"We Built Way Too Many Cultural Institutions During the Good Years."

Did we? And who are "we"? "We" are all those cities across America who think we can be Bilbao, that if we build it, they will come.

Per capita, the biggest total spenders on cultural projects during this period were Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the San Francisco/Oakland/Fremont region of California, Appleton and Madison, Wisconsin, and Lawrence, Kansas....

We seemed to buy into that Richard Florida/"Rise of the Creative Class" theory "that if we have cultural amenities, we’ll have better, more creative populations."

The biggest arts building boom in fact occurred in the South, a potential sign of cities there trying to catch up with the rest of the country. 

Look! We're not as backward as you think!

"These projects are very much emotional, they’re projects that have a lot of passion in them.... A lot of the rationality that goes into running a business sometimes doesn’t go into these projects."

Hey! That's a nice summary of the problem of letting government do anything.

It's intermission.

You can talk about anything you want.

It's intermission.

You can talk about anything you want.

At the Overture Café...

... you can tune up.

A grand performance of the national anthem in Madison... and a complaint about it.

Jessica Courtier in the Capitol Times, describing the program that opened the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s new season:

Forgoing the usual celebratory fanfare, the program opened with John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls, a piece premiered a year after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Drawing its texts from the missing-person posters that populated New York immediately after the terror attacks, the piece is filled with recorded speaking voices and live singing....

The piece closed as it opened, with recordings of the most quotidian of street sounds, and the audience held a space of contemplative silence, as conductor John DeMain had requested before starting.

I’m going to say something here that will no doubt get me hot water: I am disappointed that, at this point in the concert, DeMain chose to insert a rousing rendition of the national anthem.

Where the Adams composition creates a space for personal reflection and tenderly holds the names of people who perished, the anthem demands a particular feeling. Surely the sense of nation was implied in the Adams piece and need not have been followed by sounds so linked to politics.

Meade and I attended last night's performance, and if the audience objected to the national anthem, you could not tell. Playing the anthem has been a tradition and omitting it because of the 9/11 remembrance is, presumably, even in Madison, almost unthinkable. And the orchestra, augmented by the choir, produced real thrills, especially when they hit the high note — with descant — on "free."

"In a major turnabout, Madison and Overture Center representatives are now discussing private — rather than city — ownership of the arts facility as part of a path to erase Overture's $28.6 million debt."

Well, well, well. The climate changes. Even here in Madison, Wisconsin:

City Council President Mark Clear on Wednesday sent a memo to council colleagues saying he now believes the city should not acquire Overture and that Overture representatives are willing to consider private ownership of the $205 million building.

That's a huge shift from a June 22 deal among Overture officials, banks and donors to eliminate the $28.6 million debt — including $15 million pledged by donors — which required that the city buy the arts center on State Street for $1 by year's end.

The Overture Center...



... is an over-expensive, over-glamorous monument to the over-sized opinion elite Madisonians have of themselves... and of the humble citizens' appetite for The Arts.

I have never understood how the immense, ultra-glamorous Overture Center fit Madison.

Now, there are huge financial problems, and big cut-backs have been announced. I know these are economic hard times, but how was this immense architectural monument ever deemed viable in our small city? I often wander in there, looking for something to buy tickets to, and the offerings are nowhere near commensurate with the ambitious size of the place. So, they're cutting back jobs and shows, but they can't shrink the building -- which never seemed to offer more than we were already getting at the much smaller arts center we already had.

Here's the PDF of the announcement.

The approved budget includes deep cuts to administrative costs....

Overture Center leadership will host a series of ‘‘community conversations’’ at various places around Dane County through the spring, inviting people to share their thoughts regarding Overture Center’s future.

You know what that means. They want us taxpayers to pay for the insane hubris that made them take over an entire city block and build it up with extra theaters and giant expanses of glass and marble.