"The Philadelphia Cultural Fund, the main vehicle for supporting arts organizations in the city..., saw its budget increase to $3.5 million for fiscal 2023, a far cry from the first pandemic budget that initially sought to zero out the fund and eventually settled at $1 million." - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Conventional accounts of the effect of school closures focus on the shift from in-person to online teaching and the academic losses that resulted. This familiar story isn’t false, but it’s only a part of the truth, and it understates both the disruption and the inequities that COVID wrought on students’ lives. - The Atlantic
The initiative on this year's general election ballot "would require the state to find a source of revenue to fund K-12 arts education equal, at a minimum, to one percent of the total state and local revenues that local education agencies receive from Proposition 98 funding." - San Francisco Classical Voice
Russia, for instance, is attempting to wipe out a separate Ukrainian culture; as Ukraine's artist at the Venice Biennale says, "If it has no culture, Ukraine does not exist." Same with China and Uyghur culture. ISIS certainly understood culture's importance. Even Boris is using culture as a weapon. - The Guardian
"A vast new arts hub called Plateforme 10 has opened in the Swiss city of Lausanne with the aim to revitalize the surrounding area through culture. Poised to become a new 'arts district,' Plateforme 10 spans 25,000 square meters, the equivalent of five football fields." - Artnet
"Culture really does become a matter of life and death, then, when a society is under pressure. This can be for good or for ill: how narrative is shaped can, of course, be damaging – or dishonest." - The Guardian (UK)
"This right wing strategy of attacking visibility isn’t limited to LGBQT+ books. According to Ginny Wehrli-Hemmeter, director of events and marketing at Anderson’s Bookshop, a large independent bookstore in Naperville, Ill., 'Any book with a cover showing a person of color on it gets covered up.'" - LitHub
"Financial losses specifically from NFT crimes just through May this year were already more than 600% higher than for all of 2021, with the space seeing twice as many hacks and bigger and bigger heists. ... For many victims, there’s little hope of getting their lost art back." - Los Angeles Times
"For years, both have been susceptible to a hero complex where the cause of great architecture is so exalted that almost no sacrifice is too much to be made in its name." It's simply got to end. - The Observer (UK)
Like the one that celebrates the U.S. Border Patrol's whipping, from horseback, of Haitian refugees? "Unofficial coins ... are funded independently and reflect a more clandestine tradition among agents to valorize their jobs. CBP agents allegedly promote them in a secret Facebook group." - Hyperallergic
"For those who know Dark Mofo for its gothic bombast, weird surprises and controversial headlines, this year's festival ... may feel a little different. But after a programming controversy last year which led to public outrage, calls to boycott and an eventual apology, perhaps it had to be." - The Guardian
That was the proposition of Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired: if you can amass 1,000 people who'll each spend $100 annually to support your work, that's a good middle-class living. That didn't work out in the '90s or '00s, but might it be possible now? - The New Yorker
“BAM isn’t just for one audience. We were consistently sold out this season and more often than not had a standby line. That’s because the programming is doing lots of different things. And that diversity of programming allows us to reflect the diversity of this borough.” - Variety
Actress Renata Litvinova: "I suddenly realized that maybe I'm never going back." Director Kirill Serebrennikov: "I continue to allow myself the illusion that my departure was not a permanent escape." Scientist Ilya Kolmanovsky: "With time, people will come to understand that Putin's invasion was also an attack on Russia." - GQ
