Category: issues

“The museum, she wrote, would examine policies for renting space to third parties and offered to hold a separate gathering there on affordable housing and workspaces. Ms. Pasternak also wrote that she had contacted Ms. Quinter to ‘invite a conversation between the museum and the protest organizers.'”

“What is it with this city, whose custodians, over centuries, seem to be ashamed of having so much natural beauty bestowed upon it and constantly seek ways to diminish it?”

“A few days before the party, a billboard went up over the intersection of Bruckner Boulevard and the Third Avenue Bridge, advertising the so-called ‘Piano District’ to drivers commuting between Manhattan and Westchester County and Connecticut, promising ‘luxury waterfront living’ and ‘world-class dining, fashion, art + architecture.’ Reaching back into the distant, depoliticized past is a great way for developers to imbue a neighborhood with ambient authenticity.”

The new Minister is 36-year-old Mélanie Joly, and – aside from the sheer money that the Trudeau campaign promised during elections – she has grand plans: “I want to make sure that the impact of innovation in arts is part of the process of decision-making in cabinet and in different ministries.”

During the past nine months, the Orlando Sentinel interviewed more than a dozen former midlevel and high-level center staff members. The ex-employees, all of whom said they left of their own accord, characterized their former work environment as “toxic.” All requested anonymity, citing potential damage to their careers; in the close-knit arts world, many will likely need to do business with the center again.

“Last week, the [Greater Philadelphia] Cultural Alliance released 2015 Portfolio: Culture Across Communities, An Eleven-City Snapshot – a data-driven assessment of the nonprofit arts sector with particular attention to post-recession recovery and persistent fiscal challenges. … The cities represented in the report include: Bay Area (San Francisco and San Jose), Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Twin Cities and Washington, D.C.”

“The Rail, which reaches about 20,000 readers a month in print and an additional 200,000 online, is among a group of niche publications that have found ways to defy a media industry increasingly preoccupied with greater scale. For these publications, serving small, often highbrow readerships, it is not possible to follow the prevailing model – gathering audiences of millions, or tens of millions, to be sold for pennies to advertisers or converted to subscribers.”

“Can we who labor for the common good find common cause? Can we activate our collective will to be part of finding solutions that would allow us to dedicate ourselves to work with meaning while also making a decent living—with health care, time off, and savings for when we can’t work?”

“For the first time, L.A. Unified in September completed a detailed accounting of arts programs at its campuses … Arts programs at a vast majority of schools are inadequate, according to district data. Classrooms lack basic supplies. Some orchestra classes don’t have enough instruments. And thousands of elementary and middle school children are not getting any arts instruction.” (complete results of study here)

Rebel Pepper (néWang Liming), who went into exile in Japan following the confiscation of his social media accounts and searches of his house, was one of an ever-rarer breed in the People’s Republic …