“Located … in Skokie, about 20 miles northwest of the Loop, the [Illinois] Holocaust Museum is not exactly on Chicago tourism’s well-worn path. Yet it’s the third-largest of its kind in the world.” Says the museums VP of marketing, “We’re trying to move people from ‘something I’ve been meaning to do’ and always give them a reason to go.” And yes, the exhibit in question does have a Holocaust connection.
Category: issues
Poland’s Second World War Museum Under Threat After Court Allows Controversial Merger
“The €100m museum in Gdansk, which is scheduled to open to the public at the end of February, has become a political pawn in an ongoing battle over national memory, with the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) keen to control how the years under Nazi German occupation are portrayed.”
Iowa State Legislators Want To Raid State’s Culture Fund To Cover State Budget Shortfall
“The Iowa Cultural Trust fund is on the chopping block as state lawmakers strive to cover a shortfall in the state budget for the fiscal year that ends in June. A tentative budget agreement would take the entire $6 million in the fund, and use it to offset cuts to a range of state agencies. The fund was established in 2002. Lawmakers over time have appropriated money for the fund, with interest used for matching grants to artists and arts organizations.”
Karen Finley: Art Is At The Heart Of America. So How Are Going To Support It?
“Whether it’s transcribing Great Negro Spirituals, protecting indigenous Native languages, attending outdoor jazz concerts, preserving quilting by the Amish or the Gee’s Bend women, singing the Delta Blues, weaving narratives of neglected LGBTQ history, creating plays of the immigrant experience or collaborating across state lines, we are a country of expression. Art is the bridge when walls of fear keep us insulated and reactive. A society loses meaning, purpose and direction without it.”
Struggling Newseum In DC Lays Off 26 Employees
“The latest round of layoffs suggest the finances of the journalism museum remain shaky, as they have ever since it moved from a small space in Arlington to a gigantic building on Pennsylvania Avenue in the District.”
What (C)Should The NEA Be Doing?
“The money doesn’t seem to make big, promising things happen, things that wouldn’t happen otherwise. Much of the giving feels like disguised budget offset. The NEA’s goal looks like survival. It has been so beleaguered over the years, so pummeled, that its mission each year is to dodge the fatal bullet. Yet the NEA – or federal funding for the arts – has served many great goals and can do it once more.”
I Wrote All The State Arts Agencies To Ask What Would Change For Them If The NEA Is Eliminated – Here’s What Happened
As Leonard Jacobs notes, “40% of the NEA’s budget, by statute, goes directly to state and regional arts agencies. … If the NEA didn’t exist, therefore, large chunks of state arts agency budgets would evaporate overnight.” So what were the agencies’ responses? The first, from a national unmbrella organization, was basically Don’t talk about this out loud!!
The Last Time We Fought For The NEA’s Very Existence: A Look Back At The ’90s Culture Wars
“[Here] are excerpts from the ARTnews archives that detail the [1989-91] struggle over NEA funding, including the controversy surrounding a Corcoran Gallery of Art Mapplethorpe show, Democratic representative Mary Rose Oakar’s response, and Republican senator Jesse Helms’s vow to avenge what he saw as a loss.
Trump’s Plan To Defund The NEA And NEH Is Part Of A Long, Long Battle
Noah Charney: “Some might say that it’s … part of a long tradition that hails back to the Vandal tribe sweeping into Rome in A.D. 455 to strip it of its culture and leave a smoldering (but ‘radically reformed’) ruin in its wake. … I don’t feel the need (or have the energy) to argue how important the arts are. To some readers, I’d be preaching to the converted. For others, whatever examples I present would be insufficient to change inert minds.” (Is that the best way to say this?)
Targeting The Arts Is A ‘Lazy And Cowardly’ Way To Pretend To Cut The Budget
Alyssa Rosenberg: “Anyone who pretends that this is a particularly meaningful amount of money and that getting rid of it would be a serious step toward shrinking the federal government is trying very, very hard to delude the public. And targeting the arts is a particularly contemptuous, deceptive gesture because the Republicans who periodically propose it often suggest that the only people who care about the arts are elitist coastal liberals … But one of the things [the NEA, NEH and CPB] do is bring the arts and humanities to areas that don’t have big museums or lots of wealthy patrons.”