Category: today’s top story

“At a time when most foundations are cutting back or maintaining last year’s spending, a few are doing what hedge fund manager Ken Nickerson of the Eos Foundation calls ‘counter-cyclical giving.’ They’re increasing their grants. … While Nickerson recapitalizes his foundation, others dig deeper into their shrinking endowments than would be required to simply maintain spending. There are growing cries for more to do so.”

“The package will offer writers, editors, translators – ‘basically anybody in the writing industry,’ access to the insured extended-health-care services most salaried employees take for granted, such as basic dental and vision care, subsidized prescription drugs, accident insurance and physiotherapy.”

“With the recession already leading to millions in lost corporate and private donations, rising deficits, shrinking endowments, layoffs and artistic cuts, arts groups saw state support as especially important. Arts leaders said the cuts would lead to further job losses.” Says one arts leader: “No governor has ever done more damage to arts and culture and our creative future in Michigan.”

“The long-awaited reopening marks a milestone in the government’s efforts to retrieve and preserve artifacts and archaeological sites from Iraq’s history after almost six years of theft, destruction and violence. […] Officials have since struggled to rebuild the museum’s collection, recouping about a third of what was looted.”

“Why are so many blind to the simple reality that arts workers are real workers? I chalk it up to our celebrity culture. Funding for theater? Tim Robbins doesn’t need money! Funding for art museums? Jeff Koons is rich! Funding for concert halls? Yo-Yo Ma is a superstar! The glare of the celebrity spotlight obscures our view of the ticket-taker at Robbins’ play trying to make ends meet….”

Less than two years after founder Judy Drucker was pushed into retirement, South Florida’s only major presenter of top-level touring classical and dance artists appears certain to shut down. CAF’s board chairman is trying to get the Broward and Arsht Centers to take over the season’s remaining events.

“The spectacle of those four unrepentant arch-capitalists in front of the Treasury Select Committee yesterday was one of the most extraordinary displays of complacency and denial you will ever see. … How can the art made at festivals sponsored by these bankrupt individuals and companies do the job that classical music should do, and have a necessary, critical voice in contemporary culture, if it continues to be supported by the dead hand of big banking?”

The satellite radio giant “has hired advisers to prepare for a possible bankruptcy filing, people involved in the process said… Service is unlikely to be interrupted, but the company might have to terminate contracts with high-priced talent like [Howard] Stern or Martha Stewart.”

“Sotheby’s credit rating may be cut to junk as the 265-year-old auction house’s revenue falls and its leverage increases amid what it calls ‘significant’ losses from guarantees. ‘We believe that revenues will decline substantially over the near term due to the decline in the worldwide art auction market,’ Standard & Poor’s said in a statement yesterday, when it disclosed the possible downgrade.”

“It is time for the American arts community to confront its stunning political ineptitude. … In less than 75 years, the arts have gone from the single largest priority in a government stimulus package to a toxic joke, with a popular special amendment keeping them out. It is a stunning turnaround. How did it happen? Somehow it has come to be broadly accepted that concrete, asphalt and medicine for the body (as distinct from the heart and soul) have greater moral worth.”