Category: issues

The Barbican Centre has announced the flagship arts programming planned around the 2012 London Olympics. A few of the highlights: Juliette Binoche playing Strindberg’s Miss Julie, a major Bauhaus retrospective titled Art as Life, a month-long season by Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, and the UK premiere of Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach.

“Nobody paints a painting, writes a poem or puts on a play with the intention of having an economic impact – that’s just a byproduct. Money is easy for consultants to measure, but it tells you nothing about the quality of the experience for either artist or audience. What’s interesting about the new Edinburgh study is that it understands this.”

“In a stunning admission, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said Thursday he was wrong in proposing ‘draconian’ cuts to local arts projects in his 2012 budget. Instead, Reed has fully restored funding to 2011 levels for the grants program sponsoring groups and emerging artists.” (The city’s total arts budget, with funds restored: $470,000.)

“Edinburgh’s festivals are worth £261 million to the Scottish economy, creating thousands of jobs and generating spending of more than £40m on accommodation alone, according to a new report.”

“Four years after celebrating approval of a new downtown performing arts center, the Orlando City Council on Monday signed off on a new, post-recession financing plan that allows the stalled project to start construction.”

When London Councils (the umbrella body for the local borough governments) cut £3 million from its arts budget last December, a judge canceled the cuts and ordered a do-over of the process. The result: the councils have now cancelled all local funding for arts organizations, starting this autumn.

“Andrew Lloyd Webber’s charitable foundation is to embark on a £32 million grant-giving programme targeted at supporting the arts.” The money comes from the sale last year of a Picasso painting from ALW’s collection.

Rio’s new culture secretary, Emilio Kalil, has doubled the city’s annual budget from R53m to R106m ($33.4m to $66.7m). “Rio lost a lot of its power when Brasilia became the capital, but it has a lot more money now, and the focus of the world is on us because of the World Cup and the Olympics,” said Kalil.

“The role that literacy plays… is to give expression to the inclination we have to ask the questions anew for each generation: Who are we? Why are we here? How do we tell our story to the next generation? Well, what is our story? It depends, doesn’t it, on what perspective we take, who is doing the telling, how it is being recorded, preserved, “curated” if you will.”

The money, raised by the sale of a Picasso painting last year, is intended to make “a significant contribution to many people’s lives”.