It is a truth universally acknowledged that the public funding of arts and culture will cause political strife. Reasonable people just do not agree on this, and can be surprisingly quick to accuse others…
Over the past 20 years the size of government spending has grown, both absolutely and as a percentage of GDP. Public sector debt has also increased substantially. The cautionary tale of Greece indicates…
Imagine a scenario whereby all artists undertake a month-long retraction of their labour.
rytc/ Banksy in Boston
Over the last six months, I have been thinking, writing and talking about the artist’s role, value and agency in society. I’ve been speaking to the idea that an artist’s contribution to society is, in…
We need to break beyond operatic exclamations.
Wikimedia Commons
“Wouldn’t you just die without Mahler?” This classic line from Willy Russell’s Educating Rita, spoken by the broken aesthete Trish, signifies both main character Rita’s entry into the realms of cultured…
The history of arts funding in Australia suggests the “arm’s length” principle is worth preserving.
wallyg/ Artist: OverUnder, Brooklyn
Things to remember if you are a federal minister for the arts: In arts policy, as in the arts, how you do things matters as much as what you do. Good ideas become bad ideas if your tone is wrong or you…
Funding cuts have forced organisations into a perilous struggle for survival.
roncaglia
Arts organisations and museums all over the country will have been scrambling to get their grant applications in to the Arts Council by 12pm. And they should be worried. The news in all of the culture…
The “intangible benefits” of arts are absent from the policy documents of the three main parties.
(Mural by Hobart artist Robert O'Connor). petahopkins
This Saturday’s Tasmanian election is the first since Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) opened on January 21 2011, and it’s no surprise that the creative arts and industries have featured heavily…
Luca Belgiorno-Nettis’s family contributed A$600,000 toward the A$10 million budget of this year’s Sydney Biennale (Australia’s largest outdoor arts festival), continuing a long family tradition of generous…
Politicians and artists often join together in an uncomfortable game.
Alan Porritt/AAP Image
As anyone who works in the arts business well knows, when art and politics meet (and certainly when art and politicians meet …) the result is more often than not awkward. Many of us will remember the fuss…
The Federal Minister for the Arts George Brandis has proposed a way to to deal with grant applicants who refuse corporate funding.
Alan Porritt/AAP Image
Today it was reported that the Federal Minister for the Arts George Brandis has requested that the Australia Council draft a new policy to deal with grant applicants who refuse funding offered by corporate…
The Sydney Biennale boycott campaign has raised important – and difficult – questions about how we fund the arts.
Wexner Centre
In the wake of the Sydney Biennale’s split from its major sponsor Transfield in recent days, certain uncomfortable questions are again floating very close to the surface. In the late 1990s, I had a successful…
This may sound like a strange request, but if you go to see Joshua Oppenheimer’s brilliant, Bafta-winning and Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing, pay close attention to the opening credits. Before the…
Every year thousands of people visit the VCA campus to check out the young artists’ work.
Ollanani
The release last month of a Melbourne Arts Precinct Blueprint by Arts Victoria, that promises further development of the cultural precinct in the city’s Southbank, hasn’t come without its fair share of…
Arts precincts have a tendency to become an arts ghetto, shut off from the broader community.
PreciousBytes
Melburnians are oft to claim that they reside in the “arts capital” of Australia. Such self-perception (justified or not) reflects and helps to elevate the profile, quality and ambition of artistic activity…
Street life helps us to pretend we’re not just Pavlov’s dogging it to capitalism’s sonorous bell.
a little tune
Sixty-six years ago, the esteemed town planner Frank Heath took a bite out of his home town of Melbourne – from a safe distance. The Melbourne Herald was interviewing Heath in London. Quite possibly causing…
The Last of Us is as gripping as many of the films you’ll see in the cinema.
PlayStation Europe
Hollywood’s most celebrated actors, actresses and directors are, by now, finalising their outfits and having their manicures in preparation for the impending Oscars ceremony on 2 March. It’s considerably…
Supposed self-censorship by the Queensland Theatre Company over a joke about Campbell Newman has raised few laughs.
Dave Hunt/AAP
The joke was in, then out, then in again. Over the last week a story reminding us of the delicate politics of arts funded by the government and the need for good governance leaked out of the Queensland…
It’s time to wake up to London’s cultural dominance.
shutterstock
London has 15.4%, one eighth, of the population of England. It is well known that London receives a disproportionate amount of UK arts subsidies, but perhaps not the vast extent of this. Our independently…
Culture: not just contemporary dance in London.
Jonathan Brady/PA
Pinning down definitions of the words “culture” and “arts” has always been notoriously difficult. But over the past 60 years, fast and profound social, economic, technological and cultural changes have…
We need to find a more meaningful way to talk about arts and culture.
OsamaSaeedDotOrg
Measurement determines estimation; estimation determines calculation; calculation determines comparison; comparison determines victory. So wrote Sun Tzu in The Art of War 2,000 years ago. Since that time…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne