Category: issues

President Obama is continuing to fill the senior ranks of the U.S. Department of Justice with the copyright industry’s favorite lawyers.

“She doesn’t like the reviews — and I’m not saying she doesn’t like them because they’re too negative. She thinks they’re dumb, or she’s disdainful of them. It really comes across that she wishes she was a working journalist– and I, of course, am so very glad she is not, after reading her weakly argued piece.”

“While increasing the NEA budget will guarantee economic growth in the arts, unless the NEA can be made independent politically and fiscally, it is unlikely that higher funding levels will be sustainable. Only a genuine federal endowment for the arts stands a chance at long-term success.”

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing when it comes to the arts in America. The good news is that President Obama wants to include the arts in his bailout package. Conservatives, however, are up in arms. The one constant in all this is that art in America has come to be seen as a frill, by everyone from right-wing talk-show hosts to the trustees of Brandeis.” Why, then, should we care about art?

“Earnings by most Canadian artists are hovering at poverty levels and the situation is likely to worsen as the worldwide recession deepens, according to a statistical profile of the country’s artists released yesterday… In fact, of the 140,000 artists analyzed, 43 per cent earned less than $10,000.”

“Hold the champagne. Not everyone in Canada’s fractured culture world is rejoicing at last week’s news that Ottawa is writing a cheque for $25 million to kick-start an annual global contest in Toronto culminating in six-figure prizes for the world’s best emerging artists in theatre, dance, music and the visual arts.”

The Gallo Center for the Arts, which opened in September 2007, ran a deficit on $2.3 million in its inaugural season. The final figure is lower than the $2.9 million overrun initially reported last August.

“Via the website www.artsincrisis.org, companies can submit online requests, and Kennedy Center officials [including renowned Mr. Fix-It Michael Kaiser]… will offer help via e-mail, by phone, by live Web chats or by visiting the arts groups.”

“Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear.” “Strauss has hitherto reveled in the more or less harmonious exploitation of the charnel house, the grave, and the gnawing worm.” Vicious indictments, yes, but in hindsight, they’re evidence of the good old days, when passionate engagement with the music was the norm.

“City- and state-funded cultural institutions are cutting programs and slashing staff – even ‘firing’ the Bronx Zoo’s porcupine – and yet their CEO pay packages would make Wall Streeters blush.” That may be a bit hyperbolic (New York’s culture industry didn’t rake in $18.4 billion in bonuses last year, after all), but the perks for the head of one recently penny-pinching institution do include “an Upper East Side apartment and a full-time maid”….