There were so many good speeches that night about the importance of the Community Arts Center, and why the city must do better in guaranteeing its future and working more with the community. Perhaps the best speech of the evening was from Judge Quentin McGowen, a local historian and president of Hip Pocket Theatre.
He brought up very good points about the concerning pattern from the city, of continually underfunding and undersupporting important cultural buildings and institutions, then blaming them even though they were set up to fail, and looking to sell them off. Fort Worth deserves a world class arts center and we are fully capable of making that happen.
3 years agothenewmarshallkharrisart
When the community of Southlake is considering building a 96 million dollar football stadium but Fort Worth can’t seem to pull together and support much other than rodeo and gun shows it says a lot about the city’s attempts to support of all the arts. Visual, performance, dance, music, theatre. It’s all marginally considered and often treated like step children. But we have casa and bass hall. Yep. We sure do. But there’s a reason talent eventually moves to more supportive towns. If you compare what our city invests $$ percentage wise in the arts, we are at the bottom of Texas metropolitan areas. And that’s too bad for a place that boasts 3 major nationally recognized museums and a world renowned cultural district. We can do better. And we need to not simply accept that this is the way it’s going to be. Unless it is and then I’d like for the decision makers to stop with all the smoke and mirrors and say “you arts people just don’t generate enough $$ to make any difference to us!”’I could live with that because at least it would be honest. And it wouldn’t be an enormous waste of our time.
3 years agocarolacedoart
👏👏👏 Thank you Judge Quentin! It's illogical to say 29 million dollars is too much to spend on this iconic building, so let's tear it down and spend 2 or 3 times that instead, and maybe keep the community art programs. 🤔
3 years agocut_throat_finches
When projects like this are discussed, has music ever been a part of it within the city? When the city says art, what does that mean?
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