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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > January > 28
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Arts education gets a boost from Texas legislators
Some readers of this blog may have missed an article that ran in our pages yesterday about efforts from Texas lawmakers to re-institute fine arts education into the Texas education system.
Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano and Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, hosted author Dan Pink, author of “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future,” in a session Monday urging a discussion of how fine arts education might be melded into the core curriculum.
Read the story here.
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News bits: the arts & the recession
The recession continues to take its toll on arts organizations around the country. Every day seems to produce more bad news. The Los Angeles Opera announced layoffs of administrative staff and budget cuts. Famed tenor Plácido Domingo, the general director of the company, deferred his salary last year in an effort to reduce costs rather than to see cuts to the company’s artistic budget.
In the Midwest, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra posted a $3.8 million operating deficit. Ouch.
But by far the biggest news in recent days is Brandeis University’s unconscionable decision to close its Rose Art Museum and sell off the collection of modern and contemporary art — one of the best such collections in the greater Boston area. Such a draconian move is unethical in the worlds of higher education and of the arts and no matter the depth of financial woe — Brandeis officials reported a $10 million deficit to the private university’s budget. The Rose’s 6,000-piece collection — which has been valued at $350 million — includes works by Wilhelm de Kooning, Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Morris Louis, Rene Magritte and many, many others.
Thankfully, museum backers are seeking to halt the move, including investigating the legality of it. And the public outcry also includes some online petitions. Read an interesting Q-and-A with Rose Art Museum director Michael Rush here.
Meanwhile, up in the Metroplex, KERA’s Art & Seek blog reports that longtime Dallas gallery Gerald Peters Gallery is shutting down after more than 20 years. In addition to A-list contemporary artists, the gallery represented such well-known Austin artists as Julie Speed and Bale Creek Allen. The gallery will maintain its Santa Fe and New York branches, but it is a telling sign of the economy that such a stalwart in the state is shutting its doors.
