A New Reality For Arts Funding

Are arts organizations facing a new era? An era when government withdraws its support for the arts? “The best advice to nonprofit arts organizations is cold, but realistic: Go out and have a bake sale. The days of generous, hefty, government support of the arts are numbered. The bottom line to dwindling government support isn’t hard to figure out. Everything costs too much.”

Scotland’s Magnificent New Parliament

Edinburgh’s new Scottish Parliament building is under construction. “It is a glorious design, but derided by the press for being costly and late. True, its cost has risen from a nominal £10m at the time it was first seriously mooted in 1997, to £40m when its design was approved, to £100m when its scale was tripled, to £300m more recently, and to £345m today. This is a lot of money – but what a building.”

Treasure Bazaar

“These days, the crisis of looting in Iraq has brought the freewheeling world of art smuggling into the spotlight. But long before the turmoil in Baghdad, the clandestine art market had established itself as a multi-billion-dollar international business. By some estimates it ranks in profitability right after the illegal market for arms and drugs. In Italy, as in Iraq, layers of civilization have graced the landscape with a seemingly unending supply of salable treasures. “

A Hit After Death

Crowds are thronging to Jessica Grace Wing’s new musical “Lost” “Ms. Wing’s death so close to the production’s debut — she was said to have finished the musical’s final song just a day before dying — has created an unmistakable sentimental momentum for “Lost,” which is based on the children’s tale “Hansel and Gretel” and has a book and lyrics by Kirk Wood Bromley. Like the Broadway musical “Rent,” which also started in the East Village and whose composer, Jonathan Larson, died just after the show’s final dress rehearsal, “Lost” is selling tickets to those who knew Ms. Wing’s work and those who suddenly want to discover her. “