The management of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is grappling with a nine-million-dollar budget shortfall by proposing to cut musicians’ salaries by nearly thirty percent. The musicians have responded by voting to authorize a strike. It’s widely speculated that this could kill the orchestra altogether–but Detroit is a city in the most desperate economic straits imaginable, and it seems highly unlikely that anyone in town would be able or willing to bail the DSO out.
All of which has led me to write a “Sightings” column for Saturday’s Wall Street Journal in which I ask the necessary but not-so-obvious question: is it even possible, much less desirable, for a city whose population has shrunk by fifty percent in the past half-century to try to support a world-class orchestra? For the answer, pick up a copy of tomorrow’s paper and see what I have to say.
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
