Mile-High Musings on Arts, Culture, Creativity and Philanthropy

There was a story in yesterday's Crain's New York Business called Artists Fleeing the City about the fact that the economic downturn, combined with the high cost of living in NYC, was beginning to drive artists out of the City.  Here is a key quote from the article: Though there are no official numbers, a survey of 1,000 artists conducted in 2009 by the New York Foundation for the Arts found that more than 43% expected their annual income to drop by 26% to 50% over the next six months, and 11% believed they would have to leave New York within six months. Even more troubling, cultural boosters say, is that for the first time, artists fresh out of art schools around the country are choosing to live in nascent artist communities in regional cities like Detroit and Cleveland—which are dangling incentives to attract this group—and bypassing New York altogether.   Of course, many arts advocates and policy folks in NY are trying to figure out how to prevent this from happe...

This past Saturday at Noon the Opera Company of Philadelphia mounted a surprise performance of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah (with a lot of help from many other choruses and ensembles) in the women's shoe department at Macy's Center City, accompanied by the extraordinary Wanamaker Organ. There were over 600 participating singers! This performance was made possible by the Knight Foundation as part of their national " Random Acts of Culture " program, and coincided with the launch of the new Knight Arts Challenge Philadelphia . Given the scale of this undertaking it was perhaps not as much of a complete surprise as many similar arts flash mobs have been. The singers perhaps even outnumbered the shoppers surprised by the "spontaneous" performance. Yet it still worked. The performance coincided with the regularly scheduled Noon organ concert, the performers were dressed in ordinary street clothes, often accompanied by children or partners....