“At the end of the 19th century, an amateur meant someone who was motivated by the sheer love of doing something; professional was a rare, pejorative term for grubby money-making. Now, amateurism is a byword for sloppiness, disorganisation and ineptitude, while professionalism … is the default description of excellence. … Is it time we let some of the hot air out of professionalism?”
Category: issues
What Legacy Will Vancouver’s Cultural Olympiad Leave?
“For three years, the arts festival has funded a wide range of performances and exhibitions, with the third and final instalment, an eight-week program, officially beginning on Friday. … But will eight weeks of extreme culture have any lasting impact? Does $20-million buy any sort of legacy?”
American Arts Respond To The Haitian Crisis
The same night George Clooney hosts a two-hour telethon on multiple networks, “Washington’s Kennedy Center will donate proceeds from a National Symphony Orchestra concert,” aiming “to raise about $100,000 in ticket sales for the Haiti Relief and Development Fund of the American Red Cross.”
Why Are Professors Perceived As Liberal?
“Conjure up the classic image of a humanities or social sciences professor, the fields where the imbalance is greatest: tweed jacket, pipe, nerdy, longwinded, secular — and liberal. Even though that may be an outdated stereotype, it influences younger people’s ideas about what they want to be when they grow up.”
The Problem With Arts Philanthropy?
“The history of arts organisations shows that success in fundraising often leads to the employment of more fundraisers, not more artists. What’s more, although a few bankers might be persuaded that public redemption lies in grand philanthropic gestures or conspicuous compassion, there’s a danger that the boards of arts organisations often become over-dominated by givers who use their financial muscle to gain a say.”
What Happens When A Trustee Disappears
“It is really difficult when you have a board of one. A lot of things can happen. That’s why most nonprofits have larger boards, so decisions are not made on personalities.”
The Holy Fools And Madmen Of India
How some impoverished, traumatized present-day Indians find salvation in extreme (but often very old) spiritual practices, among them music, dance-drama and tantra – “living in a mystical anarchy in a great open air lunatic asylum for the divinely mad.”
Satirists Take Aim At Jihadist Extremism
“Have you heard the one about the Muslim who wakes up one day to discover he is a Jew? Some of Britain’s best-known comedy writers risk causing offence by lampooning radical Islam on the big screen.”
The Great Flowering Of The Great Depression
“The Depression, for all the misery it spread, ‘also left us with the most buoyant, most effervescent popular culture of the twentieth century’.”
Under Labour Or Tories, Future Of Arts Funding Is Tough
“Speaking at the first ever State of the Arts Conference, organised by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce and Arts Council England, culture secretary Ben Bradshaw and his shadow Jeremy Hunt both gave speeches in which they warned of a more difficult climate for arts funding over the next decade.”