Category: issues

“A quarter of a century later, with the humanities in crisis across the country and students and parents demanding ever more pragmatic, ever more job-oriented kinds of education, the curricular debates of the 1980s over courses about Western civilization and the canon seem as if they had happened on another planet.”

“Arts and Business, which helps raise money for the cultural sector, said companies invested £144m, down from £157m the year before. It comes nearly two months after Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced plans for a “year of corporate giving” to help boost private funding.”

Today, “it’s the bearers of culture rather than the wielders of power who are taxed with elitism. If the term is applied to powerful people, this is strictly for cultural reasons, as the different reputations of the identically powerful Obama and Bush attest.”

“Today a new website, wedidthis.org.uk, opens for business. It’s an intriguing idea: it hopes to support specific arts projects via donations, of any size, given online. If the project reaches its target funding, the donors will be given a small reward.”

“The more I quell my Chicken Little instincts, the more I allow myself to recognize — and enjoy — this moment of incredible intellectual abundance. And in terms of whether the “old regime” still matters, in criticism, we’re always standing on the shoulders of giants.”

“The engagement of Google’s people with higher ed has been almost totally around their Apps for Higher Education offering. These services might be great, but they are not focussed on fundamentally altering how higher ed is produced, delivered, and funded.”

“The economic slump isn’t just keeping Central Floridians from attending performing-arts events, it’s directly affecting what’s being presented on stages or hung in galleries.”

“This would herald a new move for the council, which has not sold any of its thousands of works before. The government’s Spending Review announced last year it was cutting Arts Council England’s budget by almost 30%.”

Author Peggy Orenstein was at “a toy fair, held at the Javits Center in New York, at which the merchandise for girls seems to come in only one color: pink jewelry boxes, pink vanity mirrors, pink telephones, pink hair dryers, pink fur stoles. ‘Is all this pink really necessary?’ Orenstein finally asks a sales rep. ‘Only if you want to make money,’ he replies.”

“Does all that revenue come directly from federal arts spending? No. Would slashing that spending significantly damage the revenue? Yes. The impact is direct and indirect.
Not only can we afford it, we need it — for the jobs and the return on the investment that federal arts and culture funding provide.”