Category: issues

“People of color are far more likely to participate in some cultural activity during the course of a year than are white people. Ditto families with children over childless couples. Yet people who attend a performance or a museum are not likely to return within a year, or maybe even longer.”

“Businesses in the U.K. are cutting spending on the arts, and aren’t planning to increase it until 2011, according to a survey…. Among arts groups, 68.2 percent reported decreased levels of business investment, and more than half of those said they suffered a drop exceeding 50 percent.”

“As the Obama administration tries to rebuild America’s image abroad, do we need to send dance companies and theater companies abroad? My response, not popular with my peers running arts organizations across the United States, is no. … But that does not mean that cultural diplomacy should be discarded.”

“We heard nothing about this until late last night. It must have been a very last-minute deal. Not only will it hit the arts organizations, but it will make it harder for people to pay.”

Despite warnings of budget cuts. Scotland’s cultural sector gets off with only minor damage.

“Most European elites… have not debated seriously the potential effects of introducing into this land of postmodern chatter millions of devout believers in another religion, one previously seen as antagonistic to European culture.”

“Why are deathbed masterpieces so unusual? Mainly, I suspect, because prettified Hollywood-style deaths, in which the sudden disappearance of makeup is the only outward sign that a terminal illness has reached its denouement, are so uncommon.”

The Artist Pension Fund is “an investment scheme that provides artists – many of whom struggle to make a living, let alone plan for retirement – with some financial security in old age. When the scheme was first set up five years ago in New York, its prospects were dim.”

“In a move to provide more money for Canadian artists to tour internationally and focus on commercially viable projects, the Tories have redirected funds that were used to help artists on the musical fringe record their work.”

“It has been nearly 20 years since Congress repealed the provisions used during the cold war to deny visas to prominent foreign intellectuals, artists and activists because of their left-leaning politics” — a practice “eagerly revived” by the Bush administration “under a flimsily supported guise of fighting terrorism.”