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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for February 14, 2019

The last of the big-time donors?

February 14, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I look at an important new tendency in charitable giving. Here’s an excerpt.

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New York’s Museum of Modern Art closes for renovations in June. When the museum reopens on Oct. 21, it will have 30% more gallery space. The price tag for the expansion is $450 million, more than $200 million of which comes from the estate of David Rockefeller, MoMA’s most open-handed donor, who died in 2017 at the age of 101. To be sure, $200 million is chump change in the fantasyland of pop culture. (It cost $316 million to make “Avengers: Infinity War.”) But when it comes to the fine arts, that’s very serious money—the biggest single donation that MoMA has ever received.

From coast to coast, our national landscape is dotted with fine-arts institutions that exist because of people like Rockefeller….

Unfortunately, big-ticket philanthropy is in the middle of a protracted sea change that is already having a direct effect on the arts. Thirteen years ago, the Journal reported that younger new-money donors were increasingly choosing to give it not to fine-arts organizations but to humanitarian causes like AIDS research and education reform. In 2013, Bill Gates put his seal of moral approval on this new tendency by declaring in an interview with the Financial Times that donating money “to build a new wing for a museum rather than spend it on preventing illnesses that can lead to blindness” was, in his words, “slightly barbaric.”

When I wrote about Mr. Gates’ remarks in this space, I observed that I had yet to hear “any groundswell of support among the rich for Mr. Gates’ rigidly utilitarian view of charity.” Apparently I was a little tone-deaf. Nowadays, everybody in the arts is taking nervous note of what the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance described with alarm in a 2018 report called “Beyond the Check: A Roadmap for Engaging Individual Donors.” According to the GPCA, “younger donors” are “shifting away from arts and culture in their philanthropy.” Moreover, studies show that they’re less likely to make big-ticket gifts to any charitable cause—and when they do, such gifts are rarely arts-related….

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Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: Louisa May Alcott on love and perception

February 14, 2019 by Terry Teachout

“Meg had spent the time in working as well as waiting, growing womanly in character, wise in housewifery arts, and prettier than ever; for love is a great beautifier.”

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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