2012 Great Arts Blogger Challenge

FINAL RESULTS

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Great Blogger Challenge. We’re blown away by the effort and quality of the participation. We discovered blogs we didn’t know about (now bookmarked!) and enjoyed reading a lot of very thoughtful posts. The votes are in.

Voting was fierce this week and we had more than 22,000 visitors and 5,000 votes. There were some attempts to run up the vote for a couple of the contestants, but we accounted for multiple voting by matching IP addresses in the final tallies. As you’ll see, the three judges’ ranking ultimately matched the public vote, which frankly, surprised us. Who says the public doesn’t know what they’re doing?

So without further ado, here are the results:

1. Trying to Remain Opera-tional (Jennifer Rivera, New York, NY)
2. Seated Ovation (William Robin, Chapel Hill, NC)
3. Operation Opera (Glenn Winters, Norfolk, VA)
4. Neo Antennae (Elena Saavedra Buckley, Albuquerque, NM)

Here’s how the voting broke down:

You can see the judges’ comments about each entry below.

First prize is $2,500 and two tickets for each of the six Spring For Music concerts at Carnegie Hall May 7-12. Forty-two bloggers originally registered to enter the competition. Sixteen were chosen for the second round. Then eight. And these are the Final 4. There are three “official” judges who account for the other two-thirds of the vote. The judges are: Katrine Ames, former senior editor at Newsweek; composer Nico Muhly; and Douglas McLennan, founder and editor of ArtsJournal. Judges will vote and comment on entries. The public vote accounts for the other third.

Round IV Question:

“Save the arts? Really? Why do so many people think the
arts need saving? Do we need to save the arts, and if so,
what does ‘saving’ them mean?”

	1. Neo Antennae Great Arts Blogger Challenge: Capes, Kryptonite, and Other Things Two nights ago, I went to a concert focusing on the composer John Kennedy. He’s the resident conductor of the SpoletoFestival this year, and also directs Santa Fe New Music. There were premieres of a few of his pieces, including…[more] [bio] Judges’ comments: First off, one million points for not leading with the question being asked. SURELY it should be clear FROM the writing of one’s post what the prompt was? Anyway, yay for that. This one has my name quite literally, so I’m going to tread carefully, but I like very much her argument. One rather wishes that the sentence, “The arts as an entity are not dying and needing to be saved, they’re just changing like any other aspect of culture does” appeared between every paragraph of this otherwise quite clear post. Negative nine million points for making me click on an article (throughout this judging I have clicked on every link to make sure they worked!) from Sequenza21. Ugh, that article is one of the reasons I almost took holy orders in 2011. Forget those people and everybody they know. HOWEVER! This is a good post whose tone is basically as conversational as I’d like an online thing to be. What you lack in historical perspective you make up for in passion and commitment. And no one will fault you for asking artists what they think–that’s enterprise. I hope that the arts will save you through a long and rich life. I loved that you asked other people and incorporated it into your argument. Somehow, I feel a bit queazy when somebody talks about “saving” us. Do we need saving? And could the arts really save us if we needed them to? I’m not convinced that’s the best argument.
	2. Seated Ovation What is it, Lassie? Did The Arts fall down a well? The “Arts-In-Danger” shtick is a catch-all for a whole slew of problems, from the defunding of education programs to the bankruptcy of the Philadelphia Orchestra to the dangers of pop culture to the avant-garde’s alienation of the broader public. I’m going to… [more] [bio] Judges’ comments: I like how this is organized, for one. I like how he articulates the sort of palimpsestic nature of antiquity. I like the simplicity of the overall point. A point he doesn’t explicity bring up but one that I sort of teased out of this text is: even if whatever possibly made up student at a “good college” doesn’t know who painted the mona lisa, she is gonna be fine. I haven’t walked down that hoe scroll one time in the last ten years without seeing literally all of japan there, rapt. Even if “we” (!?!!!?!) don’t know who painted it, it’s other people who are gonna step right in front in line and figure it out. Is it an apocryphal story that one can hear one of beethoven’s symphonies every night somewhere in Tokyo? Also to get real for a second: in a lot of cases the sense of “we” vis a vis this argument is essentially what little white children know; I would posit that for every little white girl who doesn’t know from Wieniawski, it’s gonna be two people somewhere else in the world who really, really does. I know this writer, and one thing I wished he sort of dared to say was that a lot of the reason the arts need saving is that the generation of people who are now going on about it (Falcor, Norman Leb.) fucked up; they allowed a huge rift on their watch, they allowed uptown-downtown, they allowed mean-spirited twelve tone people to say abhorrent thing to students, it’s kind of a pox on all they houses, and now suddenly they feel guilty about what their generation did. People Seated Ovations’s age, and my age, to a somewhat lesser extent, are going to fix it just as soon as we get the keys to the car. From the very beginning, I thought that you were one of the best writers in the group and was sure you’d be a finalist. You have excellent ideas/theses and you support them really well. Points off for some unnecessary snottiness; extra points for the terrific section on the 90-year span of music “that we cannot forsake.” That was magic. You saved your best work for your third point and I love a strong finishing kick. So why do I vote you second place? Because, except near the end, you didn’t reach my heart. I agree with what you say, but it doesn’t make me jump from my chair and say, yeah! Absolutely LOVE the headline. Bravo. And a well-thought-out argument, too. “Saving can be stultifying, even dangerous. We can end up freezing things in time instead of allowing them to grow.” Yup. And how many arts organizations do we know like that?
	3. Operation Opera The flower in the driveway Picture me crawling on hands and knees, struggling to reach the finish line of this Arts Blogger Challenge… did it really start just last month? …seems longer… I’m mentally fatigued… stressed… [more] [bio] Judges’ comments: One feels it necessary to point out that the judges are not together, and in fact, this one particular judge is sitting in a squalid café in London, awaiting the re-arrival of his waitress after her tearful confrontation with her manager, at this time. Okay, the two point structure of “selling out” versus “times have changed” still ignores the thing I think is the problem, which is “people behaving poorly,” but I like the comparison to liturgical music. In fact, this seems to me the most intelligent itinerary through this conversation. “Churches have pragmatic as well as spiritual reasons for ensuring that the role of the arts in worship is relevant to their constituents: the power of music to manipulate people is potent when those people can relate to it.” Negative one and one half points for not knowing the real back-story behind the title of Milton’s article. The article is annoying, but the title was an editorial imposition. “The Composer as Specialist” or something more benign was the original title. Go know about that one. I really like this one. Too much of this was a well-travelled, not to say trampled and rutted, road that I almost snoozed a little. Didn’t buy your argument about Philip Glass (why is his omnipresence indicative of his having saved music?), though you could make a hell of an argument about minimalism as a whole, in the ’60s and very early ’70s, helping to save music. I thought your church music analogy was good, as was your forest-fire one, and the virtuoso saturation point was interesting. I wish that you had fleshed that out. I’m intrigued with the forest fire idea. Is it possible that in our zeal to “save” the arts that we’ve been like the Forest Service that suppressed the fires that used to rage through the West and renewed the land? As we discovered after several decades, without letting fires do their thing, the underbrush built up and made possible super-fires.
	4. Trying to Remain Opera-tional Semantics And Scrappiness Well, I’ve made it to the final round. Four bloggers still standing. All classical music bloggers. I’m not surprised we’re the last ones left – we’re scrappy. Music may still be a big part of our society, but classical music has become such a specialty genre… [more] [bio] Judges’ comments: The problem with this whole fifteen zillion words about Nicki Minaj is this: she is, like your friends, a human being. The fact that some random TV producers decided that she should do a whole endless and probably ridiculous (I didn’t see it) show is a problem that should be brought to their attention. As a longtime advocate of classical music, I’ve always maintained that if you’re gonna care what gets shown on TV, you have to play that game — the distinction being that Nicki Minaj isn’t like, taking over Alice Tully Hall or something and denying young violinists the opportunities they deserve. Make somebody you know who produces an awards show listen to your aria, and chances are, they will be insanely moved. Don’t you think that if you shewed the same kind of tenacity as Ms Minaj has shewn and worked the system as well as she has, you couldn’t be singing “Ain’t it a Pretty Night” on the stage of the grammys in a year’s time? And wouldn’t we all weep sweet tears? Think about it that way. Minaj/Gaga are borrowing from the worlds of experimental theater, and even if it’s, in a lot of cases, uncredited, it’s still pointing somewhere else besides at themselves, I’d argue. Haven’t you noticed a sudden and wonderful resurgence of performance artists in the public consciousness in the last five years? Gaga/Minaj/Björk/etc. are on the case; we’re checking back in with Marina Abromović, we’re checking back in with Laurie Anderson. Even if it’s not as many people as we’d like, we are, indeed, checking back in. Like I said before: those people are human beings too. If you are that incensed, get on the horn and invite Nicki Minaj, the human being, to an opera. Get Lady Gaga to go to Parsifal or some Robert Wilson production of anything or get Nicki Minaj to go to Billy Budd with you. It’s a matter of three phone calls, some tenacity, and a sunny attitude. The points about education are quite right, and quite wonderful. And I love the involvement of Mom. My own mother is a longtime arts “warrior;” she works in a dead medium (mainly oils and gouache) and while she can kvetch de temps en temps about what is or is not fashionable, she just continues making what moves her, as it is irrepressible. Nothing is sadder than people whinging that what they’re making isn’t in fashion; the internet is filled with composers and musicians going on about it and it’s so sad. I’ve always maintained that the cuts in the arts budgets around Europe are horrible and tragic but that it’s going to be fine: people are gonna make it happen. Take it from mother nature: after the eruption, isn’t it always the most tenacious lichens and tender herbs that start clinging to the rock first? Thanks, as you say, Mom. As I have also said from the beginning, your from-the-trenches reportage is terrific. I love your generosity and your spirit. Your posts have what I call the pitter-patter factor in musical performance: I would rather read/hear something that is not technical perfection but is shot though with passion, than a note/word-perfect production. Your decision to home in on one thing, Elmer Gantry, was really smart. Close examination and isolation of something within the larger picture, if done well and fervently, is completely persuasive. And you know what? I think you are absolutely right not “to feat any kind of crazy dystopian future in which Mozart won’t exist.” You made your case, and you get my vote, most especially because you won my heart.

Results for Round III

Here are the Final Four after voting concluded this week:

Trying to Remain Opera-tional
Seated Ovation
Neo Antennae
Operation Opera

Judges ranked entries 1-9 and their votes were added to account for 2/3 of the total vote. The audience vote accounted for one third of the final vote. Scroll down to see judges’ comments. Check back Monday to see the final round posts and vote on your favorite.

The Challenge runs for four weeks March 26-April 19 with the winner announced next Friday, April 20. Each week a question will be posed and participating bloggers will write their response on their own blog.

Forty-two bloggers originally registered to enter the competition. Sixteen were chosen for the second round. Then eight. And these are the Final 4. They will compete for the winning post next week. 

There are three “official” judges who will account for the other two-thirds of the vote. The judges are: Katrine Ames, former senior editor at Newsweek; composer Nico Muhly; and Douglas McLennan, founder and editor of ArtsJournal. Judges will vote and comment on entries.

The winner of the 2012 Great Blogger Challenge will be announced Friday at noon EDT. First prize is $2,500 and two tickets for each of the six Spring For Music concerts at Carnegie Hall May 7-12.

Round III Question:

Many countries have ministries of culture. Does America need a
Secretary of Culture or Secretary of the Arts? Why or why not?

Judges’ Comments

bio

We Hold Culture and the Arts to be Self Evident

This whole question is one that I, myself, wish I had blogged about because it is one about which I feel strongly kind of in two directions.  Homegirl mentions Cambodia, too, which is an interest of mine, and that is a whole other issue because everybody who made culture got killed, so, yeah.  Plus, I think in a lot of cases, the framing of the question implies “somebody who will make sure it’s lots of new music and brahms on concerts,” which is kind of a different issue than what is faced in Cambodia, or, for that matter, any of those other very old countries on her list. Negative nine points for disparaging auto-tuning.  It’s a wonderful musical tool if you use it right and it’s a straw man and I’m over it.

Who else but you would bring up the great Gullah/Geechee heritage; suggest an arts-deficiency punishment of paper cuts and lemon juice, and envision a government-operated site that could direct culture-hungry citizens to great juke joints? You don’t get bogged down in political arguments, you just say heck, yes, let’s get that Secretary, and that is really enjoyable.

A secretary of culture as superhero? Absolutely. Practically speaking, the job probably wouldn’t be nearly so glamorous. But a girl can dream, no?

bio

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier. Why?

He might be making a good point, but apologizing for putting long-ass lists in all caps does not excuse the fact that you have just put long-ass lists in all caps.  Also lists of Canadian Organizations, which, as far as lists go, surely you could have just linked us to the Wikipedia entry from which you copied the list? Then we get into a whole crazy world about Wagner and Jim Carrey or something?  Also a lot of the things in the German list are palimpsestic structures — Bayreuth being one such thing, with various levels of complicated (!!!) state/monarchical (!!!) funding & patronage (!!!) through the ages (!!!) and also not the entire Rang Cycle was written for there because it was written over many years et cetera and other things I’m not getting into because this is a blog and not a conference.  I do kind of agree with his overall point but the presentation seems very Web Beta and a little bit, dare I say, #Falcor (which is what I call whatever it is Anne Midgette husband is called who gets paid cash money to say that shit’s broken in the arts)

I got awfully bogged down part way through your lists. You have a nice, slightly offbeat way of coming at this issue because you use Canada, not one of the usual suspects, to make your point. But I think your post would have been stronger had you deployed only your last two fantastic paragraphs.

Best argument I read against more bureaucracy: “I know it might lead to vertigo or mild nausea, but look once more at the mind-numbing size and complexity of the Canadian system.” Mild? ‘Nuff said.

bio

art for all, but none for art

Yes.  I mean, he makes the argument in two clear sides, and then comes out on a sensible middle ground.  His appraisal of how much crazy is out there is on point.  Real talk: people are going to talk shit about anything.  If you get an opera commissioned for $100 or $100k those terrible bloggers are going to be on you like white on rice.  So, yes, people will hate on it.  Can I point out here that I’ve worked many many places with, presumably, Arts Czars but we’ve never met; instead, what I’ve met are high-level government employees who run the arts, which is a slightly different thing.  One gets the sense that their vision is fallible and subject to the winds of change.  So maybe Czar isn’t the right word.  Public Servant!    Anyway, a sensible blog post.  The cat pictures grate on one slightly, especially given that cats, when photographed cleverly, could perhaps be caught making poses more befitting their captions?

Another intelligent and stylishly written argument with well-selected ammo for both sides: good old-fashioned on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand journalism. Excellent conclusion, though in fact I thought your best paragraph was the one in which you cited the symbolism of a Cabinet-level position for the arts. Question: do your cats think inside the box?

Visionary, pessimistic and finally pragmatic all in the same post. All this and a LOLcat too.

bio

Government and Art: Whither the U.S.A.?
The opening three paragraphs here and star sign allusion lead me to believe that this person spent a great deal of time playing online RPG’s during liberal arts school?  Am I wrong?  HOWEVER.  This makes a very good point about preserving cultures versus sweeping out — this should perhaps be the first paragraph rather than all this meta faffing about the point. I think Jake Heggie’s name has been misspelled here, as well as one of the elided definite articles in one of Philip’s operas, just for the record.  I think this is all a very long way to say a very simple thing.  I like it, I am kind of confused by the style, but I say yay.

You’re absolutely right: “Perhaps a reasoned approach lies somewhere between ‘wah’ and ‘grr’.

Hmnn. Opera, opera opera. We’re glad it’s a golden age. And yet…

bio

Cultural Ambassador (or Governmental Impasse)

This seems like an eeyorish response to me, kind of sad-sack?  Obviously the point is well taken.  Also I wonder if ambassador is really the question as much as “minister…” dot dot dot.

I thought this was the best of the three posts you’ve submitted. Though you don’t examine closely enough the reasons a Secretary of the Arts might not be a great idea, you have a good personal, heartfelt perspective.

Do people have an idea the impact that the arts have on business? Probably not. Would a secretary of arts help them understand that? Probably not.

bio

Figurehead based

I kind of like this!  CFO!  A simple idea.  I like the connection — theoretically — between sustainable financial models on a small level and those on a larger level (although one is told that that is perhaps way naive) I’m still gonna say yay.  Also this seems loosely personal & well-written and good.

Maybe what we need is a CFO of the arts? You nailed that, again used regionalism to make a fine point, and your figurehead case is really good. You have a perfect balance of light-heartedness and borderline arts wonkiness.

If it’s all about government priorities, why shouldn’t the arts be one of those priorities? It’s a simple as that.

bio

Arts In America

Negative 4,000 points for that game of like screaming “Nicki Minaj” or “Justin Bieber” and hoping for the best.  But otherwise this is a wonderful post, and the idea of connecting this kind of government post to education is quite right.

Terrific post, a nice mix of seriousness, levity and passion. Very moving, in fact.

Really? Seventy percent of your work as a singer now comes from Europe? That kinda says it all, doesn’t it? Well put.

bio

up for a challenge (yet again!)

yikes!  Good message but crazy syntax!  HOWEVER.  This is something I’ve believed in for years, which is being your own best ambassador for the arts.  It’s a wonderful message that should be shouted from the apartment-tops.

Your tone (not what you were saying, but how) really irritated me, but then at midpoint you redeemed yourself and got serious and imaginative.

An argument for the free market. K. But you don’t like the gub’ment’s war-oriented priorities. And what gub’ment decides to spend money on determines its priorities. And so the arts ought not have a voice?

bio

An Educated, Supported Orange

This is a sweet post but doesn’t feel bloggish to me.  I’ve read it three times and am still trying to sort it out; I feel like I’m trying to remember the precise sequence of tapas I 8 one time in Spain.  HOWEVER.  Again I like having the educational aspect tied in.  I like this post because it feels sort of emotionally — rather than logically — driven.

Wow, A Clockwork Orange as testament for a Secretary of the Arts is wackily delectable! Your from-the-trenches reporting and your informed and passionate point of view are both commendable and encouraging.

You’d skip school for a “Listen to Beethoven with Your Droogs” day? You’ve got priorities, for sure. Seriously – isn’t the difficulty of getting a position like this implemented a great opportunity to talk about the need for a role for the arts? Seems worth it to me.

ROUND II

Round II (Sweet 16) of Spring For Music’s 2012 Great Arts Blogger Challenge. You can see the list of bloggers below. The Challenge runs for four weeks March 26-April 19 with the winner announced Friday April 20. Each week a question will be posed and participating bloggers will write their response on their own blog.

Below you can see the bracket of Round II bloggers with links to their posts. Forty-two bloggers originally registered to enter the competition. Sixteen were chosen for the second round. At the end of this week the field will be reduced to 8 and then 4 the following week. Visitors to this site are encouraged to read the entries via the links below and then return here to vote  in the column at right. Audience voting continues till Thursday at noon EDT  and accounts for one-third of the decision.

There are three “official” judges who will account for the other two-thirds of the vote. The judges are: Katrine Ames, former senior editor at Newsweek; composer Nico Muhly; and Douglas McLennan, founder and editor of ArtsJournal. Judges will vote and comment on entries.

Bloggers who will advance to Round III will be announced Friday at noon EDT. First prize is $2,500 and two tickets for each of the six Spring For Music concerts at Carnegie Hall May 7-12.

Round II  question:

We live in an aggressively visual age;
images dominate the popular culture.
But which art form has the most to say about
contemporary culture, and why?

bio KITTEHS SAY DAT MUSIC SPEAKZ 2 US	bioListen Up! Music Has the Floor
bioOpera: the conscious and unconscious mirror	bioThe Muse That Roars
bioThe Sign, the Note, and the World: What Art Form Speaks Most Clearly in a Cacophonous Time?	bioMeme and My Shadow
bioWould you like that Kunstwerk gesamt?	bioWorth = one thousand
bioHey, Look At Me And My Tight Pants!	bioMirror, Mirror: Culture’s Voice
Withdrawn	bioup for a challenge (again!)
bioImage and Music	bioHow to rename a contest
bioGreat Arts Blogger Challenge: Wordless Connections	bioSTOP AND SMELL THE CULTURE!

PREVIOUSLY

Round I  question:

“New York City has long been considered the cultural
capital of America. Is it still? If not, where?”

ROUND I March 26-30	ROUND II April 2-6	ROUND III April 9-13	ROUND IV April 16-20
biospring for music entry no. 1
bioNew York
bioBabylon Revisited: NYC as Cultural Capital
bioWhere is the Cultural Capital of America?
bioTo New York with Love
bioIs New York still the cultural capital of America? (Duh)
bioIs New York the cultural capital of North America?
bioThe Cultural Capital of Everywhere
bioNew York, New York, It’s a Helluva Town…As Far As That Goes
bioNew York: Cultural Capital of the US (Yes or No?)
bioMake Our Garden Grow, apropos the Arts Blogger Challenge
bioBest Arts Blogger In America?
bioSpring For Music
bioAnchor or Albatross? New York’s Cultural Capital
bioCulture Quilt
bioNew York, still the center?
bioSpring For Music
bioup for a challenge
bioN.Y.Cultural Cruise Control
bioCity of Dreams
bioCultural Competition
bioCapitalization Without Representation
bioIs New York Still The Cultural Capital Of America?
bioWashington, DC is two cities, which together create one Cultural Capital
bio“New York has long been considered the cultural capital of America. Is it still? If not, where?” or “Why I decided to move to the country.”
bioTheme Parks as a Cultural Center
bioNot posted
bioCentral Standard Culture
biothis exhibit is indeed a man
bioSpring For New York
bioJourney to the center of the…
bioThe Big Cultural Apple
bioGetty Foundation
bioNew York – The Cultural Capital of America?
bioNew York has long been considered the cultural capital of America. Is it still? If not, where?
bioSpring For Music Blog Contest