Hello there! It’s been a while since we last updated the blogroll. Since then, Arts Admin has gone and come back, as has Theatre Ideas. Future Leaders in Philanthropy is now located at networkflip.com, and smArts & Culture also has a new URL. Oh, and several blogs that we’d previously added have been inactive for six months or more, and I’ve removed them from the site. But the real point of this post is to shower attention on our new additions, as follows (you may recognize three of them from the list of top new blogs from 2010):
ArtsAppeal
David Zoltan’s blog about arts management, fundraising, and policy is well-written, engaging, and informed. He’s been keeping up an admirable pace over at ArtsAppeal since this past September, and shows little sign of slowing down. David is part of a bevy of Carnegie Mellon arts administration alums and students who, along with nearly half a dozen applicants to the Createquity Writing Fellowship, have collectively raised my esteem for that program quite a bit over the past few months.
Jumper
Former Mellon Foundation Associate Program Officer and current Ph.D. student Diane Ragsdale has been hitting all the arts policy high points in her new weekly ArtsJournal blog, Jumper. Check out these two recent posts on the question of oversupply in the sector and the search for new business models, as well as this one on funding partnerships that was written partly in response to a comment of mine. While Diane’s essays always make for interesting reading on their own, what makes Jumper especially remarkable is the fact that it has managed, over a very short period of time, to become a hotbed of action in the comment section – a very hard feat to pull off for any blog.
FlowingData
I have my Fractured Atlas colleague Kirsten Nordine to thank for pointing me in the direction of this fantastic data visualization blog by Nathan Yau, a UCLA Ph.D. candidate in statistics. Yau posts frequent examples of infographics, interactive data toys, and the like to his site and makes sure to present topics in a completely accessible way. You will definitely learn something from reading this blog.
Museum 2.0
Nina Simon’s rise to prominence in the museum world has been rather meteoric, and her excellent Museum 2.0 blog is at the root of it all. This four-part series on Paul Light’s book Sustaining Innovation provides an example of the seriousness with which she approaches her craft. Nina’s oft-cited book The Participatory Museum can also be read online. She’s a real-deal Gen Y nonprofit thought leader.
YourTownPerforms.com
Sadly, YourTownPerforms hasn’t been updated in the last two and a half months, but assuming Craige Hoover ever comes back, you can bet that it will be with something well worth reading. Craige is the founder of a consulting shop called Cultural Arts Solutions and the Seaside (FL) Repertory Theatre, which he led until last year. His posts shine an incisive light on local arts-led development initiatives and cultural plans, such as this one about Nashville (Hoover is from outside Nashville) and a cool series on “Great Arts Towns.” He also brings a perspective on new urbanism which will be most welcome in creative placemaking discussions.