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Landesman Exits the NEA, Taking A Surprise Bow

January 3, 2013 by 9 Comments
RoccoLandesman

Rocco Landesman has left the building. The now-former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts departed the other day, but not without granting an exit interview to The Washington Post. Interesting choice -- maybe The New York Times didn't ask (it probably didn't) but as I recall Landesmann made a small mistake at the start of his term by giving the NYT his first interview instead of the Post, which of course is what everyone in Washington reads first. He learns. Landesman -- not my favorite NEA chief, as Real Clear Arts readers know … [Read more...]

01/3/13 6:14 PM | filed under: Government Support, Uncategorized |

Is This Moore Being Sold On A False Premise?

November 12, 2012 by 3 Comments
Draped-Seated-Woma_2392327b

I'm back from a trip to the UK -- where I saw much that I hope to write about, some here -- and one sad story I learned of while there concerns the east London town of Tower Hamlets, which has voted to sell off a Henry Moore sculpture, Draped Seated Woman. The town, quite poor, is facing budget cuts and wants to use the proceeds to make up the cuts. Christie's got the consignment and will sell the work in February. The town council is expecting to raise some $30 million from it, but as The Telegraph points out, the expectation may be built … [Read more...]

11/12/12 4:31 PM | filed under: Art Market, Government Support, Uncategorized |

Gemaldegalerie Battle Far From Over: Berlin Pulls Out Another Big Gun — UPDATED

September 25, 2012 by 6 Comments
fouquet chevalier

Just in case you thought that cultural authorities in Berlin might cave in to pressure regarding the future of its Old Master collection, here's a dose of reality. They continue to wage war, even though they have ordered up a "feasibility study" to assess alternatives to the original plans, which would send most of the city's magnificent Old Masters collection into storage for an undetermined number of years, while a new museum is supposedly built on Museum Island, and integrate the rest into the already filled galleries of the Bode … [Read more...]

09/25/12 8:09 PM | filed under: Curatorial Matters, Government Support, Uncategorized |

Las Vegas Does Spend on Culture — Just Not Art Museums

July 15, 2012 by 3 Comments
SmithCenter-LVS

The photo was pretty astonishing, and so was the pricetag: $470 million. As I caught up on newspapers I'd missed while I was away last week, I came upon an article in last Sunday's New York Times headlined Las Vegas Becomes As Much Liszt as Liberace, illustrated by a gorgeous interior photograph of the city's new performing arts center. I've written here several times about the lack of an art museum in Las Vegas, a city of 1.8 million people and plenty of tourists. The Las Vegas Art Museum closed for lack of interest in early … [Read more...]

07/15/12 6:11 PM | filed under: Government Support, Museum Funding-Fundraising, Uncategorized |

FUN Fellowships At An Art Museum Are No Joke

April 16, 2012 by 7 Comments
LadyFag

As is often said, non-fiction is stranger than fiction: Sometimes you just can't make things up as well as life does. That is certainly the case with a press release that DIDN'T land in my email box last week. Someone had to tip me off to it. The announcement was made by the Museum of Arts and Design, and it said that it had chosen four winners of its "FUN Fellowship," which "was established in 2011 by the Museum of Arts and Design in recognition of the vital role nightlife practitioners play in the city’s creative community and … [Read more...]

04/16/12 3:33 PM | filed under: Government Support, Museums, Uncategorized |

Art21 Reveals A New Group of Artists: A Test — UPDATED

April 10, 2012 by 2 Comments
altmejd-art-2008-004-theeye

Art21 is in the news today, and not in a good way -- according to various reports, the National Endowment for the Arts is planning to cut the funding it has supplied to this self-described "chronicler of contemporary art and artists." I was going to blog about it sometime soon anyway, because Season Six of "Art in the Twenty-First Century" makes its debut on PBS on Friday at 9 p.m. (although, as they always say "check your local listings").  Season Six includes 13 profiles of artists from five continents gathered into four, one-hour … [Read more...]

04/10/12 6:32 PM | filed under: Artists, Government Support, Uncategorized |

European Arts Groups Need Money, So Do Ours: A Modest Proposal

March 25, 2012 by 15 Comments
money

Today's New York Times page one story on arts cuts in Europe addresses something that's been on my mind for a while. I of course sympathize with arts groups that are having to grapple with sudden declines in the money they receive from their governments. But I'm not too crazy about the phenomenon described near the end of the article, namely: As a result, some European arts institutions have begun looking for financial support in the United States, courting American companies or wealthy Americans with emotional ties to an ancestral homeland. … [Read more...]

03/25/12 4:55 PM | filed under: Government Support, Museum Funding-Fundraising, Uncategorized |

President Obama’s Arts Budgets — Up, But DOA

February 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment
money_tree

Given the state of politics, it hardly makes sense to report President Obama's  budget requests for FY 2013. The budget is already DOA, say the pundits. Nonetheless, for the sake of discussion, I can report that the President did ask for a slight increase in the budgets of the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities. Each one, as usual, would get the same amount: $154,255,000 -- including a one-time $3 million request to facilitate their moves from the Old Post Office building. You didn't know about that? That's a whole … [Read more...]

02/13/12 3:49 PM | filed under: Government Support, Uncategorized |

The White House And Visual Arts: Found Lacking

May 5, 2010 by 1 Comment

A strawberry today to Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who while on a state visit to Berlin this week stopped in at Martin Gropius Bau to see the Frida Kahlo retrospective. Yes, I know: photo op, tourist visit, etc. So, perhaps just a small strawberry. Still, the tidbit reminded me that the Obamas have so far given pretty short shrift to the visual arts. Yes, they too made a museum stop overseas: when they visited Paris last year, the family went to the Pompidou Center and later the First Lady and the girls visited the … [Read more...]

05/5/10 2:27 PM | filed under: Government Support, Uncategorized |

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