Ireland demonstrated something: economic insecurity doesn't just force workers out, it diminishes the overall creative economy. That matters enormously right now, because we are entering a period when a lot of people across a lot of industries are about to lose their job security.
These weekly essays are meant to connect stories from the week to larger trends and ideas across the arts world. This week we collected 118 stories. Here's what I learned:
Two huge culture industry deals in the past week, both in entertainment, and maybe they don't seem connected. Certainly not connected to non-profit arts. But these are exactly the kind of culture infrastructure deals that should worry anyone in the commercial or non-profit culture business because they impact us all.
He's been called a luddite. But he rejects that and says he is calling for a moratorium on building new AI data centers because he is concerned about an existential threat to humankind.
From 2010 until its sudden termination by DOGE last April, I directed Music Unwound, an NEH-funded national consortium of orchestras and universities. A letter from Michael McDonald, the acting NEH chairman, informed me that the demise of Music Unwound represented “an urgent priority for the administration.” It was ended “to safeguard
I was at a seminar yesterday given by Professor Philip Hackney of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, given (via web) at the Marxe School at Baruch College, on “Tax Policy Toward Arts Nonprofits: Democracy or Plutocracy?” It’s a good question! I won’t try to summarize what Professor Hackney
In my past life I spent some time in university administration, and one of my jobs at this public university was to take proposals for new degree programs that the university had approved of to the state board of higher education, for their necessary approval. In those proposals we had to include
The Boston Symphony's board didn't fire Andris Nelsons as its music director. Not exactly. They declined to renew his contract because he and the BSO weren't "aligned on future vision" — the board's own words, offered without apology. Not artistic differences. Not budget. Not performance. Future vision. That phrase is
This recent book is open access, here. And my full review in the International Review of Public Policy is also open access, here. My review begins: There is an old joke: An American tourist is visiting Oxford for the first time, and on his first morning signs up for a guided walking tour. The
Having written a book – The Propaganda of Freedom – exploring the relationship between JFK and the arts, and having finished in manuscript a subsequent study of Leonard Bernstein and cultural leadership, I find myself responding to the Trump-Kennedy Center and kindred developments by looking backward at what might have
Authorship used to be a status granted by an act of creation. Now it will be a status you will have to defend through paperwork. We have moved from the era of the romantic "lone genius" to the era of the administrative author who will need to "prove" the machine
An early review of my forthcoming novel “The Disciple: A Wagnerian Tale from the Gilded Age,” by Hans Rudolf Vaget, appears in the current issue of “Wagner Notes” — the journal of the Wagner Society of New York (pp. 11-12). The book is already available for purchase (with a discount)
I wasn’t initially planning to write anything about Wednesday night’s Carnegie Hall concert by the Chicago Symphony under Klaus Makela, their 30-year-old impending music director. I’ve written about Makela quite enough. I have no doubt that he is immensely gifted. I have seen him ignite an orchestra with a rare
Brink Lindsey takes his title from one of my favourite essays, John Maynard Keynes’s “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” (which I wrote about here). Keynes, in 1930, wondered what lives might be like in our present. There are three big predictions in the essay, interrelated, of which I would say he got two right, which
