MUSICAL CHAIRS
Lots of movement these past couple of weeks!
- Shannon Daut, formerly Deputy Director of Western State Arts Federation in Denver, CO, will be the new leader of the Alaska State Council on the Arts.
- Vincent Stehle has been announced as the new director of Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media.
- Fidelma McGinn, Executive Director of Artist Trust, is leaving to become Vice President of Philanthropic Services for the Seattle Foundation.
- Lawrence Tamburri is out as CEO of the financially troubled Pittsburgh Symphony, and has been replaced by a board member.
ART AND GOVERNMENT
- The DC Office of Human Rights has challenged the practice of offering discounts on performances to professionals under the age of 35.
- Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer is speaking out against a wide-ranging state secrecy law in South Africa that she and others say will be a blank check for censorship.
RESEARCH CORNER
- Dance/NYC has released a report on the state of dance in New York City.
- The Otis College of Art and Design is out with its second study of Los Angeles’s creative economy.
- NPR’s Patrick Jarenwattananon takes a look at the Future of Music Coalition’s Artist Revenue Streams survey from the perspective of jazz musicians. (includes video)
- The Foundation Center’s Director of Research, Larry McGill, has a great post on Philanthropy News Digest talking about the limitations of measurement in the social sector. The comments are also well worth reading.
- Assets for Artists is conducting an evaluation of its program, and good for them, they’re offering $100 a pop to low-to-moderate-income Massachusetts artists who are willing to participate in their de facto control group. This is the way to do it, folks.
IN THE FIELD
- Jeanne Ruddy Dance, a part of the Philadelphia modern dance scene for 12 years, is shutting down.
- The Future of Music Coalition takes a hard look at the joint venture between Groupon and Live Nation offering heavily discounted last-minute concert tickets.
- This month’s article on classical music entrepreneurship got quite a lot of attention, and is now one of the most-viewed Createquity blog posts all time. One of the groups profiled in that piece, Classical Revolution, got its own writeup in Toronto’s Globe and Mail. And the LA Times‘s music critic Mark Swed shared the experience of another group that sounds like it could have been included, wild Up.
- I’m hearing more and more about the Trey McIntyre Project, a dance company that purposefully transplanted itself in Boise, Idaho, after a nationwide search for a community to adopt. (Baltimore’s Single Carrot Theatre is an example of an ensemble with a similar immigration story.) TMP received a $450,000 ArtPlace grant to “limit its touring to remain in Boise, where it will engage the community to make dance and dancers ever present,” aiming to “generate local identity and pride equivalent to that fostered by the university football team.” More about that project here.
- As someone with little experience in the visual arts trenches, I found this article on the economics and ethics of artists being asked to donate work to benefit auctions illuminating. (Thanks, Katherine!)
BIG IDEAS
- Will someone please offer Michael Wilkerson a blog? The American University arts administration professor participated this past week in yet another blog salon from Americans for the Arts (this one focusing on the private sector), and offered two blowout posts: one proposing a national dedicated revenue stream that would more than double the federal money available to directly support the arts; and a second questioning the good that proposal would do because of the fundamental assumptions embedded in how arts support is distributed.
- Great job-hunting advice from the Mission Paradox blog.
- The Foundation Center’s CEO Brad Smith compares Occupy Wall Street and the Giving Pledge as social movements in this lighthearted post.
- Cool story from a while back about a foundation that lets all of its staff members (even the receptionists) participate in grantmaking. (You need a subscription to Chronicle of Philanthropy to view.)
- Did you know that Zappos (the online shoe retailer that was recently bought by Amazon) offers its new employees a chance to quit after an initial weeklong training period and pocket $4,000? Ian Ayres and Akhil Amar suggest that law schools offer their students a similar “anti-incentive” to quit after their first year, in order to help save everyone a lot of time and money.
- Very smart analysis from Isaac Butler and Matt Yglesias about geographic redistribution in the arts vs. the rest of the economy.
- Are you ready for the neuroeconomics revolution?