Category: issues

“The current generation of Russians tasked with the activity of making culture and heritage more accessible by using digital technology have the unique privilege of starting from scratch. So the stereotypes from the Soviet era are no longer relevant. And in this moment of building something new, some elegant ideas are being developed and put into action.”

“Too many of our great arts institutions have migrated from the typical challenge of balancing the annual budget to a far deeper evaluation of their very viability.”

“Arts Council England will have its budgets for 2013 to 2015 cut by £11.6 million … These are in-settlement cuts and are on top of reductions to funding already announced at the comprehensive spending review in 2010.”

“The number of philanthropic donations to charitable causes worth £1 million or more reached their highest level in five years during 2010/11, although their overall value has fallen.”

“Who runs the internet? For the past 30 years, pretty much no one.” And that was deliberate. “But perhaps not for much longer. This week, 2000 people have gathered for the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to discuss, in part, whether they should be in charge.”

“The first time I write in a new format–travel essay, screenplay, apology e-mail–I read a bunch of examples. But when I want my writing to improve, I read something that forces me to think about words differently.”

“A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace.”

Donmar Warehouse director Josie Rourke “said ten years of investment in the arts under the previous government had ‘provided the most unbelievable infrastructure,’ and expressed concern that the coalition ‘might be at the point of endangering that.'”

“Even among the great masters, it is imperfection, not perfection, that is the normal condition of art, and the higher you aim, the more likely you are to miss. I’m not talking about the inconsistency of prolific but uneven artists … The fact is that even the greatest of artists have been known to produce major works in which they nonetheless fail to realize their creative intentions with total certainty.”

“Why do we settle in, smirking, to devour a review excoriating a movie we never had any intention of seeing, a restaurant in a city a thousand miles away?”