“Hays, a college town with about 21,000 residents, is a case study of how the arts can continue to thrive when public funds dry up. But it is also a cautionary tale of the sometimes-hidden costs.”
Tag: 03.24.17
How Would You Define American Music? (And, BTW, Why Do You Care?)
What is American music? And, perhaps more to the point, why do we care so much? “I remember being asked in Prague not so long ago, ‘What is your obsession, you Americans, with American music?’ ” said Robert Spano, the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, which will perform at SHIFT on March 31. “The only answer I could give . . . was: It’s because we don’t know who we are, and so we’re endlessly fascinated, because there are so many things that make up America . . . so much to wrestle with and balance and try and understand. . . . I was kind of defending our self-obsession.”
While US Considers Killing Federal Arts Funding, Canada Proposes $1.8 Billion Increase In Arts Budget
“The federal government will devote $1.8-billion more to culture and recreation spending over the next decade, “modernize” the Broadcasting Act and Telecommunications Act, and spend more on official and Indigenous languages, according to the budget delivered on Wednesday by Finance Minister Bill Morneau. But anyone looking for details of the extensive cultural-policy overhaul promised by Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly since the government took office in 2015, will find scant evidence for it in the budget papers.”
Looking For A Theatre Response In A Time Of Trump
“Since the election, I have been urgently seeking direction from dramatists in the way a cardiac patient might turn to nutrition and meditation after a heart attack. I have been thinking not just of Chekhov but of Harold Pinter, who is an even better guide to Trump’s brutal relativism and canny opportunism. Pinter’s plays throw into relief the territorial nature of human beings — the way reality, both present and past, is a turf war in which the will to dominate supersedes all other considerations.”
Performance Artists In Exile In Britain Fear They’ll Be Forced To Return To Poland
Władysław Kaźmierczak and Ewa Rybska face charges, which they insist are politically motivated, of financial malfeasance from the 2000s, when Kaźmierczak was director of the Baltic Gallery for Contemporary Art in Słupsk. The pair’s work has been critical of the right-wing-nationalist Law and Justice Party, which is currently in power in Poland.