One sad example: “The schools superintendent in Lancaster, Pa., said he had to eliminate 15 of the district’s 20 librarians to save full-day kindergarten classes.”
Category: issues
NY City’s Urban Planning Czar
“Chairing the City Planning Commission since 2002, Amanda Burden, age 67, has revolutionized its role in the city, transforming a once-sleepy bureaucratic agency into an activist department championing good design by using zoning as a weapon to enforce her vision.”
The Sorry State Of Arts Journalism
“There’s really good art out there, and there are good arts writers. The arts media landscape is like Detroit; desolated and uncertain, but with the unexpected fecundity that comes from enterprising people taking on whole deserted blocks as creative frontier. Right now, it’s the golden age of hard times.”
Michael Kaiser Says UK Arts Orgs Must Program Farther In Advance
The current head of the Kennedy Center and former leader of the Royal Opera House says that if British arts organizations want to attract more private funding, they should plan their programs three to five years in advance rather than the six-to-twelve-month period most of them use currently.
Australian Study: Where’s The Meaningful OnlIne Arts Content?
“Research commissioned by the Australia Council for the Arts has identified a gap in supply and demand for meaningful online content. People want to use digital media at all stages of what the study calls the arts “attendance journey”: from learning about a show or exhibition, to buying tickets and sharing the experience at the event or afterwards.”
Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre: What A Difference A Hall Makes
The Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet of Canada “agree that the new home by architect Jack Diamond has boosted performances to a new level, and helped to draw audiences not just from the Toronto area, but beyond.”
Only Canadians Would Respond To A Riot This Way
The day after the Stanley Cup riot, “many volunteers gathered in downtown Vancouver to help clean up and repair the damage. They wrote thousands of emotional messages on the plywood covering storefronts, sidewalks, and police vehicles – messages expressing anger at the rioters, pride in the city, and gratitude toward police and emergency workers.”
Disconnect: Have Our Arts Institutions Fallen In To A Moral Gap?
“Perhaps it’s not too romantic to suggest that art, and the institutions that advance it, should, among other things, engage our better moral senses and our common trials and aspirations, or risk irrelevance.”
Are We Ghettoizing Our Cultural History?
“With any prospective Latino museum set to sit alongside the National Museum of the American Indian and a scheduled African-American museum, the story of the American people will be segregated into separate buildings, each devoted to a particular ethnic category. Is there not a danger that American history is being fragmented into self-contained ghettos?”
Are Prize Juries Taking Over The Arts?
“The rise of the prize means the public is more and more guided by official taste as embodied in juries. It is often said the critic is a dying breed. But juries are replacing critics, and they exert influence in a far more questionable way. A jury does not have to explain its decision to the public; does not have to say why one artist is better than another.”