Category: issues

It took three decades, more than half a dozen starchitects, several public referenda, entirely too many turf battles and logistical snafus, and around a billion dollars in total – including $354 million raised during the current nasty recession – but the long-dreamed-of Dallas Arts District is nearing completion as two of its crown jewels open to the public.

“[P]erhaps instead of talking about vampire crazes, we should really be talking about vampire droughts. The brief, anomalous periods when few or perhaps even no vampire movies, books, or TV shows are produced at all. The Garlic Years.”

“In this era of Internet blasts and ornery town-hall meetings,” National Endowment for the Humanities chairman Jim Leach “wants to buck what he considers one of the 21st century’s most insidious trends: the end of civility. It’s something he’s been harping on since the mid-1990s. ‘I am appalled by the notion of cultural wars,'” he says.

The Grammy-winning cabaret star and “scholar-collector of classic American popular songs” will reduce his performing schedule to serve as artistic director of the new $147 million Carmel Regional Performing Arts Center in suburban Indianapolis.

“While President Obama and leaders from 19 other world economic powers meet at the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh, Michelle Obama is scheduled to shepherd dignitaries’ spouses through a day of arts-hopping Friday.”

“Rocco Landesman, the new NEA chairman, issued a written explanation today ‘to clarify the issues’ surrounding an Aug. 10 conference call in which Yosi Sergant, representing the NEA, invited representatives from the arts world to get involved in President Obama’s United We Serve volunteerism initiative. “

“You mean to tell me all those links [from angry conservative web sites] are about an August 10th conference call that tried to wrangle up support for the current President’s National Day of Service – a call in which not one cent of the NEA’s $155 million budget was dispensed or even offered?”

“Filmmaker and art community consultant Patrick Courrielche has made a quite a splash on conservative talk shows by releasing audio clips and transcripts of a conference call that occurred August 10. … But he has not been been forthcoming about how he came to have the recorded conversations,” possibly because “recording that call was illegal in several states where the participants are based.”

“It’s not clear whether charging an extra $1.28 would deter the average patron from visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art – probably not. But many arts organizations are teetering on the edge financially, after a sharp decline in private donations. For some, an increase in ticket prices could become the breaking point.”