August 9, 2010

Govt. funding v Arts philanthropy

Editor    posted 9 Aug 2010, 03:37 PM / edited 9 Aug 2010, 03:49 PM

Two recent articles in Britain’s The Independent offer warnings about governments who withdraw public funding for the arts and leave it to the private philanthropists.

David Lister: Hunt’s approach would indeed make a change – for the worse

Wednesday, 4 August 2010

The Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt has declared: “If you said to me what is the one thing I could do as Culture Secretary that would make a real difference to the arts, I would say it would be to help foster an American-style culture of philanthropy to the arts and culture here in the UK.”

The New York experience shows that the Hunt approach would indeed make a difference. It would put arts institutions in this country in the same danger that they are currently facing in America. [More]

This is what happens when arts funding is outsourced

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt wants to bring US-style arts philanthropy to Britain. If New York is anything to go by it would be a disaster, says Clemency Burton-Hill

Wednesday, 4 August 2010

It’s a baking hot afternoon in New York and I’m standing in line at TKTS, commonly known as “the half-price ticket booth” in Times Square, crossing my fingers that the theatre ticket I am after will be a) available and b) offered at a price that is at least vaguely near the half-price mark. TKTS hovers close to the trading-on-false-pretences boundary, as its discounts are usually more like 20 per cent, but a discount is a discount, and I have guiltily taken the afternoon off in order to wait here, patiently, among the tourists and the flashing neon lights, for a few hours.

If I told you that I’d already seen the play in question – Red, by John Logan – three times in London, would you think I was mad? You might if I told you that the combined ticket price of those three trips (£78) still wouldn’t quite add up to how much a single ticket for its Broadway incarnation – same play, same cast – costs ($126 and a $4.50 fee, or £82).

But I loved the play and am curious to see it again in New York, the city in which it is set, and in which I currently live. [More]

SmackBang SmackBang posted 9 Aug 2010, 04:58 PM

 Another interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald in the weekend:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/creative-accounting/2010/08/06/1280601551744.html