Category: issues

“On a New York stage in 1902, a poet and art critic named Sadakichi Hartmann attempted the first perfume concert, and it was a disaster. Intended to last 16 minutes and transport the audience to Japan through a series of smells, it was cut short at four by the jeers of the crowd.”

“A new archive created to mark the 70th anniversary of the Edinburgh International Festival has revealed how the city’s residents were initially divided about the first event – but ended up ensuring it went ahead by donating rations.”

“When, in the nonprofit sector do you see revenue growth like this? The sponsoring organization’s 990 reports on GuideStar show that the organization’s revenue has grown from $185K in 2011 to $3.8M in 2015.” And how many nonprofits do you know of whose conventions draw well over 100,000 participants?

Says one specialist attorney, “There’s no conspiracy. There’s no one out there saying we’re going to stop artists. It’s basically much broader than that and artists they consider collateral damage.” Says another, “What is a broader effect, I think, is that there is a pervasive sense in the international community that the U.S. is becoming a hostile environment for performing artists.”

The tense standoff with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt is putting as deep a strain on the Persian Gulf nation’s efforts to become a cultural capital as it is on the rest of the country. Even so, work continues: as one arts professional in Doha puts it, “If political relations were severed for any period of time, the close family connections across the region would act as a continued link. … At the moment, everything is continuing as normal.”

Gov. Jerry Brown and the state legislature have increased the annual budget of the California Arts Council by $6.8 million to a total, for 2017-18, of $19.48 million. And the extra funding is not one-time; it’s permanent.

“Boards are less a problem than a symptom of a larger, systemic issue: a pervasive loss of creativity in large performing arts institutions. I’m not the only one to notice that our largest performing arts institutions have become fundamentally inartistic bureaucracies … Companies have to work so hard to maintain their status quo, to keep the funding coming in and the performances going on, that many of them have lost sight of a truly creative approach. They don’t have the time or resources to break the mold.”

Stella Duffy of the Fun Palaces movement: “Our commitment to ‘excellence and quality’ as defined by mainstream, metropolitan-based thinking many decades ago, might need to shift to a new version of ‘excellence and quality’, one defined by a new generation of makers and creators – and this time from every part of society. If we want cultural democracy, genuine culture for all, elitism must make way for creativity and community-led culture. We need to offer everyone not only access to the products of creativity, but access to the means and processes of creativity.” (By, say, funding Duffy’s project.)

Sadiq Khan, responding to Arts Council England’s decision to shift some funding from the capital to the regions: “I’m not saying we deserve a bigger slice of the cake for the sake of it. I’m saying that actually, if the arts in London does well, the whole country benefits.” (Well …)