius, Survival Research Laboratories, Billboard Liberation Front, the edgier Suicide Club, Santarchy, and the still-kickin’ Cacophony Society – have been tugging San Francisco’s pigtails since the turn of the 20th century.”

“A study of thousands of former students of Glasgow University found that arts and law students were most likely to die early. Arts students were most likely to die from lung cancer or other forms of respiratory disease.”

Evansville Indiana has a beautiful old 1931 Art Deco central library which is due to be vacated after the library moves into a new home next year. So what to do with the vacant building? One plan is for a new mixed used community cultural center…

California slashes its arts funding from $18 million to a token $1 million, effectively shutting down the agency. “The new budget translates to less than 3 cents per person statewide. California will now rank dead last in per capita state spending for the arts. The national average is $1.10 per person.”

Travel to the United States this summer is sharply down. “Both tighter restrictions on getting into this country – and a strong disillusionment with the US abroad – are causing tens of thousands of people worldwide to forgo trips to America. Critics say the decline is evidence of a visa-screening process too restrictive, creating a ‘fortress America.’ But supporters see that process as essential to protecting the nation in a post-9/11 world.”