The Delaware Art Museum is planning on selling some works to pay off debt. The New York Times reports here, noting that "selling works to pay for operations or capital projects is widely considered an ethical violation, a betrayal of a museum’s role of holding art in public trust" (and see Art Law Blog here). The museum released a Q&A, and it is the very last question that interests me: 14. What will happen the next time the Museum needs money? I’m worried that the Board will look at the collection as a source of revenue. It is our … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2014
What does it mean to be a ‘strategic’ arts manager? (Updated)
The question came to mind when browsing The Economist's style guide, which contains the entry: "Strategic" is usually meaningless except to tell you that the writer is trying to invest something with a seriousness it does not deserve. But I think that is too harsh, and there are times when we could say a manager is thinking strategically and when she is not. There are two components to thinking strategically. First, the manager thinks carefully about the goals she wishes her organization to achieve, whether profit or some other … [Read more...]
Don’t just stand there, build something
The San Diego Opera is closing down, unable to see a way to reconcile its finances. Mark Swed, at the LA Times, is upset by the decision. What to do? No town is in more need of a performing arts center. New halls are sexy. I must have been away the day in cost-benefit analysis class when the professor covered the sexiness of expensive building projects when one of your major performing arts companies has just closed due to insufficient funds... … [Read more...]
Taxing Music Downloads
Europeans have been able to avoid high home-country tax rates on downloads of songs and books by purchasing through Luxembourg. The UK wants to put a stop to that. The Guardian reports: George Osborne's latest budget could spell an end to 99p song downloads by closing a tax loophole that meant consumers were paying VAT at very low foreign rates on online purchases of books, music and apps. The chancellor will bring in new laws making sure that internet downloads are taxed in the country where they are purchased, meaning web firms such as … [Read more...]
Creativity, Craft, and the Quants
In the New York Times, Timothy Egan worries we stifle creativity in the search for expert quantitative analysis. He writes, in "Creativity vs. Quants": Here’s how John Lennon wrote “Nowhere Man,” as he recalled it in an interview that ran just before he was murdered in 1980: After working five hours trying to craft a song, he had nothing to show for it. “Then, ‘Nowhere Man’ came, words and music, the whole damn thing as I lay down.” ... We’ve bottled lust. We’ve refined political analysis so that nearly every election can be accurately … [Read more...]
Gays, the ‘Creative Class’, and the Ecological Fallacy
Gay men tend to live in expensive cities with nice amenities, both cultural and climactic. Does that mean they are rich? At the Atlantic, Nathan McDermott reports: Who are America’s gays? To hear it as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would have it, gays are a privileged set, living it up in cities across the country. As the justice wrote in his dissent to Romer v. Evans—a landmark 1996 case that overturned a Colorado state constitutional amendment prohibiting legal protections for gays and lesbians—“Those who engage in homosexual conduct … [Read more...]
Tax relief for British theatre (updated)
The budget just announced by the British government provides for significant tax relief for live performing arts. Here are reports from The Stage, The Telegraph, and The Independent. The Stage gives details as follows: The scheme will mean producers are able to claim up to a 25% tax rebate on 80% of a production’s up-front eligible budget costs ahead of its run. Touring shows will receive a 25% relief, while other productions will be eligible for a 20% tax credit. It will benefit both commercial and subsidised producers, because the … [Read more...]
The economic impact of everything
Going to a bar to watch basketball, for example. From the New Republic: Nearly one-third of Americans plan to watch games at work this year, according to a survey from the consumer site RetailMeNot. One in five men said they’d go to a bar to watch at lunch. But? March Madness may actually be good for the economy—and for individual companies. Go on ... Hotels and restaurants in the 14 cities that host games will gain the most, thanks to traveling fans cheering on their teams. But even businesses in non-host cities can benefit. That same … [Read more...]
The future of nonprofits?
Commercial or nonprofit? In studying the cultural sector one of the key questions asked is why we see both kinds of firms in the arts, where nonprofits are more concentrated in some sub-sectors than in others, and I pose the question to my students: how does an entrepreneur choose the organizational form for her new enterprise? Today in the Times we have an opinion piece by Jeremy Rifkin, 'The Rise of Anti-Capitalism', who posits that the nonprofit sector is bound to rise in importance over the next few decades, not because of long-running … [Read more...]
A Cautionary Note on the Social and Economic Value of the Arts
Arts Council England has released a new report on The Value of Arts and Culture to People and Society: An Evidence Review. What to make of it? From the foreword by the Chair of the Council, Sir Peter Bazalgette: Of course the inherent value of arts and culture is, in part, a philosophical assertion that can’t be measured in numbers. Quantifying the benefits and expressing them in terms of facts and figures that can evidence the contribution made to our collective and individual lives has always presented a problem, but it is something that … [Read more...]