What A Big Infusion Of Arts Funding Did For Minnesota Over The Past Decade

Since 2009, Legacy funding has provided more than $440 million to historical, artistic and cultural projects and events, with about $200 million going specifically to artists and arts organizations across the state. In 2009, before that funding began, Minnesota ranked ninth in the nation for per capita public funding for the arts. Today, it ranks first. The state spends about $6 per person on the arts, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, pulling well ahead of states such as Hawaii and New York.

An Art Prize That Has Engaged Philanthropists In Social Justice?

Collectors have historically deferred to institutional givers to do the heavy lifting when it comes to traditional grantmaking and the red-hot area of activist art in particular. This is why Gund’s Art for Justice Fund is so important. It’s predicated on the idea that by selling their work, collectors can advance social justice. As Ford President Darren Walker noted, “art has meaning on a wall, but it also has meaning when it is monetized.”

Marrying Dance With Animation And Movie

Robert Lepage has returned to filmmaker Norman McLaren for his latest project Frame by Frame, teaming up with the National Ballet of Canada and the National Film Board to create a multimedia dance production that marries ballet and abstract film animation in hopes of pushing the boundaries of ballet for our technological era. The ballet took four years to make and cost $1.4 million.

Will Doing Away With Some Classic College Majors Make Education Better… Or Much Worse?

“The world now changes at warp speed. Colleges move glacially. By the time they’ve assembled a new cluster of practical concentrations, an even newer cluster may be called for, and a set of job-specific skills picked up today may be obsolete less than a decade down the road. The idea of college as instantaneously responsive to employers’ evolving needs is a bit of a fantasy.

Moroccan B-Boys Make Break Dancing Their Own

“In Morocco, where state funding and institutions for the arts is scarce, break dancing has empowered young people to make their own entertainment since its arrival in the 1980s. … While protesters and outspoken artists were targets, dancers flew under the radar because they were seen as apolitical. When a second generation of Moroccan B-boy crews emerged in the early 2000s, their art really began to flourish.” (photo journal)

How A Bearded, T-Shirted 38-Year-Old Is Remaking The Times Literary Supplement

“A fixture in England and on the Western world’s literary landscape, the TLS is a weekly book review journal with a reputation for being a bit dowdy — less progressive than The London Review of Books, a biweekly, and less agile than the books section of The Guardian, to name two of its competitors.” So where did they go to find an editor to shake things up? To The Sun, the British tabloid best known for its topless “Page 3 girls.” And in his two years there, Stig Abell really has changed the TLS, mostly for the better.

L.A. MOCA Hasn’t Had A Good Director For Two Decades, And ‘That Desperately Needs To Change’

Philippe Vergne, whose contract is not being renewed, is “the third MOCA director in a row who hasn’t been able to make the switch from smart, talented curator to top administrator at a major art museum, and I fear the museum cannot survive another one,” writes Christopher Knight, who argues that the problem is most likely with the museum’s board of directors.

Now There May Be No Nobel Literature Prize In 2019, Either

In the wake of the scandals and chaos at the Swedish Academy that led to the postponement of this year’s prize, “Lars Heikensten, director of the Nobel Foundation, … told the national broadcaster Sveriges Radio that the prize ‘will be awarded when the Swedish Academy has won back the public’s trust — and that means there is no deadline for 2019.’ Without naming names, he also urged the 10 remaining active members in the academy to consider leaving their seats.”