State Arts Funding: late 2009 wrap-up

Back in August, I posted a round-up of the struggles that various state arts councils were going through this year. The upshot is that a large number of agencies have experienced shocking declines in their state appropriations, in some cases totaling 50% or more of the previous year’s budget. (More information can be found atRead More

Flashback: Narciso

In 2002, just after graduating from college, I moved to Philadelphia to pursue a dual career in arts administration and composing. While holding down a couple of part-time jobs involving many file folders and mailing labels, I quickly set to work on a new choral piece, a setting of Federico García Lorca’s poem “Narciso.” IRead More

Justice for Jazz Artists?

(Image by Flickr user hitchica, Creative Commons license) A while back, an intrepid reader of this blog got in touch to inform me of the American Federation of Musicians Local 802’s Justice for Jazz Artists! campaign, which seeks to establish pension payments for jazz musicians who play at venues in New York City. The campaignRead More

The NEA and hip-hop

So, Lee Rosenbaum (perhaps better known to the world as blogger CultureGrrl) scored an interview with NEA Chair Rocco Landesman and writes about it today in the Wall Street Journal: In a freewheeling conversation we had on the day of his Brooklyn visit, Mr. Landesman was true to form—brashly candid. But his provocative words inRead More

Around the horn: fall back edition

Whose brilliant idea was it to put the end of daylight saving time in the middle of Halloween night? Can we do that every year? NEA Chair Rocco Landesman’s Art Works blog is shaping up to be the must-read of the holiday season. Not just because of what he writes there, but because of theRead More

New Blogs!

Here’s a spooky Halloween edition of new blogs for you to check out: Arts Admin It doesn’t sport the most earth-shattering name ever dreamed up, but Michael Rushton’s blog is a great find. It’s extremely active, typically with several posts a day, and many of those are quite substantive in scope. Rushton is the directorRead More

Final thoughts on the GIA Conference

(crossposted at the GIA Conference Blog) It’s been a pleasure covering the 2009 Grantmakers in the Arts Conference for you all, and I hope you’ve enjoyed getting a glimpse into sessions you may have missed or the conference as a whole (if you didn’t have the chance to be among the 351 attendees). Before IRead More

Around the horn: Go Phillies edition

Gradually getting back on schedule here, so the regular round-up is on Tuesday this week, then returns to Monday next week. Here’s the goods! A propos of recent discussions on emerging leaders, the Council on Foundations has released a first-time report looking at Career Pathways to Philanthropic Leadership. Among the highlights: Nearly four out ofRead More

An Open-Source Arts Field

(crossposted from the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leaders Salon) I want to express my appreciation to my fellow Salon bloggers last week and everyone who has commented—you’ve given me a lot to think about. Before I go, though, I want to make what seems to me like an essential point. We’ve spent a lotRead More

Blogiversary II

As of today, I have been blogging at Createquity for two years. It’s pretty amazing to think how far things have come in such a short time. Even one year ago, this blog was still pretty quiet — a subscriber base of perhaps 20, a comment maybe every month or so, and a pretty lightRead More