Michael Mehl

If you are not a city, state, or federal employee, odds are these days, you stand a good chance of losing your job, your home, or your pension; or all three. If you are a retiree, you probably don’t have a job -yet, your home is paid for, and your nest egg has become catfish batter. If you are a city, state, or federal employee, odds are you get to keep your job and whether you keep your home or not depends on your credit card habits. But regarding your pension plan, I suggest you take a good look at it because odds are, thanks to the convoluted investments in which city, state and federal pension managers have placed your cash, the affordability of your retirement is not a safe bet anymore; not by a long shot. By this reckoning many livelihoods are up against significant statistical odds of being wiped out.
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Simply said:

Engaging artists as window dressers for civic boosterism is always a losing proposition, both for the artists and for the city.

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What is the single, most fundamental problem facing the development of art programs and the long-term stability of cultural organizations?

If you answered Lack Of Funding, congratulations; your choice reflects sentiments shared by approximately ninety-five percent of cultural organizations and administrators, whom although altogether comprising a small and elite segment relative of the general population, hold sway, for better or for worse, over a large percentage of the cultural decisions that are made in this country; decisions that ultimately have a tremendous impact on our national psyche. Most of these gatekeepers, tastemakers and fundfunnelers -the people who make up the rules which govern the cultural lay of the land- are deeply vested in mostly ineffective methods of public and private philanthropic funding.

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Follow The Money.

This is a truism fundamental to the history of art.

And if you do follow the money, you will find that these days, increasingly, the money is traveling on a parallel rotation with mother earth: Eastward. 

Go East, young folks. Go East.

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