By Bill Marx

During this unparalleled calamity, please help us keep our arts and culture vibrant and alive by sustaining the magazine’s independent coverage.

The Arts Fuse turns 13 at an unprecedented time for the arts and for cultural journalism. The advent of COVID-19 has drastically affected the arts community, reducing cultural coverage at the Boston Globe and elsewhere. We are determined to fill the gap. How? By posting more book and television reviews, covering streaming music, dance, and music events, providing commentaries and interviews that explore solutions to the crisis, and producing online performances and podcasts that will benefit artists.

We will do more, not less, during this emergency — our critics will build on our archive of over 6,000 reviews, commentaries, and features on arts and culture written by over 60 writers, ranging from veteran critics from the Boston Globe and Boston Phoenix to talented fledgling reviewers. During this unparalleled calamity, please help us keep our arts and culture vibrant and alive by sustaining the magazine’s independent coverage.

Great News! The Arts Fuse has received a generous donation from an anonymous donor who has requested the gift be matched 1:1 up to $2,000!!! All gifts made to the Spring Appeal by June 1 will be doubled!! Help us take advantage of this wonderful opportunity by making a donation, of any size.

The arts and culture community appreciates what we are doing. Here is what they are saying:

“The Arts Fuse fills a vital need in the Boston arts criticism community. The writers provide timely and thoughtful features and reviews which spark conversation and inform the public about happenings in Boston and beyond”  — The Boston Camerata and Anne Azéma

“The Arts Fuse is an invaluable part of Boston’s arts ecosystem. The depth and breadth of coverage set them apart from their peers in arts criticism. More than once, in recent years, they have been the only outlet covering artists and performances of international relevance.” — Jack Wright, The Celebrity Series

Among the highlights of the past year:

*Rejuvenated Arts Fuse podcast.

* Posted mentored arts reviews of Somerville High School students, a project supported by the Somerville Arts Council.

* Featuring dozens of high-quality arts reviews and features. There are few publications that do what we do. And we are going to do more.

Future Plans:

* Underwrite a professional online production of Anthony Clarvoe’s 1993 play about the Black Plague, The Living, as a benefit for the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund, Boston.

*Establish The Arts Fuse Annex, a place where the magazine’s contributors can serve up fiction, nonfiction, and plays. This material will be available through paid subscription only. There are plans for music performances as well.

*Build on our series of public discussions about the future of arts criticism via online gatherings.

“Art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints.” — Henry James

The arts community and cultural journalists are going to be challenged as never before. Please help us do our part so we can continue to post coverage critical to the future of the arts, to provide reviews and features that benefit artists and show a way forward. The magazine has an important role to play in keeping the creative imagination healthy. I am therefore asking you to donate to the cause. Our goal is to raise $6,000. This annual appeal, which marks the magazine’s 13th birthday, must succeed so that the great reviews, commentaries, podcast episodes, and features will continue. These are treacherous times for small independent journalism sites — help the magazine thrive.

Please click on one of the donation buttons below (secure sites PayPal and Mightycause). Your contribution is tax deducible. Any donations of $500 or above will be listed (with permission) on the Infuser page of the magazine. It will be our way of thanking you — and making your interest in a meaningful conversation about the arts — public.

The Arts Fuse explores innovative ways to preserve substantial critical coverage of the arts.  

Here’s to a summer dedicated to supporting the arts during this traumatic time — through engagement, appreciation, and lively discussion.

To contribute to The Arts Fuse via PayPal:

PayPal

To contribute to The Arts Fuse via Mightycause

To mail a donation, please make out your check out to Global Narratives, Inc. and send it to:

The Arts Fuse
103 Highland Road
#2
Somerville, MA 02144

Please include your email and snail mail address with your check.

---

Bill Marx is the editor-in-chief of The Arts Fuse. For over three decades, he has written about arts and culture for print, broadcast, and online. He has regularly reviewed theater for National Public Radio Station WBUR and The Boston Globe. He created and edited WBUR Online Arts, a cultural webzine that in 2004 won an Online Journalism Award for Specialty Journalism. In 2007 he created The Arts Fuse, an online magazine dedicated to covering arts and culture in Boston and throughout New England.