Category: issues

The UK cultural sector’s ties in the EU are financial and artistic. So what are the costs for artists in Britain’s decision to leave?

Have the young’uns heard too many TED Talks? “The next generation of philanthropists at this year’s Philanthropy Australia conference made it perfectly clear that they would prefer to be known as ‘change-makers’ or ‘social entrepreneurs’, and so, are ‘consciously uncoupling’ from being known as philanthropists.”

“Before the Wicked Witch of the West or Harry Potter took flight on the spindly cleaning tool, the image first appeared in the 15th century.” You may not be surprised to read that the depiction was an attack on both sexuality and heresy.

“Between 2014 and 2019, 3,500 artists are predicted to lose their places of work in the UK capital—a 30% cut, according to a report by the Greater London Authority. Launched in March 2016 and led by Outset Contemporary Art Fund, Studiomakers is working with local authorities, private landowners and property developers to find alternative ways to retain existing studios, as well as create new ones.”

Ian Frazier: “Certain timeless laws apply to comedy – ‘Put the funniest word in the sentence at the end,’ for example. But in the modern era, in the world of political comedy, strange laws never seen before seem to be kicking in. The law that the efficiency of microchips increases exponentially every few years may now apply to political comedy, which gets exponentially funnier with every election cycle.”

“According to commercial real estate statistics provided by the Toronto Real Estate Board, commercial space in the city’s west end has increased on average from $15.89 per square foot (annually) for spaces under 1,000 square feet in 2006 to $26.44 in the third quarter of this year.”

“Since renderings were unveiled last year, the discussion has turned away from Gehry’s daring architecture to whether the 334,000-square-foot development is simply too large for the famed boulevard. The main tower, at 15 stories, would be the tallest building to be erected on the Sunset Strip in more than 30 years.”

Boomers will remember the board as either a popular sort-of-board-game or the means by which the demon possessed Regan in The Exorcist. But its history goes all the way back to 19th-century Spiritualism; it was condemned by a Pope and denounced by a professor as “a serious national menace.”

Miri Regev has done just about everything she can to alienate and enrage those she considers the elites, or the “cultural junta,” of Israel. Leftists. Secularists. Tel Avivians. Ashkenazim — Jews of European origin. People who, as she told me recently, think that “classical music is better than the Andalusian music” of Morocco, or that “Chekhov is more important than Maimonides.”

“The lion’s share (60%) of funding – grants, gifts and contributions – continue to go to the largest budget cultural institutions across the country (those with budgets over $5 million) and that, in fact, the funding to the smaller organizations, with budgets under $1 million has actually declined, and ‘that is a drearier future than we saw in 2011′.”