Category: issues

“The recent decision to transfer the excavation permits from three well-known classical sites from non-Turkish to Turkish universities – a practice almost unheard of in the protocol-laden world of archaeology – is a cracking of the whip over foreign scholars regarded as not working fast enough to transform the country’s extensive array of antiquities into tourist attractions.”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. posed the general question in the case this way: “One day I can perform Shostakovich. Congress does something. The next day I can’t. Doesn’t that present a serious First Amendment problem?”

The novelist argues that the flagship forms of high art music and literature developed and hit their twin peaks in tandem throughout the 19th century – and laments that, while art music was transformed by modernism, novelists experimented a bit and then scurried right back into familiar forms. (Some commenters riposte that this is why contemporary novels find a wider audience than contemporary symphonic music.)

La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, the “ambitious downtown center created to celebrate the role of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles culture and history opened with great fanfare six months ago, … is staggering.” Attendance is low; fundraising is slow; contractors aren’t getting paid; the staff has been halved and the CEO fired.

“Five years to the day after first opening its halls, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts is drawing crowds young and old to musicals, flamenco and opera, finally becoming the cultural town square envisioned by its early supporters. It’s also making its budget” – four years running.

“Seeking to offer a helping hand is the Association for the Mutual Assistance of the French Nobility. The Paris group helps down-and-out nobles rediscover some of the glory. It takes legal action against commoners trying to claim noble names, pays the school fees of promising young nobles and offers an informal meeting service to single nobles.”

“Significantly, the proposed policy is not an arts policy but a cultural policy, and it threatens to swallow up the traditional or heritage arts — classical music, theatre and dance — in a much bigger area of activity called the creative industries.”

“The occasion may have been the formal inauguration of a major government arts facility. But with dancers shaking, drums pounding, and a gospel children’s choir shouting into the sun-filled air, the atmosphere at the long-awaited opening of the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center in Cutler Bay on Sunday afternoon was more like a community pep rally slash church picnic slash throw-down family party.”

The event “was conceived in 2008 as a small local festival using university performance spaces to give voice to young directors and young talent. Back then it comprised a mere 10 productions. This year there were 54 productions in 11 venues around Beijing.”

“High-end travel is as much a part of neocolonialism as rubber plantations.” How to change that? Ditch the guides, and walk.