In a New York Times op-ed, Laura Raicovich and Laura Hanna call for a generous increase in the way the government, in particular the federal government, funds arts institutions: As policymakers in Washington gather to draft a new budget for fiscal year 2025, they could solve culture’s current financial crisis and radically reshape how we think about sustaining the arts. They could do this by tapping into abundant appropriations that already enjoy bipartisan support. To make this possible, first we need to stop treating museums, theaters and … [Read more...]
On the aesthetic education of the young
From Book III of The Republic, by Plato (circa 375 BCE, translation by F. M. Cornford). Socrates is speaking with Glaucon: One thing, however, is easily settled, namely that grace and seemliness of form and movement go with good rhythm; ungracefulness and unseemliness with bad. Naturally. And again, good or bad rhythm and also tunefulness or discord in music go with the quality of the poetry; for they will be modelled after its form, if, as we have said, metre and music must be adapted to the sense of the words. Well, they must be … [Read more...]
What was I thinking?
“There is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.” Hugh MacLennan, The Watch that Ends the Night (1959). … [Read more...]
The French Culture Pass Revisited
ArtReview tells us that the French Culture Pass is being put on simmer: The French Government has announced a 50 percent cut in their lauded Culture Pass, four years after its nationwide launch for young people aged fifteen to eighteen to take up cultural activities. The legislation, signed by Prime Minister François Bayrou, the Culture Minister Rachida Dati and other ministers, sees the pass for eighteen-year-olds reduced from €300 to €150, while the €20 available for fifteen-year-olds and €30 for sixteen-year-olds … [Read more...]
Art in Turbulent Times
Recently artsjournal.com shared a lengthy piece by composer and musician Jonathan Blumhofer, on the arts in times of political unrest. Although you will see I disagree with its message, it is a thoughtful and considered piece. After a discussion of the complex, to say the least, relationship between conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Nazis, he writes: Furtwängler and his Brahms performance have been on the mind of late as the balance of power has shifted in our nation’s capital and a neo-authoritarian lurch seems imminent. Granted, … [Read more...]
On art and the pursuit of power
The arts themselves, as I considered the matter, by their ultimately sensual essence, are, in the long run, inimical to those who pursue power for its own sake. Conversely, the artist who traffics in power does so, if not necessarily disastrously, at least at considerable risk. A Buyer's Market (1952). … [Read more...]
A few words from your friendly neighbourhood Canadian: updated
This is a blog about arts management and policy. But as someone who has led many students through the basics of international trade, and as your resident Canadian, I'm going to use this space for a few words on the current state of relations across the 49th parallel. As bad as things are in the current tariff dispute, I don't think it's the worst thing happening right now. Targeting vulnerable groups is cruel, and worse. Recent Cabinet appointments are as unqualified as one could possibly imagine (under an administration claiming a … [Read more...]
What is public funding of the arts for?
Some Adam Smith as an appetizer… Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident, that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. Now to the present. Nashville’s WPLN public radio reports on a dispute at the city’s Metro Arts agency: The debate can be summed up like this: should Metro Arts focus its grantmaking on individual artists or arts … [Read more...]
On owning many books
"He [Gabriel Oak] also thought of plans for fetching his few utensils and books from Norcombe. The Young Man’s Best Companion, The Farrier’s Sure Guide, The Veterinary Surgeon, Paradise Lost, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Ash’s Dictionary, and Walkingame’s Arithmetic, constituted his library; and though a limited series, it was one from which he had acquired more sound information by diligent perusal than many a man of opportunities has done from a furlong of laden shelves." Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd … [Read more...]
Even Richard Nixon has got Soul
(January 24, 1970, Richard Nixon in Philadelphia to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Eugene Ormandy: AP photo). A few days ago I wrote about a post by Thomas Wolf on public arts support in the US - I focused on what he said about the income tax deduction for charitable donations as an “indirect” arts policy. Not to get all obsessive about his post (most of which is unobjectionable!) there was one more thing that struck me. He wrote: In 1977, the U.S. Congress’s appropriation for the National Endowment for … [Read more...]
On the ingratitude of artists receiving a guaranteed income from a benefactor
(“Vanessa Bell in a Deckchair” by Roger Fry) From Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946, Economist, Philosopher, Statesman: The autumn of 1925 found Keynes, as usual, complaining of overwork (‘too much to do, no leisure, no peace, too much to think about…’). A substantial commitment was organising the London Artists’ Association, in homage to both art and friendship. The idea was to give the leading Bloomsbury painters and their protégés - a group headed by Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry - a guaranteed income, so … [Read more...]