Category: issues

“Poets stopped invoking the muse centuries ago — eventually turning instead to caffeine, alcohol and amphetamines — but painters, musicians, and even choreographers have celebrated their actual female inspirers in their work up until recent times. And now, we learn, having a muse isn’t a benefit restricted to artists.”

“Private sponsorship is almost non-existent and the decline in value of the Icelandic krona has made international cooperation difficult if not impossible. Nevertheless the country’s biggest museum, the Reykjavík Art Museum (RAM), has seen visitor numbers increase, and the country’s young art scene remains lively.”

Almost everyone agrees funding problems will become more acute in the upcoming three to five years. Adaptability is replacing growth as a barometer of success.

Minnesota voters approved new funding for the arts in the amount of about $45 million a year. Question is: how to spend it?

“The total amount of money that charities raised online rose in 2008, as charities attracted more donors to their Web sites, according to a new study. … But the average size of those contributions decreased by 17 percent, from $86 in 2007 to $71 in 2008.”

“Can a leader of the commercial theater shift to a job with a nonprofit constituency? And can someone used to being the boss — and a notably outspoken one in a world that often speaks in not-for-attribution, backstage whispers — be politic and diplomatic heading a government agency that answers to the Oval Office and Capitol Hill?”

“Any guy who could bring Tony Kushner’s ‘Angels in America’ to Broadway, as Landesman did at his company’s Walter Kerr Theatre in 1993, represents a big step in the right direction. The reason is simple. The NEA cannot be successful, whatever its format, unless successful people working full-time in the arts are addressing the powerful work of their most talented peers.”

Ask Amy probably doesn’t get letters like this: “I am on a pro-bono consulting project with a local nonprofit. Unfortunately, I’m simply not sure this organization can make it. There’s a gung-ho executive director but a total turkey of a board. … Do you have a view on whether a dud board can be rehabilitated? How scary should I be with these deadbeats to prompt some action?”

“The spectacular new arts high school in downtown Los Angeles cost an equally spectacular $232 million. Now that the campus is complete, with its state-of-the-art theater, ceramics studios and other eye-popping amenities, the critical next step for school leaders is to avoid wrecking it.” One danger: diminishing “what could become a national beacon of arts education by turning it into a neighborhood school.”

“Billionaire hedge-fund manager George Soros pledged $50 million to the Robin Hood Foundation at its New York gala dinner, helping the charity raise a record sum last night to help the city’s poor. The event took $72.7 million, the most Robin Hood has raised in a single night, defying the slump in charitable giving caused by the current recession. … To qualify for Soros’s gift of $50 million, Robin Hood has to raise an additional $150 million over two years.”