Category: issues

Last week at the last minute, the US House of Representatives voted down a $15 million increase to the National Endowment for the Arts budget. This week the US Senate Appropriations Committee votes a $7 million increase. Will it pass? “While I anticipate a spirited dialogue, I have every confidence that the Senate will prevail in its strong support for the agency,” NEA Chairman Bill Ivey said. – Washington Post

Why it must be summer solstice and a party at Stonehenge. Actually, since 1984, the partiers have been kept away from the site. But this year the gates were thrown open and about 6000 showed up to celebrate. “It was most definitely a success. We were delighted at the large turnout and we will consider more managed open access in the future”. – Times of India (Reuters)

• Australians wants to encourage cross-cultural exchange, just like the rest of us, but can’t help but wondering if they’re winning our losing by bringing widely popular international acts into the country – and exporting some of their prize performers to the outside world. Showing excitement over Cirque du Soleil is just fine…as long you are equally thrilled about Australia’s Circus Oz. – The Age (Melbourne)

Disney has lost a round in its fight to hold on to royalties for the Winnie the Pooh characters. A Los Angeles superior court judge has ruled that Disney willfully destroyed documents to prevent them from being admitted as evidence in court. – CBC

“The world’s vibrant cultural cities have an intangible something else: the capacity to surprise, an impatience with habit and reverence.” They are places where the culture is in dialogue with itself, where creativity is encouraged ahead of pro forma rules. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

• “MYTHS DIE HARD”: When Toronto, the commercial city, wants to affirm its cultural identity, it turns to Montreal, asking: “So, artist, what’s your secret?” From where I stand, the situation seems a little ironic. A Toronto adrift is bad for Toronto, period. Great cities, like artists, are laws unto themselves. It is not their role to behave like a nation’s shop window. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

So what is beauty? “We have so many reasons for being suspicious of beauty. Beauty is elitist, divisive, it implies other things are ugly. Beauty in modern thought is tied to a notion of ‘correct’ aesthetic judgment whose founding text, Kant’s ‘Critique of Judgment,’ argued that the only true taste is one that is unaffected by the pressures of real life and hence free to recognise the beautiful. This may have been a good career guide for the ambitious cultural functionary in 18th-century Germany, but doesn’t seem to have much relevance for us now.” – The Guardian

What is it that gets people interested in the arts? What makes them want to participate or attend arts events? A new Australian study goes in search of the answers. Hey – just how do you define what the arts are, anyway? Australians, it seems, are ready to provide the answers. – Sydney Morning Herald

A new report released last week by the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University measured arts coverage on American television networks – on ABC, CBS and NBC – during the decade of the 1990s. Not surprisingly, there wasn’t much. “According to the findings, on an average day, viewers receive 30 seconds of information on the arts. That’s 3 percent of the weekday news agenda. Annual arts coverage on all three networks dropped from about 500 minutes in 1990 to 300 minutes in 1999.” – Houston Chronicle

The glittering new 42nd Street Studios opens in New York. The complex includes 14 rehearsal studios, administrative and offices spaces, and a fully-equipped black box space called “The Duke on 42nd Street.” – Theatre.com

• Nestled amid renovated theaters that once housed porn shops, the facility is the first of its kind in the country. – CNN