Category: issues

In his February 2 “state of the city” address, Mayor Kasim Reed said that arts funding is critical to Atlanta and that he wants to ensure the money reaches all arts organizations, large and small. “Organizations like the Woodruff Arts Center are thriving, but our small- and medium-sized groups, our young and emerging arts, need additional support,” Reed said. “We need to give back to the creative community that gives so much to our city.”

“Since the times of the Renaissance, when the clergy and rich merchants started to support artists who could immortalise their legacy and whose art could provide atonement for their sins, artists have been feeling uneasy about the relationship between artistic talent and commerce.”

“Theaster’s bringing art into a neighborhood where there’s not a lot of resources devoted to those sorts of questions, and he’s bringing labor and craft traditions into the National Gallery. It’s a kind of circular economy. He’s got the whole art world interested in him, and he is pointing everyone’s eyes at issues that he’s concerned with.”

“Public awareness of the role of the arts is undermined by deeply entrenched perceptions. Yes, people like the arts, some quite a lot, but that’s not enough. Because the way they think about the arts is shaped by a number of common default patterns of thinking that obscure a sense of public responsibility or value.”

Art and history museums alike are taking a variety of approaches, including wait-and-see. Graham Bowley provides a run-down.

“The trouble is, once you accept the proposition that popularity corresponds to value, the game is over for the performing arts. There is no longer any justification for giving space to classical music, jazz, dance, or any other artistic activity that fails to ignite mass enthusiasm. In a cultural-Darwinist world where only the buzziest survive, the arts section would consist solely of superhero-movie reviews, TV-show recaps, and instant-reaction think pieces about pop superstars. Never mind that such entities hardly need the publicity, having achieved market saturation through social media. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a tax cut for the super-rich.”

“On March 2, 1917, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, handing power to a socialist provisional government; in October, led by Lenin, the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Place in St. Petersburg and formed a new government. A year later Lenin launched his “Plan for Monumental Propaganda”: painting, sculpture, photography, posters, textiles, and ceramics were all to proclaim the glory of the Bolshevik state.”

“All told, the crowdfunding sector generated $34 billion in free-flowing cash in 2015, and is on pace to do nearly 10 times that within the next decade. (That’s generally broken into three main areas–person-to-person lending, donations, and equity investment–yet about 70% goes toward those in need, according to a Pew Research Center report). The result is a vast pool of money that’s fundamentally shifting who is funding charitable work and how that work gets done.”

“The arts have a far greater impact than on academic achievement alone. AEP cites work preparedness as one key aspect of arts education. Through art programs, students strengthen problem-solving and communication skills, increase their capacity for leadership and creative thinking, build community, support civic engagement, and experience social tolerance that helps prepare them for life in an increasingly diverse world.”

“In 1952, the anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn wrote a famous article, “Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions,” in which they specified no fewer than 164 definitions of culture. Culture can, of course, refer to whole civilizations, such as Western culture or Asian culture; it can refer to national, ethnic, or social-class cultures, such as Israeli culture or Irish-Catholic culture, or working-class culture. In all these senses it refers to the overarching aspirations and assumptions that underlay the ways that different peoples and groups have of understanding and dealing with the world.”