23 December 2009 — David Byrne on Arts Funding
David Byrne, on discovering that a new production of Wagner's Ring Cycle has been budgeted at $32 million writes:
Take that money, that $14 million from the city, for example, let some of those palaces, ring cycles and temples close — forgo some of those $32M operas — and fund music and art in our schools. Support ongoing creativity in the arts, and not the ongoing glorification and rehashing of the work of those dead guys.
It's Byrne's typical line, because, for him "it’s more important that someone learn to make music, to draw, photograph, write or create in any form than it is for them to understand and appreciate Picasso, Warhol or Bill Shakespeare". Fairly provocative stuff, and definitely worth a read.