Category: issues

“As Europeans we should start looking at our cultural sector as a reservoir of hope, ideas and new economic growth that can lead us out of the crisis. The Europe of tomorrow is only going to be as successful and liveable as the ideas we have to make it grow. We all need master what artists are already good at – making more with less, finding fresh new perspectives and exciting new combinations. Art is not only a pleasurable icing on the cake; it is also a way of thinking and a practice of working innovatively with reality that can inspire us all to do better.”

“For filmmakers, movie production officials and even some politicians, the haul was a clear endorsement of the so-called French cultural exception – the idea that filmmaking and other arts should be protected from the ravages of a market economy, through financial support and other means.”

Anne Applebaum, Washington Post/Slate foreign affairs columnist (and wife of Poland’s foreign minister): “Twice in one day, in other words, I encountered mobs of people, pushing and shoving one another, desperate to get into a London cultural event. Those who had booked well in advance clutched their ticket as if it contained a winning lottery number.”

“More than $350 million in arts projects have been funded by redevelopment agencies in Los Angeles County over the past 45 years, including construction of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Grand Avenue headquarters ($23 million) and the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts ($60 million).” Now the redevelopment programs have been shelved.

“Public collections are kept in trust for the public. The thing about trusts is that you don’t go radically altering (in this case selling) the asset kept in trust. If you treat a trust as a rainy day fund, it simply ceases to exist.”

“At their best, public apologies restore relationships or even improve them. At their worst, the perpetrator ends up needing to apologize for the botched attempt and the initial offense, said attorney and business ethics expert Lauren Bloom, author of the Art of the Apology. Even a lousy attempt, however, is better than nothing.”

“With a bit of reverence, librarians carefully wind an antique library clock near the circulation desk in a temple of learning called the Providence Athenaeum. This is one of the oldest libraries in the United States, a 19th-century library with the soul of a 21st-century rave party. In fact, the Rhode Island institution has been called a national model for civic engagement.”

“Arts Council England is to incorporate eco-friendly clauses into its funding agreements with national portfolio organisations, making it the first arts funding body in the world to have environmental sustainability as a requirement of subsidy.”

When the NEA gives money to community arts projects but California’s budget wipes out the state agencies that fund the same types of projects, what’s the message to communities and artists? (Pretty mixed.)

“Recently published research found that 40% of British children aged five to 12 have never visited an art gallery. Claiming to have identified a “culture starved’ generation, the study also found, somewhat less dramatically, that 17% of children have never visited a museum with their parents. On closer reading, the research seems to be part of a public relations ploy to get parents to take their children to cultural venues in Britain’s second largest city.”