Category: issues

What popular culture to Afghans want, now that the Taliban is gone? “Most of the pop culture bubbling up in Afghanistan in the post-Taliban era is centered on neighbor India. Postcards of Indian stars and their bare bellies decorate everything from taxis to books. Hindi music blares from Internet cafes and car stereos. Bollywood action films are the hottest movies playing. The American exceptions are odd: Michael Jackson; any Hollywood action film, particularly those that went straight to the Third World before they officially hit the video market; and, of course, ‘Titanic’.”

“Statistics show that women have made great strides in leadership in the arts. In New England, women run 58 percent of museums today – compared to 25 percent in 1978. The number of women directing art museums nationwide has increased from about one in seven in 1989 to about one in three today, according to the American Association of Museum Directors. But some caution that the gains may not be as significant as they appear.”

Baghdad in the 9th Century was in a Golden Age, a time when “its civilization shone more brightly than any other, when its philosophers, mathematicians and doctors led the way intellectually.” But it was a time made possible by opening up to the outside world. Baghdad was “the Tokyo of its day. Many of the ideas it snapped up were foreign. Yet the Arabs adapted them brilliantly. The hospital was a Persian idea from as early as the sixth century, under the name ‘bimaristan.’ But in Baghdad the institution became much more sophisticated, with special wards for internal diseases, contagious cases and psychiatric patients.”

The Pew Charitable Trusts are major investors in the arts. But the decline in the stock market has sharply reduced the grants that Pew will give this year. “At the end of 2002, Pew’s endowment was valued at $3.75 billion, down 23 percent from its year-end peak of $4.89 billion in 1999.”

Bay Area arts groups of all sizes are having difficulty in the current economic slowdown. But mid-size groups are especially hard hit in times like these.

Just when did we become so distrustful of people who know things? “Unfortunately, this skepticism has metamorphosed over the decades into a determination that no one with special knowledge or experience is worth listening to. If Rembrandt were alive today, he’d be reviled by art students who don’t know how to prepare a canvas. Beethoven would be booed by experimental composers who couldn’t identify the key of C major on a bet, while Duke Ellington would be denigrated by rappers who couldn’t pick out a simple melody, much less aspire to the harmonic empyrean.”

A bad economy is hurting Bay Area arts groups and artists. “The big four – the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet and American Conservatory Theater – are straining to cope with dwindling donations, volatile endowment funds, cuts in government grants and smaller, choosier audiences. ‘The arts have become a victim of the sour economy. Everybody’s ox is being gored. No one is exempt from the red ink’.”

All five streams of financial support are down for Bay Area arts groups – corporate, government and individual donations, ticket sales and endowment income.

Milwaukee’s public school district is having a budget crisis. So how does it propose solving it? In part, by decimating its arts programs. “Although the district’s financial officers will not submit a proposed budget to the School Board until May 1, a preliminary analysis shows that the district will likely lose 21 art instruction positions and 13 music positions. The cuts would reduce the district’s costs by more than $2.4 million. It seems pretty obvious to us right now that the arts are where there are going to be some big cuts.”

The Colorado legislature, which had been debating whether to cut state arts funding, voted to restore some of it, but there’s a but (or is that “butt?”). Funding for the interlibrary loan program and the arts council would be contingent on the state receiving its tobacco payments.”