marcus westbury

This graph is a breakdown of Australia Council arts funding last year by artform. Despite recent scare campaigns that have suggested that Australia was somehow in the throes of doing away with the “heritage arts” in favour of “new media” there doesn’t appear to be much evidence of it in the numbers!  Right click “view [...]

ARE critics a dying breed? Are the art critics that we’ve come to know (and, occasionally, love) soon to become things of the past? Last month, I joined a panel at the Australia Council’s annual arts marketing summit in Brisbane, asking “Who’s the critic now?” The audience was made up of directors and marketing people [...]

THE dominant cultural form of the 20th century is starting to unravel. What was the dominant cultural form of the 20th century? There are plenty of candidates and no lack of ones that are allegedly under threat. Cinema? Rock music? The album? Radio? The four-minute single? Magazines? Newspapers? Television? Actually, it was none and all [...]

There is now an updated 2009-10 version of this data here. I’m basically just posting this here so i can link to it from this discussion over at Larvatus Prodeo. But it’s a reminder though that I’m involved in many debates and discussions about arts funding and policy priorities in Australia at the moment (most [...]

From the Not Quite Book notes. Click here for an explanation… Traditionalists will hate me but I am less and less convinced that artforms are a particularly useful way to slice up the way that cultures are talked about or resourced in the world. The qualities that interest me are far more about the resonance [...]