To put it mildly, “a thread of anxiety is likely to run through the proceedings at the Kennedy Center in Washington.”
Category: issues
A Palestinian Author Flees After Facing Death Threats And A Ban On His Novel
His earlier novels were controversial, but when he included a gay man in his fourth novel, “angry Palestinians wrote on his Facebook page, and their own pages, that they wanted to lynch Yahya and burn bookstores and libraries carrying Crime in Ramallah.”
Dear Citizens Of The United States: You Get The World You Pay For, So Please Pay For Art
The president’s plan to defund the arts (even further) should be a call to arms. But “because the arts seem glamorous, and can indeed be fulfilling and fun to do, it’s easy to regard them as something different — a lark, a hobby. The fact that some artists make art whether or not there’s money to be made might be taken as an argument that they don’t need to be paid because they’re just doing what they like. … But even crayons cost money.”
Why Are Dave Chappelle’s Netflix Specials So Painfully Unfunny?
Myles Johnson says follow the money: “Capitalism calls for you to be average and Dave Chappelle obeyed. It calls for you to be ignorant despite moments, even fleeting, of critical enlightenment.”
Who Are Today’s Great Cultural Critics? (Are There Any?)
“Cultural criticism, we should remind ourselves, can be almost as important as the art itself, can indeed be part of the art. There have been great creative critics, from Alexander Pope (in The Dunciad, Epistle to Lord Burlington, etc) and Dr Johnson onwards, who combined the two arts with the skill of genius. Byron was another, in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Vision of Judgment, and parts of Don Juan. Can you name a great contemporary cultural critic? Someone who could, in writing about literature and other aspects of our culture, hold a candle to T. S. Eliot on poetry, or Herbert Read on modern art? I asked several highly knowledgeable people, who struggled to do so.”
Wexner Center Hires Lane Czaplinski As Director Of Performing Arts
The Wexner Center is about a $10 million organization, while On the Boards has a $1.7 million operating budget. “It’s a much bigger staff, much bigger institution,” Czaplinski said. “I want to work more on being a curator, being a producer, writing and making trouble in Ohio.”
This Neighborhood Is Helping Artists Buy Vacant Homes For Cheap
“In Indianapolis, one block in the Garfield Park neighborhood south of the city’s downtown is experimenting with a different model. An arts nonprofit worked with other partners to buy and renovate vacant houses and is now offering to co-own them with artists. Artists will pay half the cost–one $80,000 home, for example, will sell for around $40,000.”
Rochester Art Center In Deep Financial Distress
The center is an important piece of the city’s Destination Medical Center economic development project, which aims to raise Rochester’s national and international profile by boosting its downtown. Cultivating the arts as a magnet to draw younger people to the region is key to the plan.
What Will Brexit Mean For Culture?
“A combination of shock, motivation and fears for the future can be … felt throughout the country’s cultural institutions. The insecurity is also an economic one. The cultural industry, which includes film, the art trade and the TV industry, contributes 84.1 billion pounds (97 billion euros) to the British economy.”
G7 Holds Its First-Ever Culture Summit
The culture ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized countries (the US, Germany, Japan, France, UK, Italy, and Canada) are gathering in Florence to discuss cultural diplomacy, protecting cultural heritage, and fighting the traffic in stolen and looted art and artifacts.