Category: issues

President Clinton proposes a hefty budget increase for the National Endowment for the Arts – from $97.6 million to $150 million next year. He also proposes increasing the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and suggests a new $200 million annual “lease fee” for analog frequencies that broadcasters have been using free for the past 50 years. The money would be used for the arts. – Variety

• NEA money for “Challenge America” program, plus funds to repair cultural icons. – Washington Post
  
  
• More budget specifics at the NEA website – NEA

Christie’s auction house has turned state’s evidence and told anti-trust investigators from the United States Justice Department about an alleged deal with Sotheby’s to limit competition on sellers’ commissions. Watch for the lawsuits to start flying. – The Telegraph (UK)

• CHRISTIE’S/SOTHEBY’S PRICE FIXING SCANDAL could have big repercussions for art Down Under. – Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
• Australian dealers have long suspected collusion. – The Age (Melbourne)

It’s that “save the NEA” e-mail that has been endlessly circulated around the internet. Doesn’t matter that it was written in 1995 and that threats to PBS and the National Endowment have receded. – San Francisco Chronicle

Back in the 1970s, the arts’ biggest funding buddies were the tobacco companies. Now tobacco is out and the big American investment banks are funding British arts institutions. The benefits both ways are many. – Financial Times

“From the earliest days after the revolution of 1910, Mexican governments have showered intellectuals and artists with privileges, including grants, prizes, artistic commissions, jobs in government, publishing contracts, fellowships for study abroad, and diplomatic postings. Intellectuals have wielded disproportionate influence in politics and society by becoming in-house ideologues to various Mexican presidents, or by speaking for groups that lacked a voice in politics, such as indigenous people. In return, they have been expected to act as cheerleaders for the regime, lending their prestige and legitimacy to it, and collaborating in the ‘building of the nation.’ ” – Chronicle of Higher Education

— make deals with NAACP to increase minority hiring on their programming. – Boston Globe

Under Apartheid, artists were suppressed and mistreated and their art quashed. Now the enormous task of rebuilding a culture. Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer was part of the cultural resistance, and tells of her vision for a cultural rebirth. – Media Channel

The scientific community has discovered the arts world, investing in arts projects. The artists bring outside-the-box thinking with their projects. – New York Times

US Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) took their plea for an entertainment industry “code of conduct” to New York Monday before a group of  about 200 members of the entertainment industry. – Los Angeles Times

Seattle rents are forcing out many of the city’s artists. A new set of evictions points up a much more complicated problem than the traditional greedy-old-developer-against-helpless-artists scenario. – Seattle Post-Intelligencer