Category: issues

“Many arts organisations across the UK are feeling the squeeze as their public subsidies are cut. Can millionaire benefactors step in to fill the gap?”

“The Dallas Arts District gathers this city’s major arts museums and performance halls in a 19-block area to the northeast of the shimmering downtown skyline. The district is billed as the nation’s largest contiguous urban arts district. Is it a good idea to organize arts buildings in such a clear and concentrated fashion? Or does the more mixed-up Chicago way make better sense?”

“Lots of these people actually print in their kitchen or garage. The work that comes out looks like it’s super professionally done, but in fact they’re screening these prints by hand and hanging them up on clothes hangers.”

“The city is full of streets and squares named after Beethoven (five of them), Bach (four), Wagner, Schubert, Schönberg, Schiller, Lessing, Schopenhauer, Fichte, Hegel. … And Berlin also uses street names as atonement for the crimes of history: hence Jesse-Owens-Allee, Hannah-Arendt-Strasse, Ben-Gurion-Strasse and a platz named after the great critic Walter Benjamin.”

“But here at one of the nation’s largest rodeos, which is expected to draw two million visitors over three weeks this month, a softly lighted wine garden serves up chardonnays, live jazz and educational seminars that go into picking the perfect vintage to pair with dessert. There’s also a massage booth, a flower-arranging competition – and a children’s show.”

“Few questions on the so-called Big Test appear to have provoked more anxious chatter — at least in this era of texting and online comment streams and discussion threads — than an essay prompt in some versions of the SAT administered last Saturday in which students were asked to opine on reality television.”

“Here’s the thing: Nobody reads or goes to the ballet because it’s the right thing to do. People who read literary fiction or listen to Brahms do it because they love it, and because they get something from it, and stressing that will always be a better way to evangelize about what they love than accusing So You Think You Can Dance of being inadequately dire.”

“NPR, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, all those kind of frivolous things that government shouldn’t be in the business of funding with tax dollars — those should all be on the chopping block as we talk about the $14-trillion debt that we’re going to hand to our kids and our grandkids.”

“At its most basic, the reason for Berlin’s popularity among British artists is the combination of a generously funded cultural infrastructure, the city’s rich and fascinating historical texture and, crucially, cheap property. … And then there is the feeling of ease: the gentle pace at which Berlin’s inhabitants get round the city by bike; the wide, uncrowded streets.”

“The ACE will publish its judgments at the end of March. The process of culling must be agonising, and I don’t suppose there will be positively good news for many. But I hope that success will be rewarded without fear or favour – and that means flagships such as the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre as well as brave new experiments in the regions.”