The NEA releases its latest study: “The latest SPPA compares arts participation rates based on surveys from 2002, 2008, and 2012, as well as regional, state, and metro-area statistics. Several of the findings are particularly noteworthy. Adults who attended performing arts or visited museums as children were three to four times as likely to see shows or visit museums as adults.”
Tag: 01.12.15
Cities Are Becoming Inhospitable For Artists (But Not For The Traditional Reasons)
The “urban Renaissance” we are living through is a terrific example of solving a problem by not solving it, or rather, by turning it inside-out. We’ve imported suburbia to the city, recreating its bucolic aura via bike lanes and urban gardening, and its gated community vibe via “broken windows” policing. Soon it will have all those stereotypical negative characteristics of suburbia too: lack of human diversity, and commercial life crushed under chain stores. Meanwhile, we are exporting poverty to places where you need a car to survive.
Renzo Piano: Want To Preserve Historic Centers? Look To The Edges
“In the nineteen-sixties and seventies, the big challenge—in Europe certainly, but everywhere—was to establish as a principle that historic centers have to be preserved. But in the two-thousands—probably for the next three, four, five decades—the real challenge is to transform the periphery. If we fail in doing this, it will be a real tragedy.”
More Americans Are Enjoying The Arts Online And Not In Person, Says New NEA Study
“The NEA found that in 2012, nearly three-quarters of American adults – about 167 million people – used electronic media to view or listen to art. But just 33.4 percent of the more than 37,000 adults surveyed attended one of the seven categories of art events that same year, compared with 41 percent in 1992.”
Minnesota Orchestra’s Grammy-Winning Sibelius Cycle Is Back On
“The Minnesota Orchestra will resume recording sessions this spring to complete its cycle of Jean Sibelius symphonies. The project” – released on the Swedish label Bis – “had been put on hiatus during the 16-month lockout of musicians that ended a year ago.”
T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize, And £20,000, To David Harsent
“After four previous appearances on the shortlist for the TS Eliot prize for poetry, David Harsent has finally taken the honour for his 11th collection of poems, Fire Songs. He was described by the chair of the judging panel, the poet and novelist Helen Dunmore, as ‘a poet for dark and dangerous days’.”
Rem Koolhaas And Dasha Zhukova Build A Moscow Museum
The Russian art collector “is launching an ambitious campaign to connect Moscow to the international art world, and she’s tapped [the Dutch architect] to execute her vision.”
English Theatre Closed Due To Statue Hanging From Roof
“Sunderland Empire has cancelled all shows this week after high winds caused the statue on the roof of its building to break loose.”
Charlie Hebdo’s Next Cover Features Muhammad Himself (Because Even He Is Charlie)
Never ones for prudence, the satirical French weekly’s editors have made the Prophet – holding a Je suis Charlie” sign – the cover boy for what they’re calling the Survivors’ Issue.
The Real Problem With “My Husband’s Not Gay”
“The problem, though, with making reality television about gay men who don’t want to be gay is that it will invariably lack empathy for the pain that likely defines those men’s lives. The failure of My Husband’s Not Gay is one of style, not substance; but the fact that it has been protested for its substance says a lot about the cultural tensions surrounding homosexuality in America.”