Hungary, Poland, and now Slovenia are assembling and executing a “playbook” to shift cultural institutions to the right. Often, the rhetoric around this has blended fears of anti-communism with populist, nationalist, anti-immigrant, and, in some cases, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. In the process, political memory has become a flashpoint in Europe’s so-called culture war. - Artnet
"The J. Paul Getty Trust initiated the fund, to be officially announced Tuesday, and the California Community Foundation is administering it. Struggling arts organizations with an annual operating budget of under $10 million prior to the pandemic are eligible to apply for unrestricted funds that can go toward programming or operating expenses such as rent, utilities and staff compensation...
Used to hiring artists who work as independent contractors in exchange for program or project fees, it’s been tough for these small nonprofit arts groups in particular to adapt to AB5, the labor law intended to give the state’s workers more benefits by preventing employers from misclassifying them as contractors in order to save money. - KQED
And, given the notorious personal relationship between the two men, it's no surprise that their plans are entirely separate. Governor Cuomo's scheme, called NY PopsUp, will consist of 300 free events over the next 100 days and 1,000 by Labor Day, many featuring very well-known artists, at "existing landscapes" throughout the state. Mayor de Blasio's program, called Open Culture...
"This marks the second chapter of the so-called 'Neustart Kultur' program (New Start Culture), which was first launched last July with a bailout of €1 billion dispersed across cultural sectors in the nation of 83 million. The program consists over 60 sub-programs and supports cinemas, museums, theaters, and other venues and creatives." - Artnet
"There’s this idea that because we’re removing the names we’re somehow removing the stories in what we’re learning, and that in fact is not the case. It’s really just sharing in our schools what is and isn’t uplifted. And that’s part of my work as a school-board member. That’s been my work as a teacher. What are we highlighting...
Lead singer Nadya Tolokonnikova, who has been imprisoned before for her music and activism: "Art is the most important weapon I have against a repressive regime." - BBC
This is not a democratic move: "The Muslim comic thrown in a Madhya Pradesh jail on January 1, 2021 with four others on suspicion that he might make some jokes about Hinduism." - Vice
It's not usually after a disaster: in those cases, great cities tend to rebuild and often become grander. (Think of London and Chicago after great fires, Lisbon and San Francisco after earthquakes, Berlin and Tokyo after bombing.) "Mismanagement and inertia are more formidable foes than cataclysm, though they administer less dramatic death." - Curbed
With misinformation and disinformation (here’s the difference) flourishing unchecked online, being able to discern fact from fiction is especially crucial. We witnessed the fatal violence and the humiliation on the world stage that ensues when a critical mass of our citizens can’t tell the difference between lies and truth. How can democracy, which relies on an informed citizenry, prevail...
"Two Polish historians are facing a libel trial over a book examining Poles' behaviour during the Second World War, a case whose outcome is expected to determine the future of independent Holocaust research under Poland's nationalist government. … comes in the wake of a 2018 law that makes it a crime to falsely accuse the Polish nation of...
Converting "qualities to quantities”, replacing “critical evaluation with economic, technical evaluation”, making “the price system” the ultimate judge, turning institutions into markets and individuals into competing contestants are all hallmarks of the neoliberal vision of a more efficient, productive society. They also characterise quite a lot of what is going on in the art world at the moment. -...
Just as journalistic embargoes aren’t universally bad or unprofessional, academic embargoes might not be either. But conversations about the ethics of “access scholarship” are far less mature than debates about “access journalism.” (Though such journalism still dominates cultures of political reporting, it at least has a name and prominent critics.) - NiemanLab
Yes, 2020 was a no-good-very-bad year for the arts (and most everything else), but a new study from TRG Arts and Purple Seven has at least a few glad tidings. In the U.S. and Canada, half of the arts organizations surveyed took in more total gift income than in 2019, and three-quarters attracted more individual donors than the previous...
“I’d say that size, discipline, history of percentage split of earned/contributed revenue, and dependency on partnerships and fee-for-service have all played a role in an organization’s ability to adapt, survive and even thrive during the pandemic.” - Colorado Sun
