Category: issues

The strategy lists four principles guiding whether ACE will invest public money: “ambition and quality”, “inclusivity and relevance”, “dynamism”, and “environmental responsibility”. The ACE chief executive, Darren Henley, said he wanted to move away from having centres of excellence in a small number of places and instead bring “world-class art and culture to people’s doorsteps”. – The Guardian

The largest potential casualty of the closings is the Hong Kong Arts Festival, which is scheduled to open on February 8 with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta’s world premiere of Alexander Goehr’s The Master Said at City Hall. – Musical America

When Donald Judd, the artist who came to the West Texas desert village and attracted other artists there, died in 1994, he left his foundation with $400 in the bank and Marfa faced doom. Then Crowley, a Houston attorney and developer, and his gallerist wife came to town and pumped a lot of money into it, buying properties, building businesses and bringing in new and prosperous residents. But over the last few years, as Crowley’s plans have gotten bigger and more commercial, many Marfans think that this man who owns the whole town has started messing it up for everyone else. – Texas Monthly

Long one of the stingiest states in terms of support for the arts, Georgia is now virtually at rock bottom, not willing even to put up enough money to collect the full amount of matching funds available from the National Endowment for the Arts. This year’s grants fall $300,000 short of the NEA’s allocations. – ArtsATL

The answer seems obvious, and it seems like it must be no. And yet, says a (supposedly) liberal and progressive architect who recently agreed to work with the homophobic and environmentally horrifying Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, “If there’s a responsibility that comes from the creative platform we’ve created, it is to use that platform to change the world for the better.” – The Guardian (UK)

As controversy continues to swirl (for instance, as HuffPost recounts the ways American Dirt takes passages from Latinx writers’ nonfiction books on immigration) and as the book itself climbs the bestseller charts, Selma Hayek apologizes for praising the book without having read it – thus, perhaps, exposing the celebrity book endorsement for what it truly is: A PR racket. – The Washington Post

“Based on responses from our survey, a high share (66%) of cultural workers identify as White (non-Hispanic), compared to just 32% of New York City’s population. In contrast, Hispanics, Blacks/African Americans, and Asians are underrepresented – 10% of cultural workers identify as Black/African American, compared to 22% of the city’s population; 11% identify as Hispanic, compared to 29% of city residents; and 6% identify as Asian, compared to 14% of city residents.” SMU Data Arts

Under the Trump Administration, the challenge for cultural workers who agree to participate in official events is akin to swimming upstream in boiling waters. Civil servants, thinking of the long game—the point in the future when Trump will be gone and our democracy will be restored—task cultural workers with creating a counter-narrative of America while their employer puts forth a pernicious, deleterious version of the country. But how will this anticipated moment of restored democracy arrive if we behave as if events unfolding in this country were normal, as if our collective house were not on fire? – The New Yorker