Category: issues

“In a surprise move, both the Conservative and Labour parties have made manifesto pledges to create a new funding stream for the arts.”

As Philip Kennicott argues forcefully that money from the arch-conservative, climate change-denying Koch brothers is by now irredeemably tainted, Lyn Gardner looks at the ongoing arguments over arts sponsorship by BP: “Whenever the cultural sector is benefiting from cash injections, the question must be asked: although it may bring benefits to our theatre and audience, is there a price for this sponsorship that is being paid by someone else, somewhere else?”

“Alameda County prosecutors capped a six-month investigation into the deadly blaze on Monday when they charged [Derick] Almena and [Max] Harris with 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter, saying their management of the Ghost Ship was not simply negligent, but criminal.”

“The concept of cultural appropriation is nothing less than an intellectual fence: Keep out. If it had been adhered to, then Richard Fariña would not have written “Birmingham Sunday” after the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963 that took the lives of four girls. (The song was recorded by Joan Baez.) Bob Dylan could not have written about Hattie Carroll, the black barmaid who was killed by a drunk white patron in 1963. “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” speaks to both race and class. It is as much “An American Tragedy” as Theodore Dreiser’s classic novel.”

Barry Diller – backed by pretty much every politician with jurisdiction over the spot – wants to replace, at his own expense, a crumbling pier at 13th St. in Manhattan with “an undulating platform featuring pathways, lush lawns and three venues for dance, theater and musical performances.” Real-estate mogul Douglas Durst is leading the (seemingly rather small) opposition to the project.

Yes, Charles and David Koch “have given hundreds of millions of dollars to institutions such as Lincoln Center and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art,” but they’ve also “used their fortune to sow doubt about climate science and undermine the nation’s faith in basic science. … They have undermined a critical set of our most important human capacities, and some of the same ones that the arts are often thought to enhance. These include things such as critical thinking and deference to reason and evidence, but also empathy and fellow feeling, and a sense that we are connected to other people.”

The trend is likely to alarm humanities professors and many others in academe. Many humanities departments have found themselves struggling to maintain tenure-track faculty lines and, in some cases, to continue departments. Humanities professors are quick to note that their departments play crucial roles in general education for students from a range of majors.

“While a University affiliated Think Tank, with research fellows and a management staff, has to have income and a budget, it may be possible with today’s technology to run a tighter ship with more volunteer input.  It may not be necessary for a bricks and mortar home base, but rather operate as a virtual entity, and it may not have to re-invent the wheel of all the activity already going on.  Whereas the model for an Arts Think Tank has changed, so too has the model for its funding.”

Of course, “the real currency in Hollywood is less principle than success. And that’s why there’s so much hope attached to the ‘Wonder Woman’ premiere — that its success with audiences of all genders and ages would bring the ‘knockout punch’ persuading Hollywood to give more female directors a break.”