Category: issues

The problem isn’t these two curators, specifically (though the “Black Panther” references are flying thick and fast on Twitter), it’s this widespread institutional issue: “African-Americans made up a mere 4 percent of all curators, conservators, educators and museum leaders, while Hispanics made up 3 percent and Asians made up 6 percent, according to a widespread museum demographic survey completed by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2015. White scholars occupied those roles at overwhelming rates, while people of color were more represented at museums through janitorial or security roles.”

Alyssa Rosenberg, considering Isle of Dogs: “At this point, there’s a fairly clear consensus that white people shouldn’t be cast as characters who are meant to be of other races, and that defining nonwhite characters by obvious stereotypes and obvious stereotypes alone is both objectionable and proof of artistic laziness. There is less agreement about what makes a person sufficiently knowledgeable about and sensitive to the concerns of a community that’s not their own to put it into art, or about the line between appreciation and fetishization of another culture. (Not to mention the fact that members of a particular community may have wildly diverging opinions about these issues, raising thorny questions about who has standing to make these judgments.)

When it comes to Brexit and the arts, freedom of movement and access to finance are the two most frequently discussed issues. They feature heavily in two reports from Arts Council England last month that provide the best data yet on what the sector is thinking and doing in response to the vote to leave.

Michael Kimmelman writes about the long-planned International African American Museum, to be located at the wharf on Charleston’s waterfront where close to half of all African slaves brought to the U.S. arrived.

As the continent’s economic power grows, cities are building performing arts centers as badges of their new global clout. The complexes are usually called opera houses (the idea of “opera” still carries real prestige), but they usually have another auditorium for dance and/or drama, and often a black box as well – and all those stages need people to run them and shows to present. These theaters are sprouting up from China to Kazakhstan to the Persian Gulf, as flashy freestanding buildings or (sometimes) in high-end shopping malls.

Fergus Morgan, whose six-reviews-a-week gig covering London’s Vault Festival was paid for by the local business improvement district: “The standard concern raised is that subsidised criticism jeopardises the integrity of the artist-critic relationship, that a reviewer’s opinion of a production will be skewed if he relies on the show itself for his livelihood. It’s a valid concern, but there are innumerable ways around it.”

With institutions ever more reliant on the big gifts that come with naming rights to fund new facilities or renovations – and especially when, as with the Sacklers or Kochs, controversy gets attached to those names – do cultural organizations need to be more cautious?