Category: issues

“[L]ike Casals, whose refusal to perform under Franco made him a symbol of heroic resistance, or Rostropovich, whose political beliefs led to exile from his own country and a resulting sense of moral authority. Once you’ve won that authority, what is your responsibility to use it, and how?”

Rocco Landesman’s visit “came in the wake of major arts-funding disappointment for San Diego. Last year, local organizations received just a sliver of the $50 million in economic stimulus funds distributed by the NEA…. San Diego’s share of the stimulus amounted to two grants totaling $75,000, the same amount that went to Fresno.”

“It’s not every arts institution where the person in charge can tell a visiting federal agency head, as [the president of Skid Row’s Inner-City Arts] told Landesman, ‘Our street dwellers are very proud of this place. We never get broken into, knock on wood.'”

“Advocates of historic preservation have shifted into survival mode. They argue that the program, with its relatively meager federal funding of $30 million annually, has created more than 16,000 jobs across the country at a cost of about $14,000 each. They point out that the White House’s federal stimulus package is creating jobs at a cost of $248,000 each.”

Festival chief executive Kate Gould said the Festival broke all targets, selling 66,000 tickets worth $3.4 million with “unprecedented attendances” of 650,000 people, including free events.

“Perhaps one could argue that the elite university has become a more democratic place, so that, no matter their backgrounds or views, supremely talented individuals can find a place, if they try. Whether or not this is true, one still has to wonder: How would Walt Whitman have fared as a member of a university English department, elite or otherwise?”

“This mass cultural shift towards the desire for ‘educated taste’ has led to historic levels of cultural insecurity. Who can doubt that many of the people who drag themselves through a Booker winner are doing it out of a sense of “self-improvement” rather than a real hunger for literature? Similarly, a significant portion of the audience sitting through any production of Krapp’s Last Tape are there because it makes them feel a cut above.”

“The city isn’t exactly known for its boisterous and vital art scene, but Boston’s big cultural secret is that it has all the elements to build something genuinely important in the art world, and genuinely different. Boston could become the place where America’s most exciting young artists converge.”

“Sadly, the glories of Iraq’s civilisation are displayed for a lonely few. Any hopes of a surge in cultural tourism have been quashed by the precarious security situation. There are far more people working at the museum – including a swarm of middle-age men smoking and chatting in the lobby – than there are visitors.”

“Egypt will shoulder the costs of restoring the country’s Jewish houses of worship, said the culture minister Tuesday, two days after a historic synagogue in Cairo’s ancient Jewish quarter was rededicated … [The] ministry views Jewish sites as much a part of Egypt’s culture as Muslim mosques or Coptic churches, and the restorations would not require any foreign funding.”