Category: issues

“Ninety-two percent of the nearly 100 respondents in a survey conducted in May by the Bridgespan Group said they were feeling the effects of the downturn. Eighty percent of charity officials reported that their organizations were experiencing financial stress, in another study conducted in April by the Johns Hopkins University’s Listening Post Project. Nearly 40 percent of the 363 respondents described the stress as ‘severe.'”

“The costs and complexities of big-name architecture have fueled a revulsion against architectural spectacles in today’s miserable economy — including the engineering acrobatics Calatrava is famous for. Spectacle, in great boulevards and grand buildings, is one of the great pleasures of city living. Still ASO’s leadership looks wise for recognizing that the times are simply not right for Calatrava’s design.”

“The House of Representatives today approved $170-million budgets for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2010: a 9.7% increase for each over their current $155 million. … The issue now: the Senate Appropriations Committee’s budget proposal for the cultural agencies calls for $161.3 million each….”

“The headline on the Guardian column reads, ‘Art criticism is not a democracy.’ It’s an odd thing to write, since art criticism is, in point of fact, every bit a democracy these days, as the 129 comments appended to Jonathan Jones’s work attest. And the ‘professionals’ had better figure out a way to stay on top of the pile before someone comes along and knocks them off for good.”

“A judge has ruled that a Napa food and wine museum founded by the late vintner Robert Mondavi can proceed with its plan to get out of bankruptcy, despite objections from some creditors.”

In San Francisco: “It will be the world’s only museum dedicated to the life of Disney, who besides creating Mickey Mouse and “Bambi,” palled around with surrealist master Salvador Dali, designed futuristic theme parks and had a rideable miniature train behind his Los Angeles-area home.”

“The reason so much average or absolutely awful art gets promoted is that no one seems to understand what criticism is; if nothing is properly criticised, mediocrity triumphs. A critic is basically an arrogant bastard who says “this is good, this is bad” without necessarily being able to explain why. At least, not instantly.”

“Drivers on London Underground trains have started reading out quotations from philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre in a bid to cheer up passengers. This is just about all we need.”

Thousands of less coddled students recently staged protests across Germany against their conditions. “Back education, not banks”, demanded protesters fed up with overcrowded lecture halls, crumbling campuses, tuition fees and a chaotic conversion from the traditional diploma to a European two-tier degree system.

Do non-profit arts groups “perpetuate the undervaluing of art by expecting to have artists’ collaboration without paying them What They Are Worth?”