Category: issues

Media giant Bertelsmann is locked in a power struggle among owners and management. “The new generation took Bertelsmann into television and the internet and promised that before long the privately owned and secretive organisation would be transformed into a transparent, publicly traded multinational with stock market listings in the US and Europe by 2005. Yet the modernisation process has been an uneasy one, compounded by the deepest advertising recession in 30 years and a number of questionable acquisitions.”

California is facing big budget cuts, and San Francisco alongside it. So state and city governments are making cuts wherever they can. And what’s likely to get cut? In the schools – arts education. Why? because it’s easier than cutting general teachers. “The cuts will come with apologies and heart-wrenching statements from City officials, SFUSD leaders, and school site decision makers. They will give the arts their verbal support and let us all know how much they love the arts and how important arts are to the education of our youth, but then will say, ‘What choice do we have’?”

A student newspaper at Boston College is being accused of censorship by a theater group at the school, after the paper refused to publish an ad for an upcoming production, because the ad featured a swastika. The play being advertised “is about a fictional university professor who is drawn into the Nazi movement.” The paper suggested to the theater that the ad be edited, with text replacing the swastika, and that version will run in the next edition, but there is still much debate over whether the paper should have run the ad without changes. The paper’s editors point out that they are under no obligation to run every ad submitted, referencing the fact that “the paper doesn’t run ads for abortion clinics, out of respect for BC’s Catholic affiliation.”

A boycott of Israeli universities and their academic by-products is underway across Europe, organized by European and American academics who revile the Sharon government’s hardline policies in the occupied territories. One of the main targets of the boycott is Neve Gordon, who fires back that “Israeli universities continue to be an island of freedom surrounded by a stifling and threatening environment. In the past two years the Israeli media, which was once known for its critical edge, has been suppressing critical voices… To fight the anti-intellectual atmosphere within Israel, local academics need as much support as they can get from their colleagues abroad.”

“The 2002 Slate 60, the annual list of charitable gifts and pledges from the country’s top philanthropists, totaled $4.6 billion, less than half of 2001’s total of $12.7 billion.” The good news is that two of the biggest gifts last year in America were art-related. Walter Annenberg’s bequest of $1 billion worth of art to the Metropolitan Museum led. And “Ruth Lilly, heiress to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune, came in at No. 2 with a $520 million pledge to various arts organizations, including a $100 million gift to Poetry magazine.”

Cities are governed not only by mayors and councils, but by community groups and boards large and small, each determined to preserve their own little piece of political turf. This can make speedy decision-making quite a headache, which the artist Christo is finding out as he attempts to secure permission to mount a major installation in New York’s Central Park. While most of the legal hurdles facing the project have been cleared, there is mounting opposition in upper-class neighborhoods adjoining the park. The objection doesn’t seem to be to the art itself, but to the way in which the proposal was presented. In other words, no one asked the Upper East Side if it was okay.

The movement pushing on governments and museums to return art and artifacts looted by the Third Reich to their original owners has picked up steam in recent years, and a number of high-profile repatriations have occurred. But to Anne Webber, who runs the Commission for Looted Art, the recent successes are merely the tip of the iceberg. Her organization is currently working on over 100 cases of appropriated art, with plenty more waiting in the wings. Asked why it has taken so long for this cause to be taken up, Webber replies that the families have been trying to regain their possessions for decades, but “for a long time there was no one to help them.”

Should anyone be surpriseed that popular culture holds such a firm grip on teenagers? It’s all around. Unavoidable. A ten-year-old program in San Francisco offers kids an alternative – an art alternative. Art and Film for Teenagers “offers Bay Area teens Friday night art movie screenings; Saturday outings to galleries, museums and commercial films; group trips to the symphony, opera and ballet (often three or more times a week); dinner parties and picnics, and an opportunity for mingling with peers passionate about the arts – an antidote to adolescent isolation.”

The “combination of financial foundering and artistic success sums up the challenge of running an arts organisation. Which do you put first: the art or the accounts? Given that it is tough to find curators, opera administrators or artistic directors who are as good at managing as they are at having creative ideas, who do you put in charge: a bean counter who can balance the books, or the visionary with no head for figures?” The answer, every time, has got to be…

An arts group in Whitesburg, Kentucky has been turned down for a $300,000 grant to create an exhibition hall for film documentaries and old radio programs because county officials objected to a remark they said one of the group’s members made on his radio program. County officials called the remark – that “America has killed more innocent people than any other country in the world” “unpatriotic,” but the disk jockey says he doesn’t remember saying it.