Category: issues

“Even with a down economy, there are signs that the theater could pump life back into the neighborhood. Months before it opened, the theater had sold out nearly all of its performances through April. Acts include B.B. King, Cake and the Moody Blues.”

Americans for the Arts “labeled the amendment to the Senate’s $827-billion stimulus proposal “egregious” in its exclusion of “any … museum, theater [or] art center” from sharing in the bailout. At least the arts are in popular company: Also excluded are any “gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, community park … and highway beautification project.”

“Criticism has been the backbone of newspaper arts writing since critics started appearing in large numbers on the payroll as staff writers, which didn’t come about really until the 1960s. Is it time to move past the review and embrace something more journalistic…?

“A stone parapet on the roof of the Warner Theatre buckled and then broke loose Saturday, spilling bricks and snow onto French Street.” The hall is the home of the Erie Philharmonic and Lake Erie Ballet.

“County Inspector General Christopher Mazzella’s report faults [general contractor Tower-OHL Group] for failing to properly schedule work and causing inordinate delays on the center, which is made up of two buildings and includes a 966-seat theater.” The complex is intended to anchor redevelopment of an area that has never fully recovered from Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

With a hiring freeze, reduced musicians’ fees and other “nips and tucks,” the Kimmel is reducing its current year budget by 11½ percent to $36 million in order to avoid a deficit. But “[n]o cuts in programming, operating hours, existing staff or salaries are being instituted” and no major pledges have been withdrawn.

“What do we feel here that is so unique? It may be the shock that nothing about these sites has any intrinsic significance… Stand in the box where [Lincoln] was shot and you imagine not a battle of mythic forces, but gestures by human-size figures whose actions still ominously resonate. The places become sacred because they refuse to appear sacred.”

“The poster isn’t a direct copy of the image. The background of the photo and other details are different in the poster. The poster is quite different in its use and nature from the photo, and the market for the poster strikes me as significantly distinct from that of the photo. The AP seems to be attempting to be money-grubbing here with this rather petty copyright claim.”

Tickets to Bruce Springsteen concerts supposedly available through Ticketmaster show up on another site at greatly inflated prices. TM owns both sites. Is this any way to run a ticket service?

In 2008, the U.S. Conference of Mayors offered a 10-point plan for how the president could help American cities. One of the points was “the creation of a cabinet-level Secretary of Culture and Tourism charged with forming a national policy for arts, culture and tourism.”