State of the Arts
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The, MacArthur report also addresses two other thorny issues: the city government’s lack of cultural leadership and media coverage of the arts. MacArthur program officer Nick Rabkin, a former city deputy cultural commissioner who had a hand in writing the report’s introduction, says he gleaned from its findings a strong message: “What the report does in a variety of ways is clearly demonstrate there is a lack of understanding of the importance of the city’s cultural life in the eyes of the media and our civic and public leadership.”
As for the media, anyone who has tried to find sustenance in the dailies’ impoverished arts coverage will not find the MacArthur report particularly surprising. “The weariness that is mentioned by the press is sometimes their own,” said one theater focus-group participant. Noted a dance administrator, “There is no newspaper that gives the kind of importance to the arts that the New York Times does in New York City.”
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