Category: issues

A Jiffy Lube Owner Talks About His Business’s Relationship With The Arts

Steve Sanner: “Small business owners like me don’t often view the arts as an area in which we can make a real difference. Even our “stretch” sponsorship levels are overshadowed by the huge dollar amounts that wealthy individuals, banks, law firms, and insurance companies can generate. For us, philanthropy is difficult to plan for, so our sponsorship investments tend to come out of our advertising budgets. Therefore, we’re motivated to find ways to drive our business in more immediate, ROI-based campaigns than what is thought a typical sponsorship of the arts might provide.” – Americans for the Arts

Dorrine Kondo: Film Industry Diversity Numbers Are Revealing, But Not Nearly The Whole Story

“In my book “Worldmaking: Race, Performance and the Work of Creativity,” I approach the issue of diversity as a cultural anthropologist, playwright and performance studies scholar. In it, I argue that cultural representation is about something deeper than parity for the sake of parity – that everyone needs to be mirrored in the public sphere in order to exist and to count as a fully dimensional human being.” – The Conversation

What Does The Jussie Smollett Saga Reveal About 2019 America? Victimhood Chic

John McWhorter: “Smollett doesn’t need the money he would get from a court settlement, and he isn’t trying to deny someone higher office. So why in the world would he fake something like that attack — if he did indeed fake it? The reason might be that he has come of age in an era when nothing he could have done or said would have made him look more interesting than being attacked on the basis of his color and sexual orientation.” – The Atlantic

The Case Against The Obama Presidential Library

In the Obama center case, foes of the $500 million plan have centered their objections around the site location—a perch in an historic park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1871. Almost no one objects to the Obama Presidential Center coming to Chicago’s South Side, but some feel that it hoovers up an existing community asset instead of creating a new one. The question has lingered over the project since its introduction near the end of the president’s tenure in 2015. – CityLab

Portland Loses An Arts Institution – And It Happened Out Of Sight Of The Community

“Closing the college and selling off the campus is the worst possible outcome for just about everybody. It ends a craft community and keeps anyone else from ever joining it. Sometimes, your community isn’t large or committed enough to go on, and then, yes, that’s the end of things. But asking your community to help you figure it all out should be the prior step.” – Oregon Arts Watch

The Campaign Against Sackler Family Cash In The Arts World May Have Reached A Turning Point

“The debate over how organizations should handle donations from members of the Sackler family has intensified in recent weeks after the revelation that specific individuals like Richard, former chairman and president of Purdue Pharma, played a far more extensive role in promoting OxyContin than previously known.” – Inside Philanthropy

Old Soviet-Style Cafeterias Are Becoming Popular In 21st-Century Moscow

The ingredients are more consistent in quality and the kitchens are cleaner than back then, but otherwise, the new stolovayas are remarkably like the old ones, with people waiting in long lines to get served mashed potatoes, stuffed cabbage, herring, and borscht by surly workers. Nostalgia for the superpower USSR? Not exactly: it’s comfort food, and far more affordable than most restaurants in Moscow. – Atlas Obscura

MacDowell Colony Gets A New Director

Philip Himberg is joining the 112-year-old MacDowell Colony from the Sundance Institute, where he served as the artistic director of Sundance’s theater program for the past 23 years. He will be based at the organization’s New York office and will work closely with David Macy, MacDowell’s resident director at the organization’s facility in Peterborough, N.H. – The New York Times