Winter Appeal, 2020: It has been an unprecedented year for arts and culture, and a challenging future lies ahead, particularly for the performing arts. The magazine has turned 14—few online publications dedicated to arts coverage have lasted this long, not to mention under such trying circumstances. The Arts Fuse has continued to cover the ups and downs, going where other arts publications fear to tread, online and off, recognizing under-appreciated classical music, jazz, theater, and dance performances. Over the past few months we have posted commentaries from a wide range of cultural organizations, including the Handel & Haydn Society, Boston Conservatory, and Double Edge Theatre Company, in which they talked about dealing with the crisis and their plans for moving beyond it. Thanks so much for your help getting us here.
Precious few independent online arts publications make it to double digits. I hope you’ll take this opportunity to support a non-profit magazine that is committed to sustaining the future of the arts in this country. Please give us the resources we need to persevere at an essential cultural task.
The Arts Fuse was established in June, 2007 as a curated, independent online arts magazine dedicated to publishing in-depth criticism, along with high quality previews, interviews, and commentaries. The publication’s over 60 freelance critics (many of them with decades of experience) cover dance, film, food, literature, music, television, theater, video games, and visual arts.
The publication focuses its coverage on the Greater Boston area, but it is not limited to it. Our goal is to treat the arts seriously, to write about them in the same way that other publications cover politics, sports, and business — with professionalism, thoughtfulness, and considerable attitude. The magazine’s motto, from Jonathan Swift, sums up our editorial stance: “Use the point of your pen … not the feather.”
We are celebrating our 12th birthday, a milestone for a small magazine dedicated to covering the arts. The Arts Fuse has published over 5,000 articles and receives 40,000+ visits a month, with approximately 50,000 page views.
Precious few independent online arts publications make it to double digits. Please give us the resources we need to persevere at an essential cultural task.
Winter Appeal: It has been an unprecedented year for arts and culture, and a challenging future lies ahead, particularly for the performing arts. The magazine has turned 14—few online publications dedicated to arts coverage have lasted this long, not to mention under such trying circumstances. <em>The Arts Fuse</em> has continued to cover the ups and downs, going where other arts publications fear to tread, online and off, recognizing under-appreciated classical music, jazz, theater, and dance performances. Over the past few months we have posted commentaries from a wide range of cultural organizations, including the Handel & Haydn Society, Boston Conservatory, and Double Edge Theatre Company, in which they talked about dealing with the crisis and their plans for moving beyond it. Thanks so much for your help getting us here.
Why The Arts Fuse? Its birth was a reaction to the declining arts coverage in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. When the number of news pages shrink in the mainstream media, attention is paid. But the continual whittling down of arts coverage has been passed over in silence. Editor-in-Chief Bill Marx started the magazine to preserve the craft of professional arts criticism online, while also looking at new and innovative ways to evolve the cultural conversation and bring together critics, readers, and artists.
Serious criticism, by talking about the strengths, weaknesses, and contributions of the arts, plays an indispensable role in the cultural ecology. Smaller, newer organizations need a response. When they are ignored as they are by the mainstream media, they fail to gain an audience. And without an audience, they fold, further weakening the entire ecosystem.
Assist us in our mission: to keep arts and culture hale and hearty through dialogue rather than marketing.
SUBSCRIBE to our weekly e-newsletter
LIKE us on Facebook, FOLLOW us on Twitter
HELP The Arts Fuse thrive by providing underwriting for the magazine. Even better — make a tax deductible donation.
CONTRIBUTE to The Arts Fuse via PayPal:
PayPal
CONTRIBUTE to The Arts Fuse via Mightycause
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
Include your email and snail mail address with your check.
Thanks for reading The Arts Fuse (tell others about us) and for your interest in our vital mission — fighting for the future of substantial coverage of the arts.
— Bill Marx (billmarx@artsfuse.org)
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.
