The Art Newspaper/May 1, 2020 by Robert Hewison
If I had a pound—or for that matter a dollar or a euro—for every time I read or hear someone say that we must turn this corona-virus crisis into an opportunity, then I probably wouldn’t need to try to restart my career as a freelance writer—“when this is all over”. But we must use this enforced pause to do some thinking. The damage that is being done to artists, and to the businesses and institutions they gain their living from, is devastating. In the UK the four arts councils have come up admirably quickly with emergency funding measures that are intended to help sustain both individual creative practitioners, and museums, galleries, libraries and performing arts organisations, all of whom have seen their incomes disappear. They have no idea when, or if, they might return. … READ MORE
KEY TAKEAWAY: Rethinking the relationship between publicly-funded institutions and the private sector; thinking of the arts as part of the public realm, that space where private and public interests meet and where there are institutions that are not driven solely by the profit motive.
Photo byStåle GrutonUnsplash
