Category: issues

“Music critics write basically for three important audiences: First, the people who attend concerts. Second, a larger group of intensely interested people who read reviews of concerts they aren’t going to hear. And third, the critic’s bosses. Ignore the third audience at your peril.”

Prosperous baby-boomers snapped up huge McMansions because they saw a house as an investment vehicle. But now the mortgage crash, rising commodity prices and high energy costs are causing a revival of smaller houses and such low-tech energy-saving features as porches, awnings and vine-covered walls.

Bitter controversy has broken out over a documentary about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who created modern Turkey from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. The filmmaker says: “I wanted to present Mustafa Kemal in a more intimate, affectionate light. All those statues, busts and flags have created a chief devoid of human qualities.” One critic thunders: “Atatürk raised up a people about to be excised from world history, and here he is presented as a drunken debaucher. Would you accept such a portrait of Churchill?”

“United States Artists’ Fellowships have been compared with the MacArthur Foundation’s ‘genius’ awards, which this year gave 25 artists $500,000 each, and the Guggenheim Fellowships, which this year gave out 190 grants in the United States and Canada, with an average award of $43,200. But what sets these fellowships apart from these larger, more established award programs is the way the group plays matchmaker between donors and artists.”

It hasn’t been felt yet. Ticket sales are good, and funding has been steady, but rocky times are likely…

City staff recommended $4.1 million in cuts to the city’s arts and culture programs when they released the 2009 draft budget last week.

Sports fans are lamenting that a huge funding plan for the arts passed in last week’s election when football’s Minnesota Vikings need money for a new stadium. And the arts and pro sports are related how?

Boston’s Museum of Fine Art’s success in fundraising “serves as an intriguing case study of how to build — and expand — a foundation of generosity.”

Eli Broad, whose foundation is down 18 percent in value, put it bluntly: “‘It can’t be business as usual for the next several years.’ Arts organizations throughout Southern California are scrambling in the face of declining ticket sales and donor contributions. This week brought news of layoffs and concert cancellations by the Pasadena Symphony and of the possible collapse of Opera Pacific, Orange County’s only professional opera company.”

A group of artists and anarchists called the Da! collective have started squatting in an unoccupied six-story townhouse in London’s exclusive Mayfair district. What’s more, the new inhabitants can’t be evicted without a complaint by the building’s owners – and they don’t appear to have noticed.