I'm not enviou$ at all.
"Grants bring whirl of public art for Greenway" by Geoff Edgers | Globe Staff June 25, 2014
Earlier this year, the Institute of Contemporary Art got disappointing news: It would no longer be in charge of painting the massive Dewey Square wall mural, at the head of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. The job would instead go to the more mainstream Museum of Fine Arts.
Other Greenway changes, perhaps more universally welcomed, are in the works. On Wednesday the nonprofit funder ArtPlace will announce a $250,000 public art grant for the Greenway, a 15-acre network of parks in downtown Boston. That follows by just a few days the announcement of plans for a $1 million public art expansion that will include the installation next year of a huge, billowing fabric work meant to hover over the park, by Brookline-based artist Janet Echelman. The Greenway is even hiring its own art curator.
It’s an unprecedented burst of activity in a city not known for its public art. And the surge has not gone unnoticed.
The most influential space has been the Dewey Square wall, where the Brazilian twins known as Os Gemeos created a colorful, cartoonish boy in pajamas in 2012. The project, paid for in large part by the conservancy but overseen by the ICA, drew raves — and also some unexpected criticism, when commenters on a Fox Boston website questioned whether the figure resembled a terrorist....
Then just erase it.
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The art of deception as practiced by the former champions:
"Giving increases for some sectors, not for others" by DAVID CRARY | AP National Writer June 18, 2014
NEW YORK — Wealthy donors are lavishing money on their favored charities, including universities, hospitals and arts institutions, while giving is flat to social service and church groups more dependent on financially squeezed middle-class donors, according to the latest comprehensive report on how Americans give away their money.
That's so charitable!
The Giving USA report, released Tuesday, said Americans gave an estimated $335.17 billion to charity in 2013, up 3 percent from 2012 after adjustment for inflation.
Reflecting the nation’s widening wealth gap, some sectors fared far better than others. Adjusted for inflation, giving was up 7.4 percent for education, 6.3 percent for the arts and humanities, and 4.5 percent for health organizations, while giving to religious groups declined by 1.6 percent and giving to social service groups rose by only 0.7 percent.
Experts with the Giving USA Foundation and its research partner, the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, said it was the fourth straight year of increased overall giving, and predicted that within two more years the total could match the prerecession peak of $347.5 billion.
Except I was told the wealthiest philanthropists did not give as much in 2013 as they gave before the Great Recession, even as a strong stock market and better business climate have continued to concentrate American wealth in the top 1 percent of earners.
Go figure.
During and immediately after the recession, some wealthy donors shifted their giving to social service groups working to combat hunger and homelessness, according to Patrick Rooney, associate dean of the school of philanthropy. Now, many of those donors are refocusing their attention on higher education, the arts, and other sectors long patronized by the affluent, he said.
Meaning it is ALL $ELF-$ERVING CHARITY!
Related:
"Struggling with a fall in donations, theaters, orchestras, and other arts groups appear to be retrenching. Workers in the broad category of art, entertainment and recreation, including actors, writers and musicians, earned 1.1 percent less in the first quarter than a year earlier, according to a PayScale survey."
I was told that two weeks ago, and I really no longer know what to say.
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Related: Most of the benefits of the economic recovery have been concentrated in Greater Boston
Yeah, the “story for the Massachusetts economy, if you ignore high levels of
unemployment and inequality, is the economy has been performing very
well.”
And you wonder why I'm ignoring so much of the Globe these days?