Category: issues

“The Canadian Museum of Civilization is preparing to return dozens — perhaps hundreds — of bones taken from native burial grounds to the Algonquin people whose ancestors inhabited the Ottawa area before white settlers arrived in the 19th century and began unearthing Indian graves. The proposed ‘repatriation’ of human remains… follows a series of [Ottawa] Citizen stories earlier this year revealing that a communal cemetery holding about 20 aboriginal skeletons was dug up 160 years ago on a point of land in Gatineau now occupied by the museum itself.”

The local and provincial governments serving Toronto have finally agreed to allocate a significant bit of cash for a grandiose set of architectural and cultural plans which aim to revitalize Canada’s largest city. But even as art lovers rejoice over the influx of public money, observers are quietly noting that the government’s CAN$232 million is a drop in the bucket compared with what’s needed to stabilize the city’s major cultural players. From the National Ballet to the Canadian Opera Company, Toronto’s arts groups are still in need of nearly half a billion dollars of additional investment.

The Australia Arts Council awarded $26,000 to inmates of a regional prison to perform an opera and cabaret. But the state’s justice minister, who found out about the grant after it was made, says he’ll have the money returned, saying “the money would be better spent on victim support services, or programmes aimed at reducing re-offending.”

Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser warns that the performing arts are in danger, and issues a five-point call to action. “We have been scared into thinking small. And small thinking begets smaller revenue that begets even smaller institutions and reduced public excitement and involvement. No wonder so many arts organizations are announcing record deficits.”

In recent years West Melbourne has been a place for artists. Not because it was so aethetically interesting, but because it was cheap. But now building restrictions have been changed and the area is suddenly desirable to developers. And the artists are moving out…

The top arts stories of 2002? ArtsJournal editor Douglas McLennan writes in the London Evening Standard that money seemed to be the theme flowing through more than its share of arts stories this year.

Time for the Guardian’s annual arts quiz. How closely were you paying attention to what was going on in the arts this year? We thought we were pretty on top of things, but ArtsJournal’s editor only scored 18 of 25…

While most of the architects imagining new structures for the World Trade Center site focused on office space, one suggests culture as the driving idea. “The mission of reconstructing the skyline is one that is proposed at a cultural level. Should we reconstruct it with the offices of Merrill Lynch? We don’t think so. The need is a cultural need. Almost in the same way, the Eiffel Tower became the symbol of Paris, and it is an empty building. This is an empty building.”