Category: issues

“Arts institutions in California need all the money they can get at this point, and a new bill currently making its way through the halls of Sacramento is poised to help. If it can only make its way out of committee, that is.”

“The endowment’s current slogan is ‘A Great Nation Deserves Great Art.’ Wince. That imperial bit of provincial pomposity has things exactly backward.”

“[C]utting back marketing and staff is the last thing an organization should do, says arts administration guru Michael Kaiser. However, small-budget arts groups feel they have no option. It’s either cut a marketing position or cut back on artistic product.” Kennedy Center president Kaiser cautioned arts leaders last week: “They don’t think anyone will notice. But marketing is the only way to grow an audience.”

“A serious logjam in the U.S. Copyright Office has created a growing mountain of paper applications, more than the staff can process. … The problem has tripled the processing time for a copyright from six to 18 months, and delays are expected to get worse in coming months. The library’s inspector general has warned that the backlog threatens the integrity of the U.S. copyright system.” The problem stems from a new electronic process.

“As everyone knows, … writers are increasingly being shed by publishers struggling to keep their shrinking companies alive. And while the internet has provided even wider potential audiences for arts journalists, it has not yet produced a viable business model that can finance their employment. So, are arts journalism institutes, like Columbia’s or USC’s, breeding grounds for the futile pursuit of a vanishing profession?”

“The first lady, Michelle Obama, visited New York City on Monday to promote the arts, celebrating opening night at the American Ballet Theater and the reopening of part of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Among her audience at the museum were “dozens of public schoolchildren. ‘This is your place, too,’ she told the children.”

“After more than three decades as artistic director of the festival’s chamber music series, [Charles] Wadsworth — long credited with transforming the genre into a populist art form in this country — will no longer imprint his blend of exuberance and erudition on the midday concerts that Gian Carlo Menotti, the founder of its parent, Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, likened to an aperitif.”

“Indeed, anyone who uses P2P realizes that long tail content is harder to find there, and when you do find it, it takes longer to download. Hit songs near the top of the charts, however, often download in mere seconds, which could go a long way towards explaining why the Long Tail theory doesn’t apply to P2P the way it does to services where each song is as easy to download as the next.”

“Vaudeville, cabaret, they’ve been taking requests for centuries now, and we’re a little late in getting on board. We’re giving the patrons really their only opportunity to impact the programming, and it is very small, but it’s a nice gesture.”

“Due to the massive population drop-off, vast swaths of cultural knowledge have been lost forever, contributing to the sense of insolubility that surrounds Easter’s puzzling past.”