Over the past five years, the city of Providence, Rhode Island, has been steadily eliminating arts education programs in its public schools in order to close budget gaps. As it turns out, that doesn’t sit well with the state commissioner of education, who this week ordered to city to restore art and music classes by next year. “Starting with the 2008 senior class, students will have to demonstrate their proficiency in a core curriculum that includes technology and the arts.”
Author: sbergman
Scotland To Launch Pilot Arts Projects
“A series of arts projects involving the very young, elderly, disadvantaged and isolated in Scotland has been launched to test the idea of ‘cultural entitlements’. The 13 schemes, which will be established with £1.2m of executive and local authority funding, will run for two years and follows the publication of Scotland’s first Culture Bill last week.”
The Most Important Orchestra In America?
When Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä took the reins of the Minnesota Orchestra in 2003, he said quite publicly that he wanted his new ensemble to become the top orchestra in the U.S. inside of five years. Measuring such a thing is nearly impossible, of course, but James Oestreich says that even if Minnesota isn’t the best yet, it may well be the most important American orchestra working today.
Failing Belfast Museum Scores Big Money
“Five days after being criticised for poor management, the Ulster Museum in Belfast has received its largest ever grant from the [UK’s] Heritage Lottery Fund. Last week the Public Accounts Committee at Westminster accused the museum’s officials of ‘profound deficiencies in custodianship’ and found 90 per cent of the museum’s collection was stored out of public view. But yesterday £4,527,000 was handed over to rejuvenate one of Northern Ireland’s best-known landmarks.”
Crossing Over (And Beating The Odds)
When Alexandra Ansanelli left New York City Ballet for the uncertain stages of Europe this year, the challenge facing her was daunting: to go from being celebrated as one of the ballet world’s premiere “Balanchine-style” dancers to becoming a master of the classic ballet form. Many supposed that the transition would prove impossible. But early reviews (including some from the notoriously tough London press) indicate that Ansanelli may be more versatile than anyone knew.
Art As Urban Reinvention
Houston’s Third Ward, a decrepit and impoverished neighborhood, “may be [the site of] the most impressive and visionary public art project in the country — a project that is miles away, geographically and philosophically, from Chelsea and Art Basel and the whole money-besotted paper-thin art scene.” The man behind the Third Ward’s budding reinvention is Rick Lowe, and his vision is wrapped up in the idea that “art can be the way people live.”
D.C.’s WETA May Go Back To Bach
In the wake of last week’s announcement that Washington, D.C.’s last classical radio station will shortly convert to sports talk, one of the district’s public radio stations is saying that it will strongly consider adding classical music back to its program schedule. WETA dropped classical in favor of an all-news/talk format in March 2005, but the change hasn’t been popular with the public.
Crazy For Those Painted Faces
Portraiture is hot all across the art world right now,and London seems to be its unofficial center. “Every day, it seems, you can go to a different [London] museum and see another portrait show as enthralling as the one you saw the day before. The upshot: This has turned into what many seasoned cultural consumers describe as the greatest year in memory for art exhibits.”
Can The Cell Phone Save Performance Art?
“We don’t need the cellphone-addicted script from the latest James Bond film Casino Royale to remind us that the cell is society’s prevailing fetish object. In the past few years, it has also become the multipurpose art gadget of choice that, more than ever, has helped artists bust out of gallery walls to reach a vast and eclectic audience.”
Synergy + Flexibility = Profitability? (CBS Hopes So.)
At a time when many major record labels have been cutting back, CBS announced this week that it is reviving long-defunct CBS Records, “through which the company plans to release music and promote artists on its networks’ stable of television shows… Outside of television, CBS Records will release music online through its own Web site and retailers such as Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Music Store. The label has completed a deal with Apple to sell music, videos and other content, and expects to seal similar agreements with other online music services.”