Category: issues

“The staircase and the Pavilion’s other markers of classical European opulence still dazzle. But 50 years later, the Music Center has a very different awareness of the need to reflect its audience, and it can’t be done just with mirrors.” Mike Boehm looks at the Center’s changing offerings, from a hip-hop festival to an ambitious dance program to a huge ukulele jam session.

From Zubin Mehta sipping champagne onstage during the Philharmonic’s first concert there, through the birth of opera and theater companies (and one of the great works of American drama), to a celebrated concert hall and a new ballet troupe – with plenty of Oscar lore and offstage drama along the way.

“In many cases, arts organizations’ collection of data has been driven by the need to comply with funders’ reporting requirements rather than by a desire to collect information that could improve their future decision making. While the databases that have been generated through this process provide rich sources of information, it is not always clear what that information is good for, or how individual organizations can benefit from it.”

“Worried about facing national ridicule if a Satanic group is allowed to give out coloring books to children, the Orange County School Board moved Thursday toward preventing any outside group from distributing religious materials on campus.” Said the board chairman, “This really has, frankly, gotten out of hand. I think we’ve seen a group or groups take advantage of the open forum we’ve had.”

“As humans, we criticize because we care deeply about things. We don’t criticize because we seek to attack someone, we criticize because we want to make many other people feel welcome.”

“The project also raises thorny questions about private control over public spaces, the secretive planning process behind it and the potential competition between it and other new cultural institutions hoping to make their mark on the city.”

“People might not speak up so much in London, maybe because they don’t have that same passionate feeling of belonging, whereas audiences here will shout at me or stop me in the bar – nine times out of 10 because they enjoyed something, but also to tell me if they think something’s crap or to ask ‘what’s this performance art nonsense?'”

“The accumulation of Koenig’s little judgments throughout the show — and there are many more examples — should feel familiar to anyone who has spent much of her life around well-intentioned white people who believe that equality and empathy can only be achieved through a full, but ultimately bankrupt, understanding of one another’s cultures.”

“Any chamber of commerce will tell you that the arts help cities flourish by adding to quality of life, retaining creative talent and attracting business to the region. But maybe it’s simpler than that.”

“While administrative staffers on payrolls of Chicago theaters, performance collectives and small dance companies generally make at least minimum wage, performers, sometimes categorized as solo independent contractors and thus beyond the legal reach of minimum wage, might be paid little or, in some cases, nothing.”