Category: issues

The difficulties of getting visas are forcing the cancellation of concerts and performances.

“The move by Greenwich Council to completely cut its grants to two companies, leaving them with six months transitional funding, and reduce financial support for seven others by 10%, has been branded a fiasco.”

“Critics worth their salt earn their reputations by taking on established taste, whether it appears in stuffy form, or – less obviously – as a kind of adversarial posturing. It amused and then exasperated me that, week after week, I was vilified online as arrogant, elitist, someone who was threatened by dissent, when, week after week, I was taking on the judgments of the New York Times, the New Yorker and other mainstream institutions.”

“In its statement Unesco asserted that ‘cultural property’ was part of the ‘cultural heritage of all mankind’ and deserved special protection. But the framers of that doctrine with its universalist stance would hardly recognize cultural property in its current guise. The concept is now being narrowly applied to assert possession, not to affirm value. It is used to stake claims on objects in museums, to prevent them from being displayed and to control the international trade of antiquities.”

How did Luminato, a “10-day Toronto arts festival, which had completed only one season, win a direct provincial grant of a kind usually reserved for established government agencies? How did Luminato, that ill-defined grab bag of splashy public spectacles and pricey international performances (which gets under way for a second season on June 9) come out of nowhere so fast?”

The issue of whether time and technology have passed the professional critic by is being heatedly debated across all cultural genres. “The culprit is none other than … cultural studies! By treating literature as an impersonal text from which any manner of political meaning can be wrung, cultural studies professors have robbed criticism of its proper evaluative function — the right to say this is good, this isn’t, and here’s why.”

“The percentage of colleges that require a course with an international or global focus as part of the general education curriculum fell from 41 percent in 2001 to 37 percent in 2006. Less than one in five had a foreign-language requirement for all undergraduates.”

“The city of Chicago is suing eBay and its subsidiary StubHub for failing to collect city amusement taxes on concert and sporting event tickets sold through the Web sites… It’s not clear how much money is at stake, but when the city floated the idea of going after taxes for online sales in 2006, Alderman Edward Burke estimated the city could be losing $16 million a year in taxes on Internet-based sales by ticket resellers.”

A selection of André Breton personal effects have been sold at auction in Paris for €3.6 million. “Previous estimates suggested the Manifesto would be sold separately for a value between €300,000 and €500,000 (£240,000 to £401,000).”

“European countries’ efforts to define what degrees and credits mean are already being embraced not only in Europe, but in the rest of the world. If American colleges don’t get involved, they risk finding that the entire world defines some of the key features of higher education in different ways, and American higher ed risks being passed by.”