Oil prices are at a record high. And profits are rolling in. But there's an intriguing phenomenon in the oil industry called "demand destruction." It means when prices get too high for too l…
Is it the subscription model that's not working or is it the way the arts do subscriptions? [More]
This week's podcast of The UnderTow, ArtsJournal's new weekly podcast, features three stories from the past week. Sometimes stories are not exactly about the things they seem to be about at …
Today we introduce a new podcast -- ArtsJournal's "The UnderTow" - a more or less weekly deeper look at two or three stories from the past week. [More]
There are plenty of strategic reasons to use hybrid content to further artistic goals that don't have to be around making money. But ultimately the model, whatever it is, has to make sense. …
The arts workforce, and those being recruited into it, is changing. "We've never had as many openings at one time. And we recognize that in hiring so many positions at once, we have a huge r…
Many arts organizations are coming out of the COVID shutdown in better financial shape than they were going in. [More]
Over the past year, while compiling 150,000 stories in the AJ archives, I realized that this is a unique record of an extraordinary period in our cultural history. Sorry " that sounds grandi…
You might think this is just a journalism issue, but one can draw parallels of paying to read stories to paying for music streaming, which has not proven to "pay off" for the vast majority o…
I was asked to deliver a "provocation" for this week's League of American Orchestras annual conference with the prompt "How has Technology Changed Orchestras Forever?" Here's a video of the…
We need a significant, stable ongoing source of new funding that is politically insulated and inflation-proof. [More]
The shutdown has suspended usual rules, positions and behaviors, suggesting there may be opportunities to not just rethink but take action. [More]
Opera America had asked me to speak at their annual conference this year, but of course the conference was canceled and moved online. So I made this video for the online conference, talking …
So your workplace has shut down (your theatre, concert hall museum, stage, whatever). Now what? Moving online is the obvious play. And in the weeks since lockdown there has been a flood of a…
You can see this as nothing but loss. Or perhaps some of our most intractable debates are now suddenly shaken free of their old moorings. [More]
A few months ago I was at a conference of administrators of large arts institutions when a leading researcher in cultural trends made a bold claim: The election of Donald Trump is a result o…
The tide has turned on the tech revolution. Over the past year the breathless articles that used to accompany new tech innovations have dried up, replaced with dystopian concerns about the D…
This week Washington Post arts journalists Anne Midgette and Peggy McGlone published results of their six-month investigation of sexual harassment in the classical music business. Some of th…
A few weeks ago we posted a link in ArtsJournal to a piece in the Toronto Star under the admittedly provocative headline: “Time To Retire Beethoven’s Ninth?” In the piece, …
Last Week: Have performing arts centers led us to a dead end?… The new World Trade Center in New York demonstrates much of what is wrong with building today’s cities… The h…
Following on Joe Horowitz’s essay Lincoln Center Snapshot: Bing, Bernstein, and Balanchine Fifty Years Later and the five responses to his provocation, we’re in El Paso, Te…
In his essay looking back on Lincoln Center on its 50th birthday, Joe Horowitz suggests that the cultural citadel built optimistically to be a launching pad for the American performing ar…
As recently as 1990, American symphony orchestras accounted for an average of 60 percent of their budgets in earned income. This meant, at the time, that if you weren’t selling enough …
This Week: Trump, the arts, the culture budget and protest… Harvard ART school gets suspended…MIT’s list of 10 things you need to know… Writers and money – the …
So it begins. A report in The Hill, then picked up in the Washington Post, says that the Trump administration intends to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowm…