Category: issues

A new Russian initiative aims to educate Russian artists about intellectual property and copyright. “Even though Russia signed up to the international Bern Convention on copyright in 1994, it is taking time for the copyright mentality to take root. This has led to confusing and often farcical situations, such as Russian theater companies being forced to cancel tours abroad because they never bothered to get permission to stage the foreign play they intended to bring.” – St. Petersburg Times (Russia) 11/28/00

Every study shows that children who receive instruction in art and music are more focused, get better grades and score higher on standardized tests than children who don’t. So it was something of a small triumph for sanity when the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development earlier this month announced a $4 million pilot program to help bring arts instruction to kids living in public housing. – Baltimore Sun 11/28/00

Is American culture going to the dogs? Morris Berman thinks so: His book “Twilight of American Culture” paints “a copious chamber of cultural horrors: corporate publishing and the death of small bookstores, New Age platitudes and spiritual nostrums, ignorant college students and their jargon-ridden post-modernist mentors … you get the idea. For blame, Berman trots out The Usual Suspects: globalization, corporate domination, endless greed, insidious marketing, the media circus, and of course, the stupidity and gullibility of the American public.” Really? – The Idler 11/27/00

“With Russia’s government strapped for cash, the country’s sprawling network of great arts institutions is being forced into the unfamiliar world of commerce. The Russia Museum is one of the winners, organising an ever-expanding network of souvenir shops, a web site, and this year a record 15 foreign exhibitions. None of this has come easy to Russia’s museums and theatres. For 70 years the former Communist regime paid their entire budget, and also taught that private enterprise was a sin.” – The Scotsman 11/27/00

Since taking the helm of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1998, chairman Bill Ivey has been largely responsible for the NEA’s renewed support in Washington. The Senate approved a $7 million budget increase this year in part due to Ivey’s promise to spread NEA dollars around the country and increase access to the arts in rural areas. – Nando Times (AP) 11/26/00

“By now, the pattern is familiar: Americans invent a piece of pop culture but don’t seem to fully accept it until the British adapt, refine and sell it back as something new.” – San Francisco Chronicle 11/26/00

• Artists have no problem with paying managers commission when they [the artists] aren’t earning money but as soon as they do, some of them become resentful, forgetting the blood, sweat and tears you have put in over the formative years. Every manager dreams of discovering and nurturing that talent, not out of vanity but through entrepreneurial ambition. They have careers to pursue, but people seem to think they are doing it for fun.” – The Observer (UK) 11/26/00

There’s a federal election going on in Canada, but none of the candidates or parties seems to want to talk about culture or the arts, a $22 billion industry in which the government has some major investments. – Ottawa Citizen 11/24/00

Gordon Davis takes over the running of Lincoln Center at a particularly awkward time: the aging arts campus requires about $1.5 billion of restoration work. And while it’s going on, where are the center’s organizations supposed to do their work? – Boston Globe (Newsday) 11/24/00

Protests as Canada’s Ontario Film Review Board bans the explicit French film Baise-moi from the province. “If there’s a perception that the board is becoming more hard-line – this decision comes after the board turned down a re-released version of Penthouse’s Caligula last year – there are others who feel the board is too lenient.” – Toronto Star 11/24/00