LSD As A Cultural Expression "For the LSD era there was something mythic about this initiation. Epic heroes have always descended into the underworld to emerge, however scarred, bearing new forms of wisdom. That was also the LSD archetype: descend into madness and emerge enlightened, seeing the world anew."

The New York Times 05/05/08

email this story | Posted 05/08/08@07:02PM

Boosting Arts Audiences On Philly's Agenda "The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance believes it can help double audience participation at area arts events over the next 12 years. And the Pew Charitable Trusts has put up $5 million to help finance an elaborate marketing effort - called Engage 2020 - to push for that goal, officials intend to announce today."

Philadelphia Inquirer 05/08/08

email this story | Posted 05/08/08@06:35AM

UK Waives Visas For Actors And Musicians "Foreign actors and musicians will not need to obtain a visa when coming to the UK for less than three months, the Home Office has announced. Instead, temporary visitors, including performers, will only need a certificate of sponsorship from a UK-based employer when new visa rules are enforced this autumn."

theStage 05/07/08

email this story | Posted 05/07/08@06:11PM

Why Doesn't Amazon.com Support The Arts? "Most Seattle companies contribute a lot of money--a lot of money--to the Seattle arts scene. It's considered being a good neighbor. It's not mandatory, but it is, at the very least, polite." But giant internet retailer Amazon.com, born and based in Seattle, is MIA when it comes to donating to the arts.

The Stranger 04/29/08

email this story | Posted 05/07/08@05:05PM

Needed: A Rethinking Of Language Study The United States "must abandon its exclusive short-range, 9/11-sparked, tactical emphasis on just-in-time, emergency-responsive study of specific languages to meet economic challenges and security crises. In its place, the U.S. needs to establish a longer-range strategic emphasis on the study of cultures, and widespread educational use of languages, to prevent such crises from occurring in the first place."

InsideHigherEd 05/06/08

email this story | Posted 05/06/08@04:07PM

Nostalgia For The Berlin Wall? "The rush to tear down the hated landmark in the 1990s was understandable, but Berlin's government has realized that the city may have been overzealous in ridding itself of what remains its biggest tourist attraction. It has launched an information drive to help keep memories of the Wall alive among Germans and to raise awareness of Cold War division among younger generations who have only known a united Germany."

Der Spiegel 05/06/08

email this story | Posted 05/06/08@03:56PM

Lincoln Center, Redefined (Act I) "When Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center reopens in February after a $159 million, 22-month renovation, it will have a gleaming, three-story glass lobby; custom-made seats; and a mechanized stage extension that will allow musicians to get closer to the audience."

The New York Times 05/06/08

email this story | Posted 05/06/08@06:05AM

Censor To The World: China "Conventional wisdom has it that the Internet can withstand anything. Attempts to censor it are about as futile as trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. Experts have claimed that if blocked, the flow of information will simply reroute to reach its target. Too bad China isn't listening to the experts."

Der Spiegel 05/04/08

email this story | Posted 05/05/08@06:12PM

Canadian Government Blows Off An Arts Party "Why not? Tories don't like the arts? They don't like the Governor-General? They want to be back in their ridings campaigning, fearing a snap election? They don't want to pay for their own tickets? It seems that it's all that, and more."

The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/02/08

email this story | Posted 05/04/08@07:46PM

Zimbabwe Is Melting Down. What To Do? Throw An Ambitious Arts Festival "Perhaps when the world is looking in your direction and counting down to economic and civil collapse, the only thing to do is to build a giant stage and start thinking the impossible."

The Observer (UK) 05/04/08

email this story | Posted 05/04/08@10:58AM

What's Community-Based Art Without The Community? "One of the questions that perhaps needs to be asked of all projects that put non-artists at their heart is who gets the greatest benefit. Is it the artists (who may be able to work on a scale that would be impossible without community involvement), or the community (who are giving up their precious time for rehearsals and performances when they could be watching Dr Who)?"

The Guardian 05/02/08

email this story | Posted 05/04/08@10:56AM

The World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals A ranking by Prospect magazine, with an invitation to vote...

Prospect 05/08

email this story | Posted 05/04/08@10:44AM

What's Wrong With A List Of The World's 100 Top "Public Intellectuals" "The real problem, of course, is the magnificent double oxymoron inherent in the enterprise. First, you should not rank 'public intellectuals', whatever they might be, in the manner of one of those television top-40 countdown programmes... It is the most quintessentially anti-intellectual notion."

The Times (UK) 05/05/08

email this story | Posted 05/04/08@10:41AM

New Arts Council England Chief Outlines Priorities Alan Davey "said that ACE would focus on strategic touring, international import and export of work, the body's relationship with its regularly funded organisations and the way the arts council makes funding decisions. The last of these priorities will encompass a new form of peer review and self-assessment."

theStage 04/30/08

email this story | Posted 05/02/08@05:32AM

Fewer Critics, More Reviews On the web, everyone's a critic. So while there are fewer and fer critics employed at newspapers nd traditional publications, the number of reviews is growing...

NPR 04/30/08

email this story | Posted 05/01/08@06:59AM

Beseiged British Council Arts Boss Steps Down British Council director of arts Venu Dhupa, whose proposed shake-up of the organisation's creative departments was met with protests from UK artists, has quit after less than a year in the post.

theStage 04/29/08

email this story | Posted 04/30/08@06:37PM

How Europe Receded Into The Past The standard account of Europe's twentieth century is in turns anguished, relieved and elegiac. Shadowed by the departed Golden Age, it recounts the travails of an older and calmer civilization torn apart by the barbarians within, and able only to survive after 1945 at the cost of losing its global primacy (and thus its claim on the title of civilization itself).

Times Literary Supplement (UK) 04/30/08

email this story | Posted 04/30/08@06:04PM

Ontario Gives A Big Boost To Arts Funding "That means that for its 2009-2010 operations, the provincial arts council will have almost $60 million to distribute to hundreds of individual artists and cultural organizations - the most money it has ever been allocated. It's a signal that Queen's Park is interested in all parts of the creative community, not just the flashy players such as the Royal Ontario Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario and Luminato, which got a $75 million bonanza earlier this month."

Toronto Star 04/30/08

email this story | Posted 04/30/08@08:45AM

Modernism As A Narrative "There is no doubt that Modernism is often compelling. And its central thesis - that modernists were characterised by 'the lure of heresy' - does capture not just the widespread interrogation of artistic convention, but also its subjective counterpart: the sovereignty of the artist."

spiked-online 04/08

email this story | Posted 04/30/08@07:53AM

A Plan To Encourage UK Art Donations A "national giving day" is being planned that will acknowledge the biggest donors to major cultural institutions. One aim, according to the manifesto, is to provide greater incentives for donors to give "gifts" of artwork while they are still alive rather than as a bequest after death, in order to bolster the nation's collection of contemporary artworks.

The Independent (UK) 04/26/08

email this story | Posted 04/29/08@07:42AM

What To Do? (Controversial Art In The School Place) "What is the 'appropriate action' for a professor to take when confronted with controversial student artwork? (Such scandals as Yale's, though of various degrees of salaciousness and reflecting various degrees of artistic merit, crop up like clockwork.) What are the ambiguities of an art professor's obligations?"

InsideHigherEd 04/29/08

email this story | Posted 04/29/08@06:25AM

Ohio Cuts State Arts Budget The Ohio Arts Council's 2008-09 biennium budget has been cut by 10 percent as part of Gov. Ted Strickland's effort to address a projected shortfall in the state budget.

Columbus Dispatch 04/27/08

email this story | Posted 04/28/08@09:28AM

Denver's Arvada Center Struggles To Stay Viable "Attendance at the Arvada Center plummeted to 54,870 in 2006-07, a decline of 30 percent in just two years. While revenue has remained mostly flat (thanks to a thriving children's theater division), subscribers have fallen to 5,298 in the current season, down from 8,536 in 2003-04, a drop of 38 percent. And in that time, the operating budget has ballooned by 18 percent, to $3.2 million a year."

Denver Post 04/27/08

email this story | Posted 04/28/08@12:02AM

Interest Rate Crisis For LA Arts Groups Eases Somewhat "LACMA, OCPAC, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the Colburn School saw their rates leap from the 3% to 4% range through 2007 to highs in February and March as high as 11% for LACMA. Those rates have settled down this month: 3.67% to 4.11% during the last three weeks for the Colburn School's $133 million in bonds and 4.22% to 5% for OCPAC's $265 million."

Los Angeles Times 04/26/08

email this story | Posted 04/27/08@11:36PM

Why Artists Should Give It Away "Everyone who has tried posting books online has done it again. That's a pretty good indicator it works. An artist's enemy is obscurity, not piracy."

Maclean's 04/27/08

email this story | Posted 04/27/08@10:47PM

The Point Of Arts Criticism? "People who worry about the present state of criticism tend to fall into the trap of regarding it as a public service. The health of the arts, they say, depends on a robust and vigorous culture of criticism. I sympathise with the view and occasionally feel flattered by it. But I think it inflates the role of critics. In place of public edification, I believe criticism is better seen as a (potential) public pleasure. It sounds obvious, but a piece of criticism, in the first instance, has to be worth reading."

The Australian 04/27/08

email this story | Posted 04/27/08@09:55AM

Does It Matter If The Artist Is Reprehensible? "It's all very well to ask big questions about the essence of creativity; pondering them can be valuable. But after a while, when it becomes evident that these questions lack answers, or are answerable only self-referentially, it all becomes a little tiresome. Especially given that artists themselves, in the case of creativity, rarely know how their original ideas arise. It's all a big mystery."

The Guardian (UK) 04/24/08

email this story | Posted 04/24/08@07:04PM

LA Arts Funding To Go Up, And Down "Los Angeles County would increase arts and cultural spending 3.8% under a proposed $22-billion budget released this week, but the city of L.A.'s arts agency could be headed for a 6.1% cut." It's all part of the endless see-saw of arts funding in America's second-largest city...

Los Angeles Times 04/23/08

email this story | Posted 04/23/08@06:37AM

UK Seeks Culture Of Philanthropy "The biggest problem in Britain, according to [some arts leaders,] is the single issue of cultural philanthropy... At a time when substantial public funding is required for the London 2012 Olympic Games, concerns have mounted subsidy for the arts - particularly in National Lottery 'Grants for Arts' money - will diminish." Arts groups are looking to wealthy individuals to fill in the gaps.

Birmingham Post (UK) 04/23/08

email this story | Posted 04/23/08@05:16AM

Australia Council Addresses Funding Cuts By Streamlining Operations Australia Council chief executive Kathy Keele said funding to artists and arts organisations would not be affected by the administrative budget cut from $19million annually to $17million in next month's federal budget.

The Australian 04/23/08

email this story | Posted 04/22/08@07:26PM

Baghdad Culture Fights An Uphill Battle "At the simplest level, routine details such as the time, place and duration of rare piano recitals or art openings are shrouded in mystery for security's sake. In a town almost comprehensively segregated into sectarian areas, where one man's performance is another's blasphemy, such information is intelligence hard to come by."

Wall Street Journal 04/22/08

email this story | Posted 04/22/08@06:47PM

Ailing Economy Hitting Arts Groups Hard "In New York and Los Angeles, well-established institutions including Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Modern Art and the Getty Center are scrambling to refinance their debt after interest rates climbed on so-called auction-rate bonds."

Yahoo! (AP) 04/21/08

email this story | Posted 04/22/08@07:46AM

A Random Kind Of Art For A Random Kind Of Age Forty-five years ago "it was the age of random music, random painting, and William Burroughs added random writing. The idea was to elude the mind's inner censor, cast off the shackles of the protective ego, soar through the empyrean of imagination, and produce - art! It was fun, a treat for everybody except maybe the audience."

National Post 04/21/08

email this story | Posted 04/22/08@07:07AM

A Standardized Test The US Education Department Doesn't Like There's a move internationally to create a new test measuring the academic achievement of 15-year-olds. Strangely, the US, which has lately been on a standardized-test spree, there is indifference to the idea.

InsideHigherEd 04/21/08

email this story | Posted 04/21/08@07:27AM

More Than Iraq's Ancient Treasures Have Been Destroyed "The neglect of Iraq's modern artistic production - wrapped up in the campaign to destroy any remnants of the Baathi regime, and therefore Iraq's collective memory" has been extreme.

The Daily Star (Beirut) 04/20/08

email this story | Posted 04/21/08@07:16AM

A Demographic That Doesn't Care About The Arts? "British Asians today still don't get the arts, and don't want to either. Got better things to do. They push their young people into real jobs that bring in big bucks, or at least good brides from families with big bucks. A painter, novelist, playwright, actor, cannot be admitted into respectable or wealthy dynasties - unless, of course, there is evidence of stardom."

The Independent (UK) 04/21/08

email this story | Posted 04/21/08@07:09AM

Orlando Arts Groups Abandon The Balcony, Fans Complain "In a move designed to fill empty seats on the ground floor -- and to fill coffers -- both the Orlando Opera Company and the Orlando Ballet are discouraging next season's subscribers from buying seats in [their theatre's] balcony and trying instead to sell them mostly more expensive seats downstairs." Not all of their fans are happy.

Orlando Sentinel 04/19/08

email this story | Posted 04/20/08@06:18PM

Is Art Done With Religion? "This idea that all artists are essentially humanists is a comforting myth for an agnostic age. There is little evidence to support it. It is, if you like, the agnostic's delusion - because the very opposite is true. The greatest artists, from Matthias Grünewald in the 15th century to Benjamin Britten in the 20th, had a genuine Christian faith."

The Guardian (UK) 04/19/08

email this story | Posted 04/20/08@05:56PM

Where Engineering Meets The Arts "Someone has to figure out the technological trickery that creates the sort of staggering stage magic for which Vegas is famous. And UNLV is taking the lead, inaugurating a multidisciplinary program merging engineering technical expertise with the creative instincts of the fine arts -- with the priceless advantage of access to the largest laboratory in the world, the Las Vegas Strip."

Las Vegas Sun 04/20/08

email this story | Posted 04/20/08@11:53AM

Web Fans Clash With Copyright "The Web is awash with fan-produced material that could be the subject of a copyright fight, from remixed pop songs, to new fiction based on existing characters from books and TV shows, to countless tribute videos cut together with clips from TV shows or films. And, for the most part, the big media companies that own the material being mashed up and manipulated let it slide. There are simply too many offenders to chase."

Newsday (AP) 04/20/08

email this story | Posted 04/20/08@11:36AM