I’m going to be on Rosetta Thurman‘s show on BlogTalk Radio next Monday, July 12 at noon EDT with Colleen Dilenschneider, a graduate student who is the author of a previously-unknown-to-me arts blog called Know Your Own Bone. I’ve been an admirer of Rosetta’s for some time and I’m excited to finally be sort-of meeting her, and in front of a (virtual) audience no less! Ah, this modern world we live in.
- Speaking of Rosetta, check out her brutally honest and beautifully written assessment of the downsides of living by your personal brand. I recognized several of these from my own stint as a consultant during the second half of last year, though Rosetta has it going on a whole other level. Also, if you’re an aspiring blogger who wants to reach a new audience, you could do worse than to sub for Rosetta during her vacation to Jamaica; details here. (Drew McManus and Andy Horwitz are looking for guest contributors as well, as am I.)
- Musical chairs among arts organization leadership: longtime head of Alliance for the Arts Randy Bourscheidt is retiring; so is longtime head of the Wallace Foundation Christine DeVita; meanwhile, former head of NEFA and LINC Sam Miller is the new head of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Finally, the American Federation of Musicians (better known as the musicians’ union) has just undergone a reportedly dramatic leadership change, with the reform-minded Ray Hair having been elected to the top spot.
- You might have heard something about the Billionaires’ Pledge drive led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet; together, the group is seeking to encourage billionaires to give at least half of their wealth to charity, which would raise some $600 billion for philanthropy. Michael Bloomberg and Eli Broad have signed on; Sean Stannard-Stockton provides analysis. (It’s significant for arts folks that Bloomberg is among the early supporters, given his very generous support for the arts over the years.) The original article in Fortune, by the way, contains some great reporting and actually does homework on the secret meeting of billionaires last year that was pooh-poohed at the time by the New York Times‘s philanthropy reporter.
- Laws, lawsuits, and government support for the arts: The South Carolina Arts Commission is out of the woods after the Senate overrode the Governor’s line-item veto of the Commission’s budget. Leonard Jacobs reports on a bill under consideration in Congress that would establish standards for data-sharing in the nonprofit sector. Australia just passed a law giving artists rights to subsidiary income from re-sales of their work. (h/t Brigid Slipka) And Molly Sheridan finds herself in the middle of an intense kerfuffle on intellectual property law.
- New studies, articles, and resources: material on business and the arts via Gary Steuer; a new report out of the Salzburg Global Seminar on the arts and reinvention in recession (via GIA News); the NEA mines the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts for more info on arts engagement through electronic media (this time with video!); an Australian scholar publishes an article arguing in favor of explicitly adding arts and culture to the list of exempt organization types for 501(c)(3) status in the US (currently we get in somehow under the rubric of “education”); the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy is out with an ambitious manifesto advocating the incorporation of positive social outcomes into core long-run corporate strategy; the co-founder of Bridgespan Consulting on scaling impact. A bit old news (sorry), but Lucy Bernholz’s recently published opus on the philanthropy data revolution is here.
- My recent reports on conferences and talks not enough for you? Check out Devon Smith on TCG (and totally second her on the non-availability of free wifi at hotel-based conferences – get with it, guys) and Leonard Jacobs on a forum on arts spaces presented by Alliance for the Arts.
- Cogent commentary and righteous rants: Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Phil Buchanan on why nonprofits shouldn’t be looking to corporate America for answers; The Atlantic Philanthropies’ CEO Gara LaMarche on supporting arts and social justice initiatives in the developing world; Barry Hessenius on why we need to be studying worst practices; Gary Steuer on arts and sports; Judith H. Dobrzynski questioning why people like Wynton Marsalis and Philip Glass need to be receiving cash awards from the NEA; Chris Jones railing against Chase Community Giving and vote spam; Chris Ashworth on how hiring artists for your business can be a competitive advantage (great read); and Kyle Gann coming to terms with the limits of his life’s work (another great read, and don’t miss this follow-up either).
- Helpful primers: NPR on the economics of fine art (via Guy Yedwab); Sean Stannard-Stockton on the basics of evaluation language; and Erin Carey on the history of the New York Philharmonic.
- Teaching artists how to make a business plan, New York style. Just wish it was reaching more of them; 54 artists isn’t even a drop in the bucket in NYC.
- Arena Stage is trying something new: hiring playwrights as full-time, salaried employees with benefits. The three-year initiative is funded by a $1.1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation and will benefit five playwrights chosen by Arena’s “senior leadership.” Fantastic for those five playwrights, but I have tons of questions. What happens to the program when the Mellon grant runs out? What happens to the playwrights when they’re no longer on salary? What are the criteria for selection? What is the impact of this money going to be for the legions of playwrights not chosen to participate? (These are many of the same questions, FYI, I have about the United States Artists program that’s been around for a few years now.)
- I’ll miss Trevor Hunter as a regular presence over at NewMusicBox, especially after he started churning out stuff like this epic history of the avant-garde rock band Zs.
- A cautionary tale for the rest of us: Brooklyn Museum’s widely praised audience development strategies aren’t resulting in, well, more audience members.
- Showing that it helps to have friends in the tech biz, one of composer Evan Ziporyn’s former students went on to start a company that publishes a little product called Rock Band, and now Ziporyn and his fellow Bang on a Can composers have pieces in the game.
- Did you know that Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewing Company was until recently wholly owned by a foundation?
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4 Comments
RE: PLAYWRIGHT RESIDENCIES Thanks for your interest in what we’re up to over here. You have questions, we have answers. Much of this is discussed in stultifying detail and with a somewhat obsessive frequency on our New Play Blog (http://npdp.arenastage.org) if you want to dig, but the quick answers for you and your readers:
What happens when the money runs out? First, a clarification or two. The $1.1M supports the entire program of the American Voices New Play Institute, which is much broader than the five residencies. The residencies don’t cost anything near that to run. Second, there are five residents right now (plus two Project Residents– writers engaged for a specific project) because they are working with the Institute to refine and develop the concept of resident playwrights in general– the Institute is dedicated to the advancement of the infrastructure for new plays nationally and in addition to writing their own plays these writers are working on a set of practices and policies that can improve the lives of playwrights and their plays. SO, when the work supported by the Mellon Foundation completed we don’t anticipate continuing with five residents at Arena Stage, but we do expect to continue the concept of at least one salaried playwright, with hopes that there are many other institutions following suit. What happens when the playwrights are no longer on salary? They’ll return to the world of freelance writers, but hopefully the landscape will be altered in some way and their own body of work will be more in evidence in productions around the world. The point is to give them a meaningful period of time to dedicate themselves entirely to writing plays, as opposed to stringing an income together from a variety of sources and trying to write plays in between. It’s possible, though I don’t see it as likely at the moment, that any one (or all, for that matter) could remain on staff at Arena beyond the three years. Nothing prohibiting that. But that’s not the design at present. What are the selection for criteria? This was covered on the New Play Blog in detail, but essentially this group is all mid-career writers with whom Arena Stage already has some level of reltaionship going in. It was a very small invitation this first time around. We needed to be working with people we already knew we could work with, whose plays we were already interested in producing, who were themselves interested in being in DC a bunch and in helping to develop the notion of resident playwrights for the field. As for those not chosen, the impact is going to primarily be limited to the effectiveness of our work in establishing the value and imperative for playwrights on staff at every theater doing new work. Though I wonder what the impact of any job is on the people who aren’t hired for it and whether that makes the job less valid for having not been able to solve the unemployment crisis. We’re at the very beginning of a long involved process designed to study and advance the infrastructure for new plays in this country. We hope you’ll stay tuned as we discover where it leads us, together.
Another interesting news bit recently about copyright: Jason Robert Brown explains to a teenager why her illegal downloading of his sheet music is hurting him as an artist: http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/weblog/2010/06/fighting_with_teenagers_a_copy.php
Hi David,
Thanks for your response. I think I understand what you’re trying to do (especially after reading Outrageous Fortune), and I hope it works out well for everyone involved. As you can probably tell, I have philosophical misgivings about any strategy that intentionally results in a disproportionate concentration of resources among a very few artists, especially when the constituency making choices about who those artists are is also necessarily small in number (no matter how ethical, informed, or qualified they may be). If it was a “small invitation this first time around,” fine, but I guess I’m not sure how it could ever be anything but small absent an enormous increase in the pool of philanthropic dollars available to the arts. With that said, I don’t mean to rain on your parade – I haven’t yet studied this program in detail and I don’t feel like I can fairly come down hard on one side or the other at this point. As I said, I just have lots of questions.
Best of luck with the program.
We’d welcome your study of it, Ian- it’s a new initiative that’s meant to evolve and your perspective on it could only move it forward. I’m going to be especially interested, as we go, to understand the economic truths here. I’ve a hunch that the institutional adjustments it would take to make this space for writers are relatively minor in terms of financial barriers to entry and that it’s more a psychological shift that’s needed– if organizations see a value from having a playwright on staff they’ll perhaps find a way to absorb the cost into their regular business model. If not, it won’t take hold no matter how much money comes into the field for it.