Category: issues

“Museums, theaters and operas, already reeling from the recession, are having a tough time attracting support amid perceptions that vital services like soup kitchens and homeless shelters should receive funds first. Arts organization are retrenching, and in some cases closing, as a result of fewer sales of tickets and merchandise, arts leaders say. They’re also seeing fewer donations from individuals and corporations, and cutbacks in government funding.”

“Artists know how to look at the world – and problem solve – with fresh eyes. If businesses regularly invited photographers, crafters and writers to participate in brainstorming sessions and hold employee workshops, some new solutions and strategies might arise.” Andrea Hammer offers as possible examples photographer Art Wolfe and dance company Pilobolus.

“But raging ignorance and deep ambivalence didn’t stop me from doing a day’s lobbying work last week, in actual Senate and House office buildings, concerning an actual bill that’s actually before the first session of the actual 111th Congress and that actually affects me and most musicians I know. And of course, by ‘affects me’ I mean ‘promises to earn me more money.'”

In Wyoming, “[t]he job of preserving jobs has fallen in part to a small state agency that normally specializes in promoting the arts: The Wyoming Arts Council. The council has applied for $290,000 in National Endowment for the Arts funding through the federal stimulus act. … Already the Wyoming Arts Council receives more NEA funding per capita than any other statewide arts agency,” amounting to “about $1.30 for each man, woman and child in Wyoming.”

“The results of a nine-month study commissioned by President Nicolas Sarkozy, the [ten] proposals aim to transform Paris and its surrounding suburbs into the first sustainable ‘post-Kyoto city,’ a reference to the treaty on climate change, with an expanded Métro system and sprawling new parks.”

“Several years ago, the Legislature decided the arts, history and good beaches were so essential to New Jersey that it passed laws setting a guaranteed level of funding for those entities and others. As it looks for ways to save money in a recession budget, the Corzine administration has formulated a new approach to those laws: ignore them. Since taking office, Corzine has never fully funded the cultural offices, but this week he proposed cutting their budgets below the minimum limits required by law.”

As the newspaper industry contracts violently, arts coverage is shrinking dramatically as well. “After complaining for years of unfair or insensitive reviews, [arts administrators] have come to the realization that the only thing worse than getting criticized is being ignored. Arts journalism in the United States will surely survive — but in what form?”

The debate is joined in the UK. “Arts leaders are pointing to the bleak example of the US, where the arts, with minimal support from the public purse, exist at the whim of the market and where 10,000 arts organisations could collapse this year, according to Americans for the Arts.”

“In the age of postmodern advertising, slogans like “free store” usually mean the opposite – they are probably being used to market hyper-exclusive shops selling nothing under $1,000. But in this case free store is precisely what it says. Every item on offer inside the small shop is free. Anyone off the street can browse through its goods, select an item, and if they think they need it, walk out with it utterly without charge.”

“Gossip, in its popular and journalistic forms, is the subversive revenge of the resentful over the resented, resulting in the apparently endlessly satisfying proof that celebrities, the wealthy, and the titled have lives replete with scandal, misfortune and misery. It is nearly always best done by those who feel marginalised.”