Just wanted to direct you to two conversations now going on-line that are worth a read:
ArtsJournal is hosting a conversation among critics, focusing on the changing universe of criticism, filtering, and insight on creative works. You can read the conversation from the beginning here, or jump directly to the most recent posts. Here’s the topic in a nutshell:
With a growing flood of opinions available to all, some suggest that the influence of the traditional critic is waning, that the opinions of the many will drown out the power of the few. But in a time when access to information and entertainment and art seems to be growing exponentially, more than ever we need ways to to sort through the mass and get at the “good” stuff. The question is how? Where is the critical authority to come from?
Elsewhere on the web, Barry Hessenius is hosting a conversation on ”change” in the cultural industries, featuring a bunch of folks (including me). The tiny topic in issue one is this:
What kinds of societal changes, patterns, trends, events and movements are likely in the next five to ten years that will have an impact on the arts, what might that imapct be, and how can we deal with it? How do we begin to even organize such a discussion?
Both on-line conversations are preludes to real-time discussions at conferences to come. I’ll be participating in the live version at Americans for the Arts in Milwaukee in June.
Artists of every discipline, the good ones, work with their ears to the ground. They always have. Do you want to know what is coming up, what new awareness or practice or wisdom is about to touch the present? Ask an artist. Always ask the artists first. This is their home and native landscape. Sometimes I think managers suppose they are the “new artists” making it possible for local arts to work. This is backwards. I worked here for my local Arts Council for a while and was amazed to find that noone at all — whether on the Board, in the office, or the volunteer community — wanted to talk to artists about what they saw as being important, what they needed from the city to work better, or how we as liason between city and their worlds, could serve them.