The National Endowment for the Arts will soon have a new Chairman. Rocco Landesman announced yesterday his plans to retire at the end of the year, in a decision widely anticipated among arts insiders. Senior Deputy Chairman Joan Shigekawa will serve as acting chair until a successor is named.

The Supreme Court will consider a case involving first sale doctrine and whether consumers have the right to resell copyrighted items bought abroad in the United States. The New York Times comes out in favor of copyright holders on this one. I’m more skeptical though – limiting consumers’ rights in this way seems like a recipe for convoluted legal restrictions and the Grey Lady offers no prescriptions for how the limitations should be put into practice. Meanwhile, the FCC is adopting new regulations pertaining to the use of wireless microphones (relevant for some large theaters and performing arts centers).

What do this month’s election results mean for copyright, anyway? Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman speculate that in the short term, we probably won’t see any major (successful) efforts to expand copyright protection, especially with two of Hollywood’s favorite pro-copyright Congressmen, Howard Berman and Mary Bono Mack, losing their elections. In the longer term, we may see Republicans try to pursue a libertarian line on copyright in an effort to draw a wedge between Democrats and younger voters. I’m not sure how well that would work, but there is already evidence that, among its many civil wars, there is also a generational divide among Republicans on this issue. Last week, the conservative Republican Study Committee released and then pulled a memo by 24-year-old Congressional staffer Derek Khanna advocating for meaningful copyright reform. Future of Music Coalition’s Casey Rae has more.

DOMESTIC – STATE AND LOCAL

Denver’s arts community is in an unusual situation, finding itself with $57 million in publicly approved bond money for capital construction to spend after a planned renovation of Boettcher Concert Hall failed to go through. The mayor has submitted a list of recommendations redirecting the cash to nine institutions. Denver’s not the only city with new publicly approved money for the arts: as previously reported here, the city of Portland, OR’s Regional Arts and Culture Commission will get $5.7 million a year in new arts funding because of a recently passed ballot measure. Eloise Damrosch explains how it happened.

Obviously inspired by the recent passage of a millage (property tax) to support the Detroit Institute of Arts, arts advocates in Ann Arbor put a similar millage proposal on the ballot for this month’s elections – this time to support public art. The measure would have cost taxpayers $11 per year and raised about $450,000 for public art programs, but failed to garner enough votes to pass on Election Day. Aaron Seagraves, Ann Arbor’s public art administrator who is interviewed in the article, says he doesn’t know why the measure didn’t pass, but I’m guessing the DIA’s $2.5 million advocacy campaign (and presumably the lack of same in Ann Arbor) might have had something to do with it.

INTERNATIONAL

For the second Createquity update in a row, the arts policy news from abroad ranges from inconvenient to tragic. Canada’s oldest arts advocacy group, the Canadian Conference of the Arts, is no more. The organization had received continuous funding from the federal government since 1965 which represented about three-quarters of its budget, but Canada’s conservative leaders decided to cut the cord. CCA had at times been critical of government-supported policies, though the decision appears to have been more financial than political. Advocacy is not completely dead in Canada, though – Shannon Litzenberger has a report from the all-volunteer Canadian Arts Coalition’s Arts Day festivities (similar to Americans for the Arts’s Arts Advocacy Day).

In the UK, Arts Council England is reducing its staff by 21% as part of a previously negotiated agreement with the government, and Creative Scotland is adjusting its grantmaking procedures in the face of artist concerns. Folks don’t seem to be happy with the general direction of things. In Newcastle, the local government has cut all funding to the arts for a whopping £90 million savings, losing 1300 jobs in the process – similarly drastic cuts had already happened in the cities of Somerset, Derby, and Darlington.

A very sad story comes from Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the 124-year-old National Museum is closing due to lack of funds. The museum, in Sarajevo, is the victim of a political crisis that is destabilizing the government of the young country. Several other revered cultural institutions are in danger of failing as well. Things are a little better in Greece, where Ira-Ilana Papadopoulou reports on how the economic crisis there has affected the cultural sector.

Even sadder news continues to come from the Muslim world, as news of arts-related tragedies attributable to conflict or oppression continues to pour in. In Syria, the ancient city of Aleppo is losing its cultural heritage in the wake of the civil war taking place there. In Mali, where the militant group Ansar Dine has already destroyed mosques in the ancient city of Timbuktu, Salafists are now threatening and harassing musicians. In Somalia, a popular poet, playwright and songwriter was assassinated in Mogadishu by Al Queda-aligned group Al-Shabab. Astonishingly, he is the 18th media figure killed by the group this year. Iran, thankfully, is not beset with this kind of violence, but its national orchestra is virtually dead in the face of financial difficulties and political pressure.

Breaking news: the government is cutting its funding to PBS! Wait – sorry – hold that. It turns out the NEA is cutting its funding to PBS – to the tune of more than $1 million, to be exact. Talk about irony! The money had been earmarked to support organizations that produce arts-oriented programming on public television through the NEA’s Art in Media program. The grants are large by NEA standards – one organization was receiving $400,000 – and the media program received more than twice as many applicants this past year in part by opening up the guidelines to include interactive forms.

Facing potentially deep cuts to defense spending should the parties fail to come to agreement during this winter’s “lame duck” session, the US Air Force is planning to shutter three of its 23 military bands and downsize two others, eliminating 103 positions in total. An attempt to reduce the Pentagon’s spending on bands by $120 million (note that this is only a little less than the entire budget of the NEA) failed in the House last year.

STATE

The Arizona Commission on the Arts has been reauthorized by Arizona’s state government for another 10 years. In another state that might have been a routine win, but Arizona’s arts commission has been cut to the bone by Republican legislatures and governor Jan Brewer since the start of the current recession, and had been threatened with de-authorization earlier in the process. The cynic in me wonders if conservatives are happy to keep the Commission around as a political punching bag as long as it doesn’t have any real power, but at least if the infrastructure is there the hope of growing it in the future is ever-present. Congratulations to Bob Booker and Arizona Citizens/Action for the Arts for shepherding this one through.

Meanwhile, it looks like much-maligned Kansas may be on track to restore funding to its state arts council this year. Rebranded as a creative industries commission, the agency is slated to receive $700,000 in the state’s yet-to-be-passed budget. Of course, it wasn’t until the budget got to Governor Brownback’s desk that the arts commission was vetoed last year, but after the political firestorm and that caused, one hopes that he will see things differently this time around.

Otherwise, things continue to be quiet on the state front. Is no news good news? I guess we’ll find out in a few months.

LOCAL

In the city of Portland, ME (yeah, the other Portland), two arts and creative economy agencies are merging, and the community is seeing the benefits. Creative Portland and the Portland Arts & Cultural Alliance will become the Creative Portland Corporation as of July 1, and will be the official arts agency of the region. Creative Portland has also successfully applied for a Community Development Block Grant to bring Blair Benjamin’s Assets for Artists program to the city.

INTERNATIONAL

The UK is considering a cap on the tax incentives offered for major charitable gifts, and some folks in the arts community there are not happy about it. Similar proposals for this country have been floated by the Obama administration for the past few years, but have gone nowhere to date. Meanwhile, Britain’s Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is implicated in the growing scandal concerning News Corporation’s cozy relationship with the British government. Hunt is accused of acting as a “back channel” to Rupert Murdoch’s news empire during its bid to take over full control of the broadcasting network BSkyB, which it was Hunt’s job to approve.

Hunt isn’t the only minister of culture in the news lately. We had Sweden’s Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, who found herself in the worst photo op of all time the other week. And now, Bahrain’s culture minister is in some serious hot water for calling her conservative critics “not real men” for opposing an arts festival that her office is organizing.

At least these countries have culture ministers. Bosnia and Herzegovnia’s most prominent museums, galleries and libraries may have to close indefinitely due to a dysfunctional, leaderless government that failed to appropriate any federal funds for their operation last year. At Sarajevo’s National Museum, employees haven’t been paid in seven months. Amazingly, it’s still open – for now.

Finally, this is a novel take on the “day without art” concept: an apparently insane museum director in Italy burned one of the paintings in his museum’s collection as a protest against debt-driven funding cuts, and is threatening to destroy three more each week until the Italian government stops to listen. (So far, there’s no indication that it gives a crap.)