Archives for March 2009

Late last week, the White House seems to have appointed an arts czar — but no one seems to have noticed. His name is Kareem Dale, according to a short item in Saturday’s New York Times. As of 1 p.m. on Monday, there’s no press release on WhiteHouse.gov and no reports of the appointment at the Associated Press or Reuters.

I don’t know Mr. Dale, a lawyer from Chicago who is partially blind, but he doesn’t seem to have much of a profile. Searches on Google and Kosmix and in Factiva (which has articles from most major newspapers and many minor ones) turned up very little.

According to published reports, Dale hails from Chicago, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in advertising from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and stayed there to earn a law degree and an MBA, which he received in 1999. He founded and is CEO of The Dale Law Group, which has no website. Campaign finance records show that Dale contributed $2,300 to Obama’s campaign in 2008 (and about the same during the primary season); then he volunteered for it. At some point, he became the campaign’s Disability Vote Director. The only mention of arts I could find was during his campaign volunteer days, when Dale was a member of the campaign Arts Policy Committee, plus service on the board of Chicago’s Black Ensemble Theater.

I can’t help but think this is not what many people in the cultural world had in mind when they asked President Obama to appoint a powerful person in the White House to raise the profile of the arts in the U.S.

Another oddity: in mid-February, the White House announced that it had named Dale to the post of Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy. He still seems to hold that post. 

Stay tuned.  

It’s a rare cultural institution — maybe even a unique one — that hasn’t had to cut its budget in these turbulent times. And everyone’s still worried about further declines and even closures. For some perspective, I decided to call someone who’s been both an advice-giver and an arts manager — Adrian Ellis, once a fulltime consultant in the arts and, since 2007, the Executive Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Like me, Ellis thinks there’ll be more casualities, because single-digit budget trimming isn’t enough. Museums, he believes, will have to close galleries to lower their fixed costs, and performing arts groups, for example, may have to band together to share resources. Ellis also says that the old “pyramid” model for fundraising — where 10% of the donors give 90% of the money — is “too steep.” Smart institutions will seek more money from smaller donors to broaden their base. They will also sharply focus their programs, because those that survive will be the institutions with clear, well-defined missions that have rabid fans — and the big ones integral to a community’s identity.

But is Ellis practicing, at Jazz, what he preaches?   

[Read more…] about Weathering Turbulent Times

Uh-oh. Turns out that the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s charismatic music director Gustavo Dudamel is not so popular with eBay fans. Maybe they don’t yet know who he is. As I mentioned here earlier this week, someone at the New York Philharmonic had put a T-shirt autographed by Dudamel and Pinchas Zukerman up for sale on eBay, with proceeds going to the NYPhil.

Alas, no bidding contest ensued. Just one bid, the minimum $100, was made when the auction ended today. The $100 goes to the NY Phil.

 

It has been more than a week since Francis Wilkinson published an incisive commentary in The Week headlined “Is Writing For the Rich?” In it, Wilkinson (below), The Week’s executive editor, dissects a growing problem: the number of people willing to write for free, and where that leaves professional writers, which is even poorer than they used to be.

Wilkinson focuses on young writers, unable to get started. But this is a problem for established writers, too — just ask any of the thousands of journalists who’ve been laid off in the last 18 months or the battalions of freelancers trying to ply their trade. I know a Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter/author of three books who is leaving the profession because she can’t find a job and can’t earn a living freelancing.

I called Wilkinson to ask if he’d gotten any reaction from any publishers. “No, nothing,” he said. “They’ve been battered.” He has heard from tons of writers and people who want to be writers. Unless they have other income, few can afford it.

Why should you care? Imho, when you pay writers less, you get less: articles and books are less well-reseached, less well-written, and less thoughtful. They have little value-added editing. Readers have to compensate by reading more things — or they suffer, perhaps without realizing it, from being less well-informed.  

Read Wilkinson’s article here. It’s not news that the business model for publishing is broken, but it’s surprising that more attention hasn’t been placed on writers. And if anyone has any ideas for a new publishing business model, I’d love to hear them.

Official word on results from the Armory Show is in, and it’s not bad. This year’s expanded version — 243 exhibitors — drew 56,000 people, versus 52,000 last year. Dealers reported “solid sales” that were better than they expected.

Some of the larger deals:

Lisson Gallery, London: two Anish Kapoor sculptures at $1 million and $700,000
respectively; 

Cheim & Read, New York: a Louise Bourgeois for $1 million;

Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin: a Sigmar Polke for $340,000 (o.T.(02), 2003, pictured, right);

Sicardi Gallery, Houston: a Gego wire sculpture for $195,000;  

Michael Rosenfeld, New York: a Werner Drewes painting for $170,000.

Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, and Peres Project, Los Angeles, both said they sold the entire content of their booths.