{"id":7431,"date":"2018-05-25T22:09:41","date_gmt":"2018-05-26T02:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=7431"},"modified":"2018-05-25T22:09:41","modified_gmt":"2018-05-26T02:09:41","slug":"boston-arts-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/05\/25\/boston-arts-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Boston Needs To Make Art, Not Just Consume It"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do we need from the city of Boston’s next chief of arts and culture? The Boston Globe<\/a> published my thoughts:<\/em><\/p>\n

One measure of a healthy city is the art that comes out of it. Boston is an amazing place to consume the arts \u2014 with the Museum of Fine Arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art, ArtsEmerson, the Symphony, the Ballet, the universities. But for artists, Boston can be a discouraging place to work.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s chief of arts and culture, Julie Burros, arrived from Chicago with great fanfare in December 2014, but she\u2019s now leaving. Mayor Marty Walsh shouldn\u2019t just put someone new in the job; he needs to continue to reckon with the underlying dynamics that make Boston so difficult for artists.<\/p>\n

Many people don\u2019t realize how much talent is here. It\u2019s not just Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians. Two years ago, Roxbury artist Ekua Holmes<\/a> won the Caldecott Honor<\/a>, one of the top prizes in children\u2019s picture books. The House Slam poets<\/a> have been bringing home national championships<\/a>. The city\u2019s hip-hop scene is ascendant with STL GLD<\/a>, Dutch ReBelle<\/a>, Oompa<\/a>, Cliff Notez<\/a>. And check out our street artists: Victor \u201cMarka27\u201d Qui\u00f1onez<\/a>, Cedric Douglas<\/a>\u00a0(pictured at top), Imagine<\/a> (Sneha Shrestha).<\/p>\n

Read the rest in The Boston Globe<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Oompa<\/a>
Oompa (left) performs with Cliff Notez at Hojoko at the Verb Hotel, May 18, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do we need from the city of Boston’s next chief of arts and culture? The Boston Globe published my thoughts: One measure of a healthy city is the art that comes out of it. Boston is an amazing place to consume the arts \u2014 with the Museum of Fine Arts, the Institute of Contemporary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,114],"tags":[37,364,367,365,366],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7431"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7438,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7431\/revisions\/7438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}