Economicsitis: A Response

Last week’s post, provocatively titled Economists Don’t Care About Poor People, attracted two lengthy, substantive critiques. One was from Michael Rushton, with whom I’ve tangled previously on the subject, and the other from Adam Huttler. (Note to self: when your own boss writes an eleventy-thousand-word comment refuting your twelvety-thousand-word blog post, maybe it’s time to,Read More

Around the horn: it’s an honor just to be nominated edition

Americans for the Arts has another blogfest going, this time about private sector arts advocacy. Some big names participating in this one. The National Endowment for the Arts’s latest program has sort of flown under the radar, but Our Town (which is currently in the President’s budget request waiting to be approved by Congress) wouldRead More

Economists Don’t Care About Poor People

(Cf. for the title.) My around the horn post from this week included an item on the ethics of offering unpaid internships and a proposal under consideration across the pond to force arts organizations (and other employers, presumably) to pay interns the minimum wage if the engagement is longer than a month. This sparked aRead More

About the name

Since you asked, Michael, I still can’t figure out if Createquity has four syllables or five. Indeed it has five syllables: cree-ay-TEH-qui-tee. And in case anyone’s wondering, there’s no glottal before “equity,” I just lean right into the “t” before it. Also, not that I really need to remind you if you’re reading this, butRead More

Around the horn: earthquake edition

David Byrne has a new journal entry talking about his experience speaking at the TED Conference last month. If you’d like to hear Byrne speak, he will be kicking off the Connecting New England’s Creative Communities Summit in Providence next week as part of a panel on “Cities, Bicycles, and the Future of Getting Around.”Read More

eighth blackbird and the Ethics of Pay-to-Play

Chicago-based chamber music ensemble eighth blackbird has earned the admiration of many a composer over the past 14 years for their electrifying performances, outreach to new audiences, and tireless championship of contemporary programming. That is, until the announcement of their new composition competition earlier this month. It seems that in order to enter the competition,Read More

Around the horn: Johnny Weir edition

It is indeed state budget time, and AFTA’s Tim Mikulski has a helpful round-up of some of the early arts advocacy fights on the horizon for this year. So far, Rhode Island’s 58% cut is looming largest, but Louisiana is close behind as Gov. Jindal wants to halve the state’s Department of Culture, Recreation, andRead More

Flashback: Press Play!

In April 2007, my experimental rock band/electric chamber ensemble Capital M had its second (and last) annual World Premieres Extravaganza at the now-defunct Tonic on New York’s Lower East Side. We opened with a performance of composer Ian Dicke’s Press Play!, a really cool composition fusing rock, jazz, and classical idioms just about as authenticallyRead More

They like me, they really like me!

The good folks at the Technology in the Arts blog, a program of the Center for Arts Management and Technology at Carnegie Mellon University, run a podcast that includes a feature called “Cool Sites of the Episode.” Here they are talking about Createquity and giving a shout-out to Around the Horn (hope it’s cool ofRead More

Yosi speaks

Yosi Sergant, former NEA Communications Director, has finally broken his silence with respect to the events that led to his resignation last fall. For those of you who haven’t been following this story, the article linked above provides a good overview. Sergant was interviewed by Hillel Aron, a grad student at USC who is (self-admittedly)Read More