Category: issues

“A member of the cast of ‘Porgy and Bess’ stayed with a Pacific Heights friend during the opera’s run here. One night when the singer, an African American, was parking, a local woman emerged from her house, approached and demanded to know why she was there. … The next night, when the singer lingered in her car making a phone call, the woman apparently summoned police….”

“Foster + Partners has been given a second chance to masterplan the $2.7 billion West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong The British starchitect, together with Rem Koolhaas and local designer Rocco Yim Sen-kee, make up the three-strong team named as consultants on the conceptual plans for the cultural and artistic hub.” Foster’s previous plan was shelved in 2006 following objections to his proposed 2.4km glass canopy.

A couple of giant obstacles are built into the arts’ economic equation. One is that “arts organizations have a very difficult time achieving productivity improvements. … A Balanchine ballet that required 32 dancers in the 1950s still requires 32 dancers today.” So costs escalate faster than in other industries, a problem compounded by the fact that “one simply cannot sell more tickets than one has seats.”

“When it comes to shock, the different arts seem to be out of phase with each other. The big shock of modernism arrived in verse, painting, music and dance at around the same time: the beginning of the 20th century. In terms of material and subject matter, though, the genres are all over the place.”

“Switching to the Deutsche Bank site could let it move ahead more quickly, since it would be less encumbered by competing interests, and since the bank building, which has not yet been demolished, has a structural foundation that could be reused, saving on construction costs, people with knowledge of the proposal said.”

“The long-delayed Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center site is making a comeback. A new proposal would rescue the PAC from the tangle of infrastructure in the middle of the Trade Center site and plunk it down where the Deutsche Bank building currently stands. The move would allow construction on the PAC to begin far earlier than previously contemplated.”

“Tony Hall, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, was today confirmed as the chair of a new Cultural Olympiad board,” which “will comprise Arts Council chief executive Alan Davey, Royal Shakespeare Company director Vicky Heywood, Barbican managing director Sir Nicholas Kenyon, BBC director general Mark Thompson, Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota, the mayor’s adviser on arts and culture Munira Mirza, and Jude Kelly, the Southbank Centre artistic director who has been overseeing the project to date.”

“The hard truth about the future of journalism is that nobody knows for sure what will happen; the current system is so brittle, and the alternatives are so speculative, that there’s no hope for a simple and orderly transition from State A to State B. Chaos is our lot; the best we can do is identify the various forces at work shaping various possible futures. Two of the most important are the changing natures of the public, and of subsidy.”

“A survey by Barclays Wealth of 500 wealthy individuals in the UK and US revealed that around 75pc had not reduced their contributions to charity, while more than one in four had increased their giving in the last 18 months.” At the same time, “the report indicated that donors were becoming more discerning about how they donated their money.”

“Local councils across the UK are to compete to become Britain’s ‘city of culture’, under a new scheme which aims to build on the success enjoyed by Liverpool’s arts organisations during its stint as European Capital of Culture in 2008.” (London, already overflowing with cultural offerings, will not be eligible.)