Category: issues

“Hundreds of theaters, museums, musical groups and other arts organizations learned this week that the state treasury froze the more than $10 million in arts grants approved last summer. The money was expected last month, but this week state officials said they don’t know when the funds will be released.”

“Over the years Ireland has provided New York with cultural assets like Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne and that occasional visitor Bono. Now the Irish government has made a more numerically quantifiable contribution in the form of a $3.5 million grant that will be used to build a new Irish Arts Center in Manhattan.”

“The Actors Fund, a human services organization that helps people who work in the performing arts and entertainment industries, is planning to build hundreds of low-income housing units in urban centers across the country over the next few years. … The projects will include low-income housing, assisted-living and nursing-home facilities.”

“In one made-for-TV evening Sunday night at the Kennedy Center, you got: a mini-opera recital, a madcap Broadway medley, a rock and jazz concert and a whole bunch of famous and accomplished people who’ve probably never encountered each other before and likely won’t again. Jack Black and Aretha Franklin? Philip Seymour Hoffman and Eddie Vedder? Yeah.”

“When many people think of the stimulus program, jobs in the arts are not what first come to mind. These are not workers building bridges and repairing schools. Furthermore, though they are usually at the bottom of the pay scale, they do indeed pay taxes and contribute to the economy. As for the organizations themselves, the money may seem minuscule but will definitely help keep doors open.”

“A critic’s duty, in the second half of the 20th century, was to uphold classical standards against the fripperies of fashion and to convey an ideal of enlightenment to commuters who glanced at a newspaper on their way to and from work. Times change. It is easy to deprecate today’s critics as unworthy of giants’ shoes, but the challenges of the 21st century are of a different order from anything the arts have known since Gutenberg made the quill obsolete.”

“In a very real sense, Dubai has been the architect of its own demise. Over the last decade or so, the city’s ruling elite has operated under the principle that there’s no challenge that can’t be met if you throw enough money at it. At times, this approach has worked well – Dubai, remember, solved its hideous traffic problem in less time than it takes your average US city to fix a pothole. But things got out of hand.”

“Education has been slower than other sectors to respond to the digital revolution but, as elsewhere, the direction is being dictated by users. Nowadays, if you have a bad teacher you can find another one on YouTube or the plethora of other video sites still popping up.”

The panel concluded that the Pentagon program, called the Human Terrain System, has two conflicting goals: counterinsurgency and research. Collecting data in the context of war, where coercion and offensive tactics are always potentially present, “can no longer be considered a legitimate professional exercise of anthropology,” the report says.

“Over the next five years 18 artists around the country will receive $50,000 unrestricted grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of an arts fellowship … The awards, known as USA Knight Fellowships, will be presented to artists who live and work in the 26 cities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers.”