International News in March 2007
Show all of 2007
Cultural diversity? A pipe dream
The UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions entered into force on March 18. Rüdiger Wischenbart gives a quick overview of the realities behind translation. more >
Diversity Makes the Difference
Europe’s cultural sector has called for cultural cooperation between the EU and third countries to form a strong part of EU foreign policy. more >
Joburg lands World Arts Summit
Johannesburg has won the bid to host the fourth World Summit on Arts and Culture in 2009. more >
Museums are Theatres
Museums are no longer ivory towers, but local theatres open to the community, claim French economists. more >
Museums Increasingly Receiving More Than Just Art
In years past, museum directors could be confident that when a patron called to discuss an in-kind gift, it was to talk about donating a work of art. more >
Sofia Hosts Meeting of Culture Ministers Council from SE Europe
Culture plays a key role in the EU integration of the countries from Southeast Europe and in the Balkan region as a whole, Bulgaria's PM Sergey Stanishev said at the opening of the meeting of the Council of Culture ministers. more >
ACE demands rise in Treasury funding after Olympics bruising
Arts Council England chief executive Peter Hewitt has warned that, following the loss of more than £100 million of arts funding to the 2012 Olympics, the culture sector needs a real terms funding rise in the forthcoming spending round to avoid a “return to the days of boom and bust”. more >
Artistes Urged to Plough Back Into Communities
Artists should plough back into the communities rather than being perceived as hapless and helpless people in perennial need of assistance, National Arts Council of Zimbabwe deputy director Elvas Mari has said. more >
Battle for Venice Exhibition Space
French billionaire Francois Pinault and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation are neck and neck in the race to turn a disused Venice customs building into a contemporary-arts center. more >
Leaving Room for the Troublemakers
The more successful a museum grows, the more elitist it tends to become. more >
National Cultural Policy Document Launched
Zimbabweans should venture into manufacturing of cultural products to save foreign currency being used in the importation of the commodities, Vice President Joice Mujuru has said. more >
Oda defends museum policy
Conservative government is standing by its policy that the nation's museums need to stop expecting public money to be available whenever they need it. more >
This Arts Council cut will devastate theatre
Two weeks ago it was announced that £675million of lottery funding would be diverted from the arts in order to pay for the Olympics, but nobody realised quite how quickly and painfully the cuts would start to bite. Now we do, and it hurts a great deal. more >
Visa costs threaten to silence visiting musicians
Foreign musicians hoping to perform in the UK are running up against a slew of exorbitant new visa fees. more >
`Golden Era' for the Arts Will End After Blair: Norman Lebrecht
The U.K. has fostered a mixed economy in which state funding, corporate and individual sponsorship and box office provide roughly equal thirds of the revenue of major arts institutions. That happy equation is about to change with the waning of the Blair regime. more >
I am the Ministry
Culture Ministry Director General Eitan Broshi insists he has no political agenda. Others beg to differ. more >
New Music Economics (Part 3): Keeping Up With the Rent
Orchestras are frequently criticized for not playing enough new music. But less attention is focused on the cost of such "adventurous programming," both from the viewpoint of orchestras renting new scores and the publishers and composers producing them. more >
Canadian artists celebrate Canada Council birthday
Some of the country's best known artists are in Ottawa paying tribute to the Canada Council for the Arts on its 50th anniversary and sharing stories about how the agency helped them get to where they are today. more >
Americans for the Arts Lobbies Congress for Increased Arts Funding
At the first congressional hearing on arts funding in twelve years, D.C.-based Americans for the Arts called on the federal government to restore funding of the National Endowment for the Arts to levels not seen since the 1990s. more >
Kilts won't be obligatory if it controls culture budgets, says SNP
Will the arts become a battleground during this May's election? What would Scottish cultural policy look like if the SNP could indeed forge a governing coalition? more >
Online skills site finds a creative new home
ProjectsETC - the information-sharing site for people creating digital projects - will be taken over by Creative & Cultural Skills (CC Skills) when Culture Online closes at the end of March 2007. more >
Policy by donor countries
What part does culture play in the development cooperation policy of the various donor countries? more >
A battle to confine art treasures within city limits
Recent deals have revealed a struggle over the ownership of community-beloved art. more >
Art Boom? What Art Boom? Collectors Head to Japan for Bargains
Here is the scorecard for the recent contemporary art auctions around the world: New York, $240 million; London, $229 million; Hong Kong, $67 million; Tokyo, $1.1 million. How can this be? more >
Art world looks to Asia for painters and patrons
Art collectors, dealers and auction houses are increasingly looking east for inspiration and investment opportunities, eyeing the rising stars of Asian painting as well as the region's super-rich patrons. more >
Arts Management, Capacity Building Vital for Cultural Sector
The cultural conference that was held on Goree Island off Senegal last week identified four primary concerns that need urgent attention if the African cultural sector is to make much headway. more >
Arts purse strings loosened ahead of federal budget
Canada's Heritage Minister Bev Oda has made a flurry of arts funding announcements in the past week, ahead of Monday's federal budget. more >
B.C. arts groups to get $6.5M for new works
A public-private partnership called Arts Partners in Creative Development will give British Columbia arts organizations $6.5 million in new funding over the next three years. more >
Blair's speech on the arts in full
Tony Blair delivered a wide-ranging speech on cultural policy at London's Tate Modern earlier this month. This is the full text. more >
Brazilian Government Invests in Culture of Hip-Hop
An official government program that is helping to spread hip-hop culture across a vast nation of 185 million people. more >
Congress holds first hearing on arts funding in 12 years
Jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, actor Chris Klein and BET co-founder Sheila Johnson pressed Congress on Tuesday to restore funding for the arts to levels from 15 years ago - before those funds were slashed. more >
Cultural Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago: A Lesson for Nigeria
Dr. Biko Agozino offers a few tips for "cultural industries" in Africa. more >
CULTURE MINISTER SAYS MUSEUMS ARE HEART OF UK CULTURAL RENAISSANCE
Less than a week after Prime Minister Tony Blair hailed the success of Britain's creative economy and the arts, Culture Minister David Lammy has made a speech placing the nation’s museums at the heart of the UK’s 'cultural renaissance'. more >
Educators charge arts lag under No Child Left Behind
Critics say that No Child Left Behind, the massive education reform act that President Bush signed into law in 2002, has "left behind" arts education. more >
Global capital of culture
The past 10 years have been a golden age for British arts, and Blair can take some credit. more >
Iranian Academy of Arts to submit to UNESCO declaration against “300”
The Iranian Academy of Arts has prepared a declaration against onscreen Hollywood production of “300” to offer the UNESCO. more >
Kenya Drawing Up Patent List
Kenya has began drawing a list of artefacts it wants patented by a United Nations agency to ward off increased intellectual piracy from the developed world. more >
Metropolitan Museum Will Let Art Historians Use High-Quality Digital Images Free
The Metropolitan Museum of Art unveiled today a long-awaited program that will make high-resolution digital images of works in its collection freely available to scholars. more >
In French campaign, artists have little to say
Is culture losing its political clout in France? That may seem a bit of a stretch, since the government still pours €2.9 billion into the arts every year — or 30 times the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States. more >
Of poetry and princes
It's no longer compulsory for western poets to starve in garrets, but they are expected to survive on meagre advances and the occasional public handout. In the United Arab Emirates, this Romantic image of poetic poverty holds little sway. more >
'Inside the wire'
The pressures of confinement in Guantánamo Bay have led many in the controversial detention camp to turn to poetry. But American authorities are very reluctant to let the world see them. more >
Why should artists be agents for the government?
Did you know America has a Hip Hop Ambassador appointed by The US Department of State? Or that the ice skater Michelle Kwan holds the office of American Public Diplomacy Envoy? You can now rest at night, knowing the future of the world is taken care of with skating and rapping. Soon a similarly influential role could be coming to an artist or cultural organisation near you. more >
The international who's who in cultural policy, planning and research >