Category: issues

“We are writing to affirm the leadership role of cultural institutions in advancing cultural and social as well as political public discourse. As stewards and advocates of contemporary and historical cultural expressions, we directors, curators, and staff members of cultural institutions, as well as the board members to whom we are accountable, have a particular obligation to facilitate the free and safe exchange of ideas about our contemporary world with art as the catalyst.”

“As robots take over routine jobs, we will need people who can think creatively, imaginatively, logically and laterally. Acquiring a narrow “skillset” of the kind society increasingly demands will, in fact, leave students not equipped for the future, but vulnerable to it.”

Only go if you are interested in art history. I love history, but I couldn’t stay here for more than an hour, as its pictures doesn’t make sense to me.

“City officials [in Berea, Kentucky] count 40 galleries in total, and three new restaurants and a gallery-cafe have opened in the past two years – not a bad showing of entrepreneurship in a city of fewer than 20,000 people. … But it wasn’t always like this.” Ivy Brashear reports on how it got to be like this.

Nine of the country’s ten largest passenger carriers have donated a total of $28 million for a makeover of the exhibition on the history of commercial aviation at the Smithsonian’s most popular museum.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the city’s King’s and Festival theatres and the body that promotes its Unesco “City of Literature” status have had their funding stripped by Creative Scotland. Creative Scotland has dropped 20 organisations from its three-year funding programme, but added 19 following a shake-up of how its £99 million budget is spent.

“Last year, wondering what it means to be a Syrian artist when Syria in many ways no longer exists, I began to map the journeys of a hundred [visual, performing, and literary] artists from the country.” Eliza Griswold shows us some of the maps and profiles seven of the artists.

“Under-fire arts quango Creative Scotland has been forced to hold crisis talks to “review” controversial funding cuts. An emergency board meeting is to be held within days to ‘take stock’ of the fall-out from moves to strip 20 companies of long-term funding. The Scottish Government has revealed that the summit has been called to ‘review certain decisions,’ raising the prospect of an embarrassing climbdown for the quango.”

“Artistic directors are our stars. What has changed is that they also need to be civic leaders. This is a new profile for the next generation. We have moved away from the period where it was enough to do great work which would ensure funding. The artistic director is the personality who personifies the mission and makes it feel vibrant to the community.”