Category: issues

The conductor and president of Bard College, himself an immigrant, in a New York Times Op-Ed: “Not since the era of witch hunts and ‘red baiting’ has the American university faced so great a threat from government. … What, then, are we, the leaders of our institutions of higher education, to do when faced with a president who denies facts, who denies science?”

According to Freemuse, an independent international organization that researches violations of artists’ rights, that global number has more than doubled that for 2015, increasing by 119%.

Three major contributors to The New York Times culture section have left the paper. The most recent is Charles Isherwood, the No. 2 theater critic since 2004, when he jumped from the top critic’s slot at Variety.

Nigel Redden, in an op-ed in South Carolina’s largest newspaper: “Whether presenting an opera by Antonio Vivaldi or a play by Samuel Beckett, the Festival depends on works created by artists from many parts of the world. … [Their] varied outlooks come from lives and personal histories that differ from many in the audience who flock each year to the Festival. And this is why they flock: they come looking for the kind of personal connection that the performing arts provide especially well. … To limit these possibilities limits us as human beings.”

Tom Rachman, writing from the Verbier Art Summit (a would-be Davos for artsy types), is not encouraged: “Politics in the arts often looks more like group bonding than anything that might effect change.”

“Formed by a ‘system of negative spaces’ carved into the ground, the complex will house two galleries dedicated to Afghan archaeology, a performance hall and a tea-house. … UNESCO experts are still debating the controversial plan to rebuild the pair of rock-cut Buddha statues demolished by the Taliban in 2001.”

“The property developer Emerige group plans to build an extensive art centre and 13,000 sq. m art hotel on Île Seguin, an island in the western suburbs of Paris that once housed the Renault car factory. The new development, called S17 & S18, will transform the former industrial site into ‘one of the biggest cultural hubs in Europe’, says a spokeswoman for the Emerige.”

“There would be a detrimental effect for the many Irish artists who relied on showing their work in the UK, and changes in VAT regulations could make travel abroad more costly.”

“As the chief executive of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, it is the rare occasion that moves me to comment on the actions of our federal government. However, in less than two weeks, our new president has attempted to limit public discourse, diminish cultural exchange and bully our neighbors. The executive order that temporarily — for now at least — bars entry into the U.S. of individuals from seven Muslim-majority nations is a terrible thing for America’s creative community, in whose work we find our common humanity. I must step forward.”

The story of the New Oxford Shakespeare, the one that’s shaking the Bard world with data-driven literary analysis and more, intertwines painfully (and in a way Shakespeare might have appreciated) with a tale of academic backstabbing, disappeared budgets and institutional support gone missing – if it was ever promised in the first place.