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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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The OAAG just sent around some startling numbers about money spent on art and culture in Ontario:
Ontarians spent $8.6 billion on cultural goods and services in 2001, four times more than the $2.2 billion spent on culture in Ontario by all levels of government in 1999-2000, the most recent year available. Ontario residents spent $830 million dollars on art works and events and $170 million dollars on admissions to museums and and heritage-related activities. In terms of municipal regions, the cultural spending of Ottawa residents ranks first among 13 municipal regions in Canada ($1027 per person). In Ottawa, $80 million was spent on art works and events and $55 million on art supplies and musical instruments (as compared with $41 million on movie theatre admissions). Toronto ranks ninth in per capita consumer cultural spending among the 13 municipal regions ($731 per person). In Toronto, total cultural spending by consumers was $3.4 billion in 2001, including $350 million on art works and events and $130 million on art supplies and musical instruments.The research was done by Hill Strategies Research Inc. and pdf files of the full report are available at their website here.
This eveing I attended a packed out panel discussion that attempted to address the following questions: "Is art criticism still able to galvanize debate or has its effectiveness been diminished? Or are there no issues? Is the art system now too complex for debate, or has the art community advanced beyond this need, having found other ways and forms of engaging discussion?"
Highlights include the following quotes:
panelist Mark Cheetham: Debate needs a context of contestation, and that needs to be staged.
panelist Sarah Milroy: The citadel has fallen to the art-hungry hordes.
panelist Catherine Osborne: Assumed knowledge is a failing.
The panel was lopsided in favour of journalism and accessibility (two things that I like), and therefore art criticism per se (another thing that I like) did not get a fair kick at the can. Philip Monk apparently felt that his role as moderator prevented him from truly advocating for the 'lost' discourse. Some riled-up audience members such as Andy Patton, Xandra Eden, Jessica Wyman and John Bentley Mays, spoke up for critique, but in the end Monk, somewhat fatalistically*, declared a consensus that art criticism is irrelevant, and the statement was met with an overall sense of quiet, defeated resignation. Ouch!
I told someone the other day, dismayed at my lack of a master's degree, that I got my learnin' at the school of hard knocks. HAh. Not true. I'm basically uneducated. But I do occasionally read (and also sometimes publish) art theory and criticism. My budding series of Canadian art quotes ( 1 / 2 / 3 / and JR ) is a tiny testament to the peaks of the discourse that have inspired me along the way. Reading art criticism (and here I will melt art theory into the same puddle, tho I know there's a distinction) may be the provenance of freaks and social deviants ...but I know you are out there!
Join me and post your favourite art criticism and theory quotes (with bibliographic citations, please) in the comment section below.
*or mabye he's right, and I'm a Pollyanna. Okay okay ... I am a Pollyanna. But that doesn't mean he's right!
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