Category: issues

While other nations have had traditions of blackening the face to portray a particular character (e.g., Holland’s Zwarte Piet), “a man named Thomas Dartmouth Rice first brought American minstrel shows to Europe in 1836 in which white performers portrayed African American slaves in tattered clothes, dancing and singing songs such as ‘Jump Jim Crow.’ … [Subsequently,] blackface minstrels toured Australia, India, South America, South Africa and other places in the world. They were seen as American and therefore exotic” — and their imagery was absorbed into other cultures.” – Public Radio International

“Valecia McDowell, incoming chair of [local funding body] the Arts & Science Council, said the local arts sector is at a ‘crisis point.’ To make up for steep losses in private giving, Mecklenburg County could ask voters this year to approve a new quarter-cent sales tax, which would provide a dedicated funding stream for the ASC.” – The Charlotte Observer

Rachel Donadio: “To DAU’s producers and editors, and some of its celebrity-artist guests, the project has become a vibrant creative and intellectual community, even a way of life. To anyone outside it, the project can seem unwelcoming. I’ve spent many long hours visiting DAU since it opened here on January 24, and I’ve found the films at turns maddening, boring, and pornographic. I’ve never encountered a project whose monumental, megalomaniacal ambitions are so dramatically at odds with the uneven final product. Although maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s all a big metaphor for the Soviet Union.” – The Atlantic

The government issued a decree that requires artists to obtain government approval before performing or displaying their work, while also regulating the artwork itself. For example, it prohibits audiovisual content that contains “sexist, vulgar and obscene language” or that uses “national symbols” in ways that “contravene current legislation.” Government inspectors can impose fines on offenders and confiscate their property. – The New York Times

Yes, minstrel shows started in the 19th century – and were one of the U.S.’s first popular forms of entertainment. But they were never seen as harmless, at least not by African Americans. “Frederick Douglass decried blackface performers as ‘the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens.'” – The Atlantic

Bob Lynch tries To Add it up: “A specific example of the chilling effect of the shutdown’s impact on arts organizations and local businesses comes again from the Smithsonian, which reportedly lost $1.5 million in revenue during the first 10 days of the shutdown. According to the Secretary of the Smithsonian David Skorton, the roughly $1 million a week that the institution lost is unrecoverable and will have long-term impact.” – Americans For The Arts

Amazon had a deal and could have simply gone ahead. But the company had no allegiance to Queens and no need to be where it wasn’t wanted. “Amazon’s retreat from Queens shows us the dynamics of a new local power game — one in which giant tech companies play on the same field with governments, as equals, with equal influence over our economies and communities.” – Axios

Unfortunately, big-ticket philanthropy is in the middle of a protracted sea change that is already having a direct effect on the arts. Thirteen years ago, the Journal reported that younger new-money donors were increasingly choosing to give it not to fine-arts organizations but to humanitarian causes like AIDS research and education reform. In 2013, Bill Gates put his seal of moral approval on this new tendency by declaring in an interview with the Financial Times that donating money “to build a new wing for a museum rather than spend it on preventing illnesses that can lead to blindness” was, in his words, “slightly barbaric.” – The Wall Street Journal [paywall]