Arts organisation seeks new collaboration -- US style

[Mike Gibb, Operabase]

There's been much discussion in the UK over the possible loss of artistic freedoms in return for private funding. Arts companies in the US have other, and bigger, problems. My own particular area of interest is opera, and the last two years have been particularly harsh in the US -- a dozen companies (with about 400 years of operating history between them) have gone bankrupt in the last two years, and the remainder have reduced the numbers of productions, shortened seasons, deferred new world premieres, laid off staff, imposed pay cuts, raided their investment portfolios and endowments.

The Wall Street Journal reports a move by the Washington National Opera to obtain some stability by trying to buy into some guaranteed public funding through a merger with the Kennedy Arts Center -- the opera will sacrifice the artistic control of its programming in return for access to the stability offered by $40m congressional funds available to the centre.

Perhaps the US could learn something from Europe about the public funding of the arts ...

Full story, by Erica Orden in the Wall Street Journal, here.