Category: issues

” The Orange County Regisert’s new arts columnist writes that art is everywhere: “Whether we realize it or not, art is all around us. From the purple, inflated gorilla grinning atop a Dodge dealership along the Garden Grove (22) Freeway to murals in downtown Santa Ana, Huntington Beach and Laguna to the big, red ‘A’ that lights up after an Angels win, aesthetic images surround us. The trick is taking the time to see. We may think of some of these as eyesores more than art, and we may bemoan the lack of ‘real’ culture here in Southern California, Orange County in particular. But the truth is, the rest of the country – and the world – looks in our direction when they talk about the cutting edge of artistic and visual production.”

How did an outspoken advocate of publicly funded art wind up as part of an administration which is, at best, indifferent to art, and at worst, opposed to anything remotely controversial? No one seems quite sure of the answer, but Dana Gioia is clearly not intimidated by the president who appointed him to the top job at the National Endowment for the Arts. Frank Rich thinks that the key to Gioia’s success may be his refusal to get involved in “the ugly culture wars that the likes of Lynne Cheney and William Bennett embraced during the Gingrich revolution. Many of those battles were in one way or another about N.E.A. grants to artistic projects with sexual content, especially homosexual content. Mr. Gioia will have none of it.”

Florida takes a slice-o-matic to its state arts budget. “The Florida Legislature approved a budget that slices annual cash for the state’s arts facilities from $29 million to $8.7 million.”

“In the past few years, fueled by a real-estate boom and the $300 million budget of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ), a community-development organization, the arts as well as the neighborhood have been revived in Harlem. ‘Harlem is the new Greenwich Village. People are rediscovering it. It is what I remember the Village being in the ’70s – a little edgy with an element of danger, but exciting, full of life and soul’.”

The culture wars are raging on college campuses. “The left has been attempting to brainwash students for years, and it’s only now, it seems, that the intolerant tide is flowing both ways. Students are facing off, left and right, along the ideological divide, declaring hard and fast the prejudices of their respective political extremes. This, it appears, is how so many of them are leaving school: not eager idealists, fertilized with learning and rife with critical thinking, but blinkered ideologues and hardened partisans, indoctrinated in conflict, deaf to inquiry, groomed and ripe for politicking.”

The Kennedy Center’s Michael Kaiser says that in hard times arts organizations need to do more, not less. “When an organization has a little bit of a problem, it is the first reaction of the board and staff that tends to make the problem worse. Their natural reaction is to pull in and say, ‘We have to do less.’ Organizations get into a vicious cycle. They cut back a little bit on art and marketing. They get a little bit less revenue the next year, and they cut back a little more. And they have less. They have less, they have less, they have less.”

Washington is in the midst of a building orgy, as $2.4 billion worth of new museums, theatres and other arts projects go up. “The grandest plans are taking shape at the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum complex, which is adding two new museums — the National Museum of the American Indian, on the National Mall, and an immense hangar-style addition to its popular National Air and Space Museum adjacent to Dulles International Airport in nearby Virginia.”

“With the stock market, the economy, and corporate earnings all lagging, charitable giving is in a huge slump. Total U.S. giving by individuals, companies, and foundations is likely to fall this year by about 22%, or about $47 billion, to $165 billion, estimates Charity Navigator, a New Jersey-based organization that tracks and rates charities according to their financial efficiency. Museums and other nonprofit arts organizations are being slammed the hardest: Gifts to such organizations are expected to fall by one-third, to $8 billion this year, down from $12 billion in 2002. The reason arts organizations are being clobbered so hard is pretty obvious. When faced with having to pare their giving, most people and companies reduce arts donations before they cut back on support for organizations such as the Salvation Army.”

Archaeologists have found the bodies of six people near Stonehenge, close to where another body was found last year. “The remains of four adults and two children were found about half a mile from that of the archer, dubbed The King of Stonehenge by Britain?s tabloid press. Archaeologists said he came from Switzerland and may have been involved in building the monument.

A new study by the Montana Arts Council reports that the arts generate $85 million a year in economic activity in the state and are responsible for almost 2000 jobs.