(This
is the first in a series of articles looking at the components of
River Renaissance five years after Scott County voters agreed to
contribute $5 million to the effort. While that amount was relatively
small in the projects' financing, it secured $20 million in Vision
Iowa funding from the State of Iowa.)
Evaluating the Figge Art Museum five years after the River Renaissance vote is an exercise in perspective. The choice of how to measure its success determines the outcome.
It
might sound like a lame excuse.
In
August, two news stories broke the same day - one meaty, one junky.
In Detroit, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the Bush
administration's warrant-less National Security Agency surveillance
program was unconstitutional and must end. Meanwhile, somewhere in
Thailand, a man named John Mark Karr claimed he was with six-year-old
beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey when she died in 1996.
Rick
Best acknowledges that public television isn't the unique presence
that it was in the 1970s and '80s - virtually the only place on
the television spectrum to find educational programming and serious
shows on science, history, public affairs, and high culture.
We've
seen screaming headlines of a grading scandal at Auburn, the shocking
arrests on murder charges of two former Montana State University
athletes, and sharp scrutiny over so-called high-school-diploma mills
that churn out would-be college athletes who lack the requisite
academic credentials. Echoing among these stories is the Duke
University lacrosse scandal, which continues to percolate in the
national news media.
