Madison’s $205-million Overture Center for the Arts is bracing itself for a budget pothole in its coming season — a $735,000 gap between projected revenues and expenses, against an $11 million total budget. At the heart of the problem is a projected 29 percent drop in ticket sales — to $4.1 million, about $1.6 million […]
Archives for January 2007
The key to happiness? Low expectations.
The New York Times has a short summary of a rather tongue-in-cheek medical journal article on happiness and life satisfaction in the European Union. It turns out that citizens of Denmark consistently rank as more satisfied with their lives than their counterparts in other EU countries. There’s even a chart. So it must be true. […]
Measuring cultural vitality
Lots of communities and consultants talk about ”cultural vitality,” and the benefits of achieving that status for their local economy, education system, creative workforce, and quality of life. But few have actually detailed what they mean by the term, or by what measures they would know that they had achieved their goal.
A shot across the bow
Artist/director/maven Peter Sellars got right to the point in his conference keynote for the American Symphony Orchestra League, suggesting that the contemporary standard for the American orchestra doesn’t serve the art, doesn’t serve humanity, and disconnects the two in the process: If you want to respect your grandparents, take care of your kids. You can’t […]
Rethinking a window to the world
There are so many fascinating things about the One Laptop per Child project, which is working to bring durable, wireless, portable computers to millions of children in the third world. These new machines can only be ordered in quantities of one million or more, usually by governments (like Rwanda or Libya). And the nonprofit project […]
Reclaiming ‘culture’
Australia’s The Age offers an opinion on ”culture,” hoping to reconnect a word that has become disconnected from the discussion of daily life. The piece claims ”culture” — distinct from ”the arts” or ”being cultured” — as universal, an unavoidable stream of experiences, memories, expressions, and conversations, integral to every action in society: We all […]
The For-Profit Charity
Why should nonprofits and their donors get all the goodies from the IRS? That’s the question posed by Eric Posner and Anup Malani of the University of Chicago Law School in a working paper published in September. Posner and Malani suggest that the exclusive tax benefits available to nonprofit corporations are both unfair and inefficient. […]