Category: issues

“History tells us that it is the Cinderella – or, as the French would say, the Cendrillon – of the world’s great squares. It was born to encourage manufacturing, quickly turned into a region for real estate speculation, then given its permanent, completely irrelevant title in one of the most cynical ‘naming opportunities’ ever conceived before the modern football stadium.”

“Arts Council England chair Peter Bazalgette has made a plea for local authorities to ‘keep the faith’ and continue funding the arts to avoid losing ‘irreplaceable’ organisations.”

“When I’m forced to justify the arts in a narrow outcomes-based context I feel like I’ve already lost, because the reason art is so interesting is how hard it is to pin down to just one dimension. I like to argue like this: we need to make a commitment as a society to paying health care workers, educators, and artists enough to support them as well as any typical worker in our society.”

“A little more than two years after taking the position, Jed Bernstein is stepping down as the president of Lincoln Center, a major job in the nonprofit world that he had come to after a career in the commercial theater. His departure … leaves Lincoln Center in the position of looking for a new leader just as it is trying to begin an ambitious project: the long-delayed renovation of David Geffen [formerly Avery Fisher] Hall.”

“Homintern” – a riff on Lenin’s Comintern – “was the name various people jokingly coined to describe a sprawling, informal network of contacts that occupied a prominent site near the centre of modern life. It may have started as a joke, but it was taken all too seriously by those whom it infuriated.”

Philip Hensher’s list runs from the expected (Proust) to the … well, not (Ellen’s talk show changed the culture?).

“The three-week summer festival offered around 50 ticketed events and a further 100 free outdoor events in the financial centre, spanning classical and contemporary music, visual arts, film and talks. … The organisers laid the blame on the deteriorating climate for arts funding.”

“I’ve come to believe that most marketers target young people because they see everyone else doing it. And they assume that somewhere someone must know why we are doing this. The marketing industry has been spending too much time on another planet. We need to get back down to earth.”

Rick Moody suggested as much in a recent New York Times Book Review essay. George Packer – citing Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin – begs to differ. And what if we suggested the same about European art or music?

“For one long rapturous night, artists will wrest Westminster from the clutches of politicians, creating art from dusk till dawn in public spaces and very private ones … Plenty is programmed, even for the sad suburbanites who have to catch the last tube home, including installation art, theatre, film and dance, and a giant exercise class.”