As a case-in-point for my post yesterday about allocating value in cultural production, fellow weblogger Drew McManus has some great volleys about the Philadelphia Orchestra’s musician negotiations.
Philly has been cutting staff and requesting musician compensation cuts while it has been giving raises to key staff and leadership. In Mike Wallace fashion, Drew corners Joe Kluger, the Philadelphia Orchestra Association¹s President, in a phone interview about his recent 10 percent raise.
It’s interesting how many times ‘market forces’ come up in the interview and the media surrounding the struggle (inability of the market to support the orchestra at the current musician salaries, need to pay a competitive wage to administrative staff, comparisons of Kluger’s salary to that of his peers in other large orchestras).
Nonprofit status for cultural organizations used to be a way of buffering cultural efforts from market forces, so that communities could have a wider range of cultural opportunities beyond the purely commercial. That buffer seems mighty thin these days, and is bound to get even thinner in the months to come.
