That’s the question asked by John Metcalfe in this silly-but-kind-of-not photojournal in The Atlantic Cities, The Atlantic magazine’s online urban planning spinoff. Metcalfe spends most of the piece rehashing a 13-year-old broadside by a group of Philadelphia artists against that city’s Mural Arts Program for the “amateurish” quality of its paintings. As it turns out, though, [...]
MUSICAL CHAIRS Americans for the Arts CEO Bob Lynch has been appointed to the US Travel and Tourism Advisory Board. The advisory board “consists of up to 32 members that advise the Secretary of Commerce on government policies and programs that affect the U.S. travel and tourism industry, offers counsel on current and emerging issues, and [...]
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – DOMESTIC A professor’s quest to overturn a portion of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that placed certain foreign works back under copyright after they had already entered the public domain appears to have reached an end. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is thinking about trying out social impact bonds. Looks [...]
In late September 2011, I started following Occupy Wall Street’s (OWS’s) Arts and Culture committee with the goal of understanding, and critiquing, its organizational structures for a Createquity article. However, I soon found that the same way the movement as a whole resists neatly following one set of demands (though its anti-corporate greed and income [...]
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – DOMESTIC Fractured Atlas officially comes out against the PROTECT-IP Act, also known as SOPA. The same week, the Senate and House remove the most controversial provision. Coincidence? I think not. The state of Connecticut is rebooting its arts agency giving strategy under new leader Kip Bergstrom. The mayor of Boston is “asking” local museums and other [...]
Britain’s Independent has a short feature on the growing influence of corporate arts sponsorships in the wake of recent cutbacks from the government. While the article doesn’t offer much in the way of data or even examples demonstrating the purported trend, writer Emily Jupp does manage to get some beautifully candid on-the-record quotes from corporate [...]
Happy New Year, everybody! ART AND THE GOVERNMENT Congress has agreed to put aside consideration of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) through the end of the year, but the bill isn’t necessarily dead. Arts and technology commentators have begun to be more vocal in their criticism of the bill, which would, among other things, sanction pre-emptive takedown requests [...]
Of course, not all commentators will make equally valuable contributions to the discussion. Just like art, providing critical analysis and consistently thoughtful, informed, and credible feedback requires considerable skill and practice. In short, we want to be able to open up the process to anyone without having to open it to everyone. What qualities would we desire in [...]
Each year, Createquity offers a list of the top ten arts policy stories of the past 12 months. You can read the 2009 and 2010 editions here and here, respectively. In addition to the main list, I also identify my favorite new arts blogs that started within the past year. The list, like the blog, [...]
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – DOMESTIC Sadly, this is what passes for a victory in arts funding these days: the NEA survived the 2012 budget appropriations process with only a 6% cut from last year. This represents full funding of President Obama’s request; yes, that’s right folks, our fearless leader demonstrated his steadfast support of [...]
Thank you very much for this extremely informative and insightful comment, Gary! I agree that the debate...
As the head of the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, which has...
This also points to the lack of clear evaluation tools for public art, and systematic ways of gauging public response....
Don’t forget the best part of the Lehrer article, at least for this crowd: the study of the Broadway successes that...
Sorry that was so long! I guess I needed to get some things off my chest…. The only other thing I would say...