Category: issues

What does the 62 percent cut in Massachusetts’ state arts funding mean in real terms? “Almost no arts organization – from giants such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra to the smallest local arts groups – has avoided the knife. While no group has lost all its state funding, each has been given less money. These include programs that provide after-school art classes and low-price tickets for students. Some of the toughest cuts are being felt at the council itself. Eight of its 12 core programs have been cut and it has laid off 11 of its 41 full-time employees.”

An editorial in the British Medical Journal argues that “the government should divert 0.5 per cent of its £50 billion health care budget into the arts, equivalent to an additional £250 million for the sector. Where health professionals are trained, they should be surrounded by art. They should regard it as one of their duties in later life to see that hospitals, for the benefit of patients, their relatives, visitors and staff, contain art.”

London theatres are protesting the London arts councils’ decision to drastically cut arts funding and give the money to sports. “The ALG, which gives £27 million a year to a wide range of community groups and social service providers, said the changes were necessary if it was ‘to properly meet the needs of Londoners’.” Arts groups say the cuts will force some groups to close.

Jack Shafer thinks the proposed new $400 million plaza for the Kennedy Center looks like little more than…a New Jersey-style toll plaza. Why is it being built? “Isn’t the design a tad reminiscent of something out of Albert Speer? It shares the Kennedy Center’s coldness and its monumental bombast.”

New York’s Lincoln Center is planning a renovation/expansion. What should the new campus achieve? “The goal is still to expose the American citizen to art and music, but the emphasis has changed. Arts institutions no longer see themselves as beneficent agents of acculturation and middle-class homogenization. Instead, they are scrambling to adapt to a crowded entertainment market and recast themselves as democratic, youthful, relevant and diverse. As Lincoln Center rebuilds, its planners are searching for ways to open it up, make it more visible, transparent and permeable.”

Washington’s Kennedy Center has approved a $650 million plan for a “four-block plaza, to be built over existing roadways and flanked by the new glass-and-steel buildings, one housing rehearsal and office space and the other for an educational center and interactive exhibits on the performing arts. ‘It puts us in reality where we were supposed to be all along, as a monument in Washington’.”

Benjamin Forgey is wondering what exactly took the Kennedy Center so long to unveil the new plan to remake its architecturally embarrassing digs. But better late than never: “From opening day 31 years ago right up to the present, the big box on the Potomac has remained a huge urban faux pas — an outpost of culture separated from the city by a deep moat filled with speeding cars. The plan unveiled yesterday, conceived by architect Rafael Viñoly, does a lot to correct the mistakes.”

New York’s Parks Commissioner is trying to get evict artists from selling their work in the city’s parks. This at the same time he’s been proposing awarding a prime park space to a hamburger franchise. “He said artists and other vendors have overrun popular park sites and that his letter was in support of City Council legislation that would allow the department to restrict sales in the park.”

A man posing as an agent for visual artists has been arrested in Miami, after scamming several American and Canadian artists out of their work, having promised them cash and publicity that never materialized. Michael Harrison, who operated under a false name that hampered his pursuers for some time, told his ‘clients’ that his brother had been killed in the 9/11 attacks (he hadn’t,) and convinced them to send their best work as a donation to a non-existant foundation in his brother’s memory.

“In New York, there is nothing to match the Brooklyn Academy of Music, affectionately known by its acronym BAM. Its three tiers hold around 2,000, but the embracing curve of its interior makes it seem intimate. What I love most about BAM is the sense that, like Topsy, it just growed. It doesn’t seem engineered. So many ‘arts centres’ – the Barbican and the Lowry not least – are really arts ghettos, plonked down and squashed into the middle of nowhere to suit the exigencies of the town planner.”