Category: issues

With a $175 million arts complex called Luma Arles, Maja Hoffmann (an heir to the Hoffmann-La Roche pharmaceuticals fortune) “is trying to transform [the city of 35,000] through art, much in the same way that the artist Donald Judd reimagined a town called Marfa in Texas, or the Dia Art Foundation rebuilt the upstate New York town of Beacon, using art as a draw and an economic engine.” (Not to mention, of course, Bilbao — and, of course, the architect of Luma Arles is Frank Gehry.) “In doing so, Ms. Hoffmann has taken on a role that was once reserved for public officials and city planners: imagining the future and then building it.”

“Previously, social media was delivering great reach and PR but not converting to sales.” They are now using sophisticated analysis to track posts and put money behind content that gets a good reaction, then automatically ‘throwing good money after good’ – the opposite to what often happens in arts marketing, where spend is usually focused on difficult-to-sell inventory.

If you’ve ever tried to get permission to perform a play, you’ve probably encountered some issues having to do with theatrical copyright. But where did the concept of copyrighting theatrical works come from? What do the legal wrangles over who owns the rights to a performance say about the nature of theatre?

As the Philharmonia Baroque announces retirement plans for Nicholas McGegan, who provided leadership there over the past third of a century, other Bay Area performing-arts organizations are experiencing a tsunami of changes after many years of apparent permanence.

“The real-world and social-media combat we’ve been in for the past two years over what kind of country this is — who gets to live in it and bemoan (or endorse!) how it’s being run — have now shown up in our beefs over culture, not so much over the actual works themselves but over the laws governing that culture and the discussion around it, which artists can make what art, who can speak. We’re talking less about whether a work is good art but simply whether it’s good — good for us, good for the culture, good for the world.” Wesley Morris is sympathetic to the impulse, but the result troubles him.

In Arts Council England’s first-ever “live online review of the year,” a questioner asked executives (via Twitter) if there could be a relatively red-tape-free way for artists to apply for amounts as small as £500. (ACE has two programs that make grants from £2,000 up to £15,000.) CEO Darren Henley replied, “We don’t know the answer yet, but it’s something we will go away and think about.”

The number of newspaper articles produced over the last 10 years has shrunk by almost half; wire service stories are taking the place of local political coverage; and of the articles still being produced, fewer include coverage of democratic institutions and civic affairs.

In 2016, dozens of theatres around the country had a booth in their lobby where staffers registered voters during intermission. That has continued for the 2018 elections. Playwrights Horizons in New York City, who spearheaded a national effort in 2016 under the hashtag #PlayOurPart, is registering voters from Sept. 1 to Oct. 11 during performances of I Was Most Alive With You by Craig Lucas. Playwrights Horizons also provides information about other institutions can register voters on their website.

The new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), announced late Sunday night, commits Canada to extending the term of copyright by two decades, from 50 years after the author’s death to 70 years. While that sounds like a relatively minor change, University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist said the costs associated with it could be significant.

The suit’s plaintiff is listed as one Allen Lee, but the class potentially includes, “All end-user purchasers in the United States who purchased a secondary market Ticketmaster ticket from a professional reseller participating in Ticketmaster’s resale partner program and/or using TradeDesk or a similar system operated by defendants, such as EventInventory or eimarketplace.”