Category: issues

“[N]early two dozen institutions,” including, this week, the New York Philharmonic, “have received grants from the Leon Levy Foundation since 2007 to identify, preserve and digitize their archival collections and to make them available online to scholars and to the public.” Some organizations “barely realized they held potentially valuable archives.”

“The recipients include the Alliance for the Arts, which will use the money to help create Web applications for the city’s cultural industry; The Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island, which wants to repurpose the North Shore waterfront as a creative sector incubator; and the Institute for Urban Design, to help launch Urban Design Week.”

The South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center “squats on Southwest 211th Street in mid-construction with missing glass panels – more than two years after it was to open.” The county commission diverted the money from the complex’s operating budget: “Since there are no shows going on in the center, it doesn’t need the $2 million.”

“The budget would cut Arts Board funding by nearly 75%, because slicing city funding from $160,000 to $50,000 would also lead to the loss of a matching $25,000 state grant. That’s a tiny fraction of the $1.45 billion city budget, noted Christine Harris, of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Milwaukee.”

“The shimmering, louvered canopy of the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House provides three acres of shade while extending a Dallas-sized welcome to an arts district that hopes to challenge New York’s Lincoln Center.”

“Turmoil at Escondido’s struggling performing arts center was partly alleviated this week when city officials agreed to tell arts center trustees how their performance would be judged and what might prompt the city to reduce their power. The move comes one week after city officials threatened to withhold operating cash from the center.”

The pilot “Any Given Child” project announced Friday for schools in Sacramento, Calif., could be expanded to as many as three cities each year, the center said. Under the strategy, the Kennedy Center will link local arts groups with schools to help teach students in grades K-8.

“In a world of shallower roots, greater personal mobility and a reduced sense of “ownership” of the community and its resources, where are the new donors to put on the mantle of generosity the previous generation wore so proudly?”

“The Mr Fix-it of the performing arts, Noel Staunton, has been tapped to run the Brisbane Festival, replacing Lyndon Terracini, who has taken over as artistic director of Opera Australia.”

“Until now, the highest number of women honoured in one year was three, in 2004. American Linda Buck won for medicine, Elfriede Jelinek of Austria was awarded the Nobel for literature and Kenyan Wangari Maathai was given the Nobel Peace Prize.”