“Following the endless turbulent commentary on Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen, and the commentary on the commentary, you could be forgiven for feeling that literary art, as Trilling defined it, has been largely displaced by life—or, at least, by the pictures of life ceaselessly produced by the all-powerful media—as the realm in which we lose ourselves in a moral problem.”

Just compare us to Paris, Rome or even New York. The arts are cheap – 14 pence a week per taxpayer goes to the arts, a third of what the French spend. It’s a tiny sum of money.” But the subsidy is shrinking. “I don’t use the word ‘subsidy’. It’s a wet, tedious word. I use ‘investment’. ‘Subsidy’ sounds so passive.”

Philip Kennicott on arts in the Obama Administration: “Why has it neglected one of the fundamental tools it has for shaping attitudes to American culture? Why did President George W. Bush manage to use the NEA so effectively while Obama has manifested only indifference? Is this the sad reality of the technocratic mindset, that culture is secondary or tertiary, and not worth the bother?”

“If adopted, the measure would end a streak of 11 consecutive years in which California governors and legislators have allocated just $1 million to the arts council from the state’s tax-fed general fund — a level that consistently has left the Golden State last in the nation in per capita funding of its state arts grant making agency.”

We believe that creativity researchers have been asking the wrong question. We ask, “Is creativity important?” The answer is clearly yes. The real question is, “Is creativity MORE important than all of the other attributes that demand our time, attention, and resources?”

“Executives developing a performing arts center at ground zero have hired a temporary artistic director from the Young Vic theater in London, one of a series of steps to be announced Thursday to advance a project that has long faced political and logistical hurdles.”