Good Morning:
Many of the week’s stories kept circling one question: when the old money for culture’s civic middle retreats, what replaces it? In the US, mostly nothing yet. Philadelphia’s local government share of arts budgets fell from 7% in 2019 to 1% in 2024 (Philadelphia Citizen), Chicago cut its arts agency this cycle (WBEZ), and Philadelphia’s 200-year-old Academy of Natural Sciences came within a day of closing before a rescue deal (Philadelphia Inquirer). Washington, meanwhile, is converting support into leverage — threatening to pull all federal aid from the Smithsonian (Washington Post).
Elsewhere, governments are building new plumbing rather than waiting for philanthropy. Scotland will pilot a minimum income for 2,000 artists (The Herald), Edinburgh is routing a tourist levy into a 25% funding boost for its summer festivals (The Stage), and California will pay newsrooms tax credits per journalist hired (NiemanLab). Even Toronto’s symphony found a toll-highway operator to bankroll five years of suburban concerts (Toronto Star). The common design principle: treat culture as infrastructure and price it into revenue streams that already exist, rather than asking it to compete as a discretionary line item.
One model asks culture to prove its worth every budget season; the other stops asking.
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
