Category: issues

Scotland was supposed to be in the middle of a “Golden Age” for the arts now. And yes, theatres and concert halls are full. But underneath there’s a crisis. “Devolution was supposed to herald a golden age for the arts in Scotland, but there has been no cultural renaissance. Plans for a Scottish national theatre have stalled, numerous arts organisations are being forced to cut their creative output to make ends meet, and there are fears of a talent drain to England, where regional theatre is benefiting from £25m worth of government funding.”

“Scotland’s new government missed its historic chance to boost the arts; and now its error has been compounded by spectacular increases in arts spending in England – an 81 per cent cash increase since 1997, compared with 32 per cent in Scotland, further enhanced by the spending associated with the major push by Newcastle, Liverpool and other northern cities to be named European City of Culture 2008 – which in turn has led to fears of a new cultural exodus from Scotland to the south.”

The first 50 recordings to be named to a new American National Registry of Sound have been chosen. “The registry, which began life yesterday with 50 inaugural inductions, is meant to call attention to the problems of preserving this country’s recorded legacy. The recordings chosen include significant troves of folk music, famous speeches, ethnographic recordings and a few representative classical, jazz and pop selections that are already widely familiar to audiences. The recordings were required to be more than 10 years old and be culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Its endowment shrinking, the Packard Foundation is following other foundations and “is announcing today a more narrowly focused mission and a 2003 grants budget of $200 million. The organization gave out $616 million in grants in 2000 and $250 million last year. ‘There has been significant investment in time and energy to talk with grantees about how to move forward in what is a difficult funding environment for everyone’.”

Where is Scotland’s vision for the arts that is creative? As far as the government goes, “the dead hand of Treasury control has fallen on the arts, subjecting it to the same criteria that it applies to every other branch of public spending. A presumption has grown up that culture can answer to ‘targets’ and ‘benchmarks’ in the same way as hospitals and schools, that unless creativity can be measured against ‘outcomes’ and ‘deliveries’ then it does not deserve to be funded.”

Philadelphia’s venerable Academy of Music is reopening after the Philadelphia Orchestra moved out and a major renovation was completed. The hall looks great. And some theatre producers are enthusiastic about getting into the building. But with the touring show business down, is there enough business to justify the Academy’s operation?

Juilliard is the top arts school in America. A new documentary looks at the school as it turns 100. “What is perhaps most interesting about the documentary is the unflinching way it confronts the darker side of this famous place. Not that it isn’t ultimately celebratory, and rightly so. One comes away almost awed by the devotion and intensity with which the teachers, and the self-motivated students themselves, go about the business of making the best better, a process that goes on every day in the fortress-like building on the corner of Broadway and 65th Street. One has to wonder if an atmosphere like this, despite all the superb teachers and students and alumni, doesn’t breed a kind of hard-edged competitiveness that fails to serve all music or dance or theater equally well.”

While many foundations are cutting back arts grants, the Warhol Foundation has increased the amount it is giving away this year by 20 percent. “It isn’t that the foundation is such a smart investor, although putting lots of money into bonds has helped. And it isn’t just that the foundation continues to profit from sales of Warhol’s work. “We wanted to send a message. Even in bad times, a lot of people have a lot of money. Sometimes they can do more, spending some of that money in bad times than in more plentiful times.”

How do you get people to think creatively about science? The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation believes the arts can help. “Sloan’s Public Understanding of Science and Technology program spends $8 million to $10 million a year funding a slew of projects in film, theater, public television, books, radio, and new media. “We need people going back and forth between the [science and lay worlds]. And I thought the best way is through media such as film, TV, and theater. It’s very powerful.”

It’s a myth that copyrights are owned by creative artists. Big companies own them. Take “the ubiquitous ‘Happy Birthday,’ whose tune was composed by Mildred Hill, a kindergarten teacher in Louisville, in 1893, was copyrighted in 1934 by her sister Jessica Hill, after the ditty with new lyrics attached appeared in the Broadway musical The Bank Wagon and had been used by Western Union for its singing telegram. Rights to the song changed hands several times and today they are owned by Summy-Birchard Music, which in turn is owned by AOL Time Warner, for which it earns $2 million a year in royalties for public usage. (Don’t worry about singing it around your dining table; AOL Time Warner has not figured out how to collect on that yet.)”