Saturday, June 25, 2005

More on Naked Statues...

About bloody time! (Excuse my English)

John Ashcroft had the naked statues at the Justice Department covered at a cost of $8000 because he was embarassed by a bronzed breast.

The new Attorney General Alberto Gonzales let them be removed because he had "more important" things to consider. Gonzales is obviously someone with common sense.

WASHINGTON (June 24) - With barely a word about it, workers at the Justice Department Friday removed the blue drapes that have famously covered two scantily clad statues for the past 3 1/2 years.
Spirit of Justice, with her one breast exposed and her arms raised, and the bare-chested male Majesty of Law basked in the late afternoon light of Justice's ceremonial Great Hall.
The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to speak in the Great Hall without fear of a breast showing up behind him in television or newspaper pictures. They also provoked jokes about and criticism of the deeply religious Ashcroft.
The 12-foot, 6-inch aluminum statues were installed shortly after the building opened in the 1930s.
With a change in leadership at Justice, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales faced the question: Would they stay or would they go?
He regularly deflected the question, saying he had weightier issues before him.
Paul R. Corts, the assistant attorney general for administration, recommended the drapes be removed and Gonzales signed off on it, spokesman Kevin Madden said, while refusing to allow The Associated Press to photograph the statues Friday.


http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050624185809990004&ncid=NWS00010000000001

Friday, June 24, 2005

Art Museum Visits-I See Naked People

In an earlier post, I mentioned changing Michelangelo's art in order to "protect" children from nakedness.

Read this article for a sane viewpoint:

Art museums are often full of nudity. Why? Because artists love to create representations of people.
"The human figure has always been one of the most studied aspects of art," said Danielle Rice, executive director of the Delaware Art Museum.
"It's the measure of all things."
So if you go to a museum or art gallery where there will be depictions of art, how do you explain it to your kids?
Naturally, of course.
When children notice a nude figure, Rice who headed the education department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art before coming to Delaware, uses the moment as an opportunity to start a conversation about the subject. Does the image make them feel uncomfortable or embarrassed? Why is that?, she asks. She then leads the conversation toward the difference between nudity in art -- an ideal, or symbol of nature -- and nakedness, which is less ideal. "It gets them thinking," she said.
Milton Downing, who teaches art at Brandywood Elementary School in Brandywine Hundred and and Maple Lane Elementary School in Claymont and at the Christina Cultural Arts Center in Wilmington, explains how artists see the drawing of the human body as an artistic challenge and an important form of expression. He then points out what makes the image artistic. "Oh, course, I get some oohs and ahs," he says.


http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050621/LIFE/506210305/1005

Saturday, June 18, 2005

Legal Help for Artists

I had a request from someone looking for legal help on an art issue.

I recommend any artist looking for help to start at their local Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. There are several offices around the country and this link should take you to a national list:

http://dwij.org/matrix/vla_list.html

Here in Illinois the local office is in Chicago:

William E. Rattner, Esq.
Executive Director Lawyers for the Creative Arts
213 W. Institute Place, Suite 401
Chicago, IL 60610
312 649-4111 Ph
312 944-2195 Fax
eMail: wrattner@law-arts.com http://www.law-arts.org/

And The Survey Said...

If the following article proves anything, is that parents are the ones who need to get involved with making sure that their children receive arts education. This is a hurry-up, stressed-out, don't bother me society but if we don't take action, who will?

Americans for the Arts, a non-profit organization committed to advancing the arts in America, conducted a survey focusing on the attitudes and opinions that Americans feel about art education.

·86 percent of Americans agree that an arts education encourages and assists in the improvement of a child’s attitudes toward school.
·83 percent of Americans believe that arts education helps teach children to communicate effectively with adults and peers.
·79 percent of Americans agree that incorporating arts into education is the first step in adding back what’s missing in public education today.
·79 percent of Americans believe that it’s important enough for them to get personally involved in increasing the amount and quality of arts education.

However, the survey also revealed that those “involved with a child” are uncertain when it comes to how to become involved in “advocating for arts education”.

·62 percent believe that there are other people or organizations in the community who are better suited to take action (than they are).
·40 percent say that they do not know how to get involved in arts education.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Art Advocacy Links

If you surfed here looking for art advocacy links, these are some of my favorites:

Americans for the Arts
www.artsusa.org

ArtsEdge
www.artsedge.kennedy-center.org/

Arts Journal Online newsletter
www.artsjournal.com

In addition, you can google search "Art Council" along with your state. If you live in Illinois, this is the link:
www.state.il.us/agency/iac/

I will continue to post links to sites that promote the arts and if you have a favorite, please post it here in the comments or send me an e-mail. Larger organizations like the Americans for the Arts have membership fees, but not all groups do. I prefer a grass-roots approach meaning I want to encourage people to support their local community artists, theaters, and music organizations. And when local schools want to cut art programs for whatever reason, stop them. The arts are a vital part of education and benefits are across all subjects.

Good luck!

Exhibition space-in space...

I know finding exhibition space is hard for the self-employed artist but imagine the logistics involved in this:

The International Space Station (ISS) - currently in orbit around the Earth - is our only permanent human habitation in space. It is a great achievement of human ingenuity and international cooperation, as well as a cutting-edge research facility. The European Space Agency is interested to open the International Space Station to a new community of artistic and cultural users. This new study sets out to investigate and focus the interest of the cultural world in the International Space Station, to generate a policy for involving cultural users in the International Space Station programme in the longer term and to develop a representative set of ready-to-implement demonstrator projects in arts, culture and media.

For the full article see the Arts Catalyst page here:
http://www.artscatalyst.org/projects/space/ISS.html

Friday, June 10, 2005

Art Museums Flourish

Depressed by all the bad news concerning art programs being cut, lack of funding, etc. etc., I came across this gem from the Seattle Times. About time for some positive news! Being a Cubs fan, the point about admissionto Wrigley Field is a bitter pill to swallow...

Art museums have learned the lessons of successful retailers in that they allow people to visit at all times of day, including evenings and weekends, not at a prearranged time. And a visitor can go at his or her own pace in a museum, looking, reading, thinking and enjoying. Plus, a concert, dance, performance or film is often included in the price of admission.

Speaking of admission, some museums, including all the great museums on the Mall in Washington, D.C., are free. Even the newly expanded Museum of Modern Art in New York, which charges the highest admission of any art museum in this country, is still a bargain at $20, compared with typical ticket prices of $40 at the New York Philharmonic and $32 to see the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002320703&zsection_id=268883724&slug=artmuseums08&date=20050608

Monday, June 06, 2005

Celebrities and their Causes

Star power can bring atttention to a cause, there's no doubt about that. In this article the discussion was, does a celebrity hurt or help? Strangely enough, I'm all for celebrities who promote the causes I like, but when they go out and stump for a presidential candidate I don't agree with, it makes me mad... hmmm.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/05/ING9QD1FIE1.DTL


Why would anyone object to these efforts? Two big reasons: Suspicion of the celebrities' motives and a sense that the celebrities don't really understand the problems about which they speak.

Case in point: The lead singer for rock group Coldplay, Chris Martin, has visited Ghana in his campaign against Western trade practices that he says undermine farmers in the West African country. Get rid of unfair tariffs imposed on Ghana, and those farmers would thrive, he believes.

Martin, who's married to actress Gwyneth Paltrow, may be well-intentioned, but he's ignoring structural problems in Ghana that have far more impact than outside tariffs, says Franklin Cudjoe, a development director in Ghana's capital, Accra. Cudjoe derides what he calls rock-star economics -- the practice of musician-activists and others to focus predominantly on the West's perceived responsibility for Africa's economic woes.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

IRS and the Arts Business

One of the biggest pains to being self-employed in a creative industry is trying to predict how much I’ll make during a given quarter so that I can let the IRS know. If I get it wrong, I get penalties or the IRS keeps more of my money than it should. So when I read this article I thought “so what?” Why shouldn’t an arts business pay its employees and its taxes like any other business?

When I gave it more thought, I realized many arts businesses operate with wildly uncertain income just like the artists they hire. Depending on grants or admittance fees isn’t like selling a product where sales can be predicted more easily.

On third thought, maybe the IRS regulations are at fault…

Here’s a part of the article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Shakespeare won't be on the playbill when Kent Phillips finishes plans for his theater group's next season. Instead of a 15-player production of the Bard's "Richard II," he is looking into a two-man show by Noel Coward.

Phillips, interim director of the Tacoma Actors Guild and managing director of Bellevue Civic Theater, didn't pull his Shakespeare plans for artistic purposes. He was reacting to news that the state has been auditing other theater companies and fining them for paying actors honorariums and stipends rather than treating them as full-fledged employees.


At issue is the practice among small and midsize theaters to treat some actors, technicians and designers as independent contractors rather than as employees. Theater directors say paying a fixed payment or weekly stipend is a way to honor and at least slightly subsidize their creative work -- and provide a stepping stone to higher-paid Equity jobs -- without completely breaking the bank for community non-profits.

Now, they say, the state is telling them that workers should be classified as employees, meaning they should pay an hourly salary of at least minimum wage, plus contribute to the state's unemployment and workers' compensation funds.


For the complete article follow this link:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/theater/226100_theatertax27.html