Category: issues

Anne Midgette: “My keenest experience of the Kennedy Center Honors this year had to do with the marginalization of the high arts. This is not usually my position: I have no problem celebrating the artistry of popular culture, placing Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” above the level of many works of contemporary art music or recognizing the quality of “The Wire” and other high-level made-for-television series. And I have been comfortable with the idea that in what is essentially a knockoff awards ceremony, the Kennedy Center should seek to honor the best of American art. But fully recognizing just how marginalized my field is, both before and during the ceremony, was sobering.”

“Denver has boomed over the past decade. The city is bigger, richer and more interesting than ever. Public- and private-sector investment is through the roof, and neglected neighborhoods are springing back to life. And in all of this, artists have been left behind.”

“We can read into this tragedy the disastrous head-on collision of two conflicting obligations that the ‘creative city’ imposes on itself and its residents.”

“The all-encompassing liberalism in popular culture might not be hurting the performers’ financial bottom lines (so far), but it’s certainly not doing anything to help their political causes, either. As we learned this election, we ignore whole segments of the population at our peril.”

The best collection of Western modern art outside of Europe and North America will not travel to Germany. The head of the Berlin museum authority says that as far as he knew, “Iran’s culture minister and foreign minister both backed the exhibition. All that was required was the signature of the president, Hassan Rouhani, for the export licenses to be granted, and that signature never came.”

No, it’s not in Paris or Bologna; it’s not even in Europe. Or Asia, for that matter. What’s more, this university was founded, almost 1,200 years ago, by a woman.

For the past few years – starting with an ugly battle in Seattle – the yellowface issue has raged around productions of the Gilbert and Sullivan favorite in the U.S. Last year, facing likely protests, the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players cancelled its production and did Pirates of Penzance instead. (One wag wrote in to decry the failure to cast real pirates.) This year, after much consideration, care, and consultation, the company is trying again, with a new approach.

Ian David Moss argues that funders have tended to keep their arts programs in a “silo” rather than connecting them with their organizations’ wider goals.

Perhaps there’s a crisis in the arts in rapidly gentrifying Denver. A new researcher at the University of Colorado Denver has some thoughts: “I want the city to work together with creative producers to benefit both. Sugar-coating anything or obscuring facts is not going to help either side.”

The Austin arts community is furious with the Austin American-Statesman, which decided to lay off Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, the paper’s full-time arts critic – and use freelancers instead. But, says the rival weekly, “The critic has a unique strength coming from 19 years on the beat, not only reporting but actively shaping the cultural landscape with access to the wide and the long views.”