Category: issues

“Everyone around here knows Michael Bloomberg … built a multibillion-dollar company and served as a three-term mayor of New York. But what people might not know is that Bloomberg credits the Museum of Science for helping to shape who he became. ‘I went every Saturday, and it changed my life,’ recalled Bloomberg, 74, who attended classes there starting when he was about 10 and through his high school years.”

“The Musée du Quai Branly Jaques Chirac in Paris has come under fire for literature published for children alongside their exhibition, ‘The Color Line: African American Artists and Segregation.’ The booklet appears to play down the European role in slavery, and claim some slaves had enjoyable lives. Following public outcry, the museum destroyed the inaccurate pamphlets.”

“The cultural critic’s conceptual enemy is the smoothing formula known as ‘the wisdom of crowds.’ On that theory, it must be the case that the person whose favorite song is the No. 1 song, whose favorite book is a best-seller, whose favorite food just switched from kale to quinoa, is the luckiest person in the world, because the culture is producing exactly the goods that he or she enjoys. This rule would apply right down all the rungs of life-style choices within your demographic: the kind of car you drive, the number of kids you have, where you take your vacations. On a wisdom-of-crowds hypothesis, what most people who are like you choose to do should be the optimal choice for you.”

The 50,000-square-foot project will rise around the existing museum, housed in the humble Hitsville, U.S.A., building where Berry Gordy Jr. launched the careers of stars such as the Supremes, Temptations and Stevie Wonder.

Miami Dade College’s grand plan to build a massive downtown cultural center imploded Monday when college trustees chose to cancel the project rather than proceed amid a declining real estate market and an escalating feud with a local art dealer.

“The act of going to the movies itself will likely become an expensive, high-culture sort of ritual, like the opera. Hollywood classics will be digitally retooled as VR environments and shown in restored out-of-town multiplexes. And ex-movie stars, desperate for cash, will perform the movies live.”

“The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts is buying the Merriam Theater from the University of the Arts for $11 million, leaders from the two arts groups say. … With this purchase, the Kimmel bolsters its control of major arts venues between Pine and Locust Streets totaling well over 8,000 seats.”

Usually funded by private investors or large corporations, an artist-run super PAC is a completely new concept, though the driving force behind it is not. “We believe that artists, and art, play an important role in galvanizing our society to do better,” says For Freedoms on its website. “We are frustrated with a system in which money, divisiveness, and a general lack of truth-telling have stifled complex conversation.

“The Arts Council of Ireland has received a €5 million (£4.5 million) increase in the 2016/17 budget – equivalent to an 8% increase that will see its total funding rise next year to €65.1 million. In total, the arts budget for 2016/17 is €158.3 million (£142.7 million), although this is down 16% on the previous year. However, the decrease was attributed to one-off capital funding allocated in the previous budget for projects marking the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising.”

“But what if we thought about defending Harlem against these same forces using strategies of addition and not only ones of attrition? What if the rule rather than the exception were to form institutions that can support and enable artists who are rooted in Harlem, who have durable connections to its soil?”