The new Brooklyn Philharmonic: A “Site-Specific” Orchestra?

The term “site-specific” is ubiquitous in contemporary visual art organizations. For art historian Miwon Kwon, the term encompasses projects that are linked not only to a physical location (like a sculpture installation designed for a particular gallery), but to a specific community and its cultural traditions and values. Can we also apply the term “site-specific”Read More

Around the horn: Rick Perry edition

TOP NEWS The National Endowment for the Arts has spearheaded the formation of a new coalition of private funders to support its creative placemaking agenda. Called ArtPlace, the collaboration features Carol Coletta as its fearless leader, and has the backing of such significant national funders as the Ford, Knight, Kresge, Rockefeller, and Mellon Foundations. GrantsRead More

Around the horn: Rock me like a hurricane edition

First, two personal items of note: I’m honored to be listed once again as one of the top 25 (really, 40ish) arts leaders on Barry Hessenius’s annual list of such things; and the video of my talk at TEDxMichiganAve given many months ago is now available for viewing. CLOSURES, OPENINGS, MERGERS, AND PAY CUTS Gentrification claims anotherRead More

Meet the fall 2011 Createquity Writing Fellows

I’m delighted to announce Katherine Gressel and Myra Margolin as the fall 2011 Createquity Writing Fellows. I can’t wait to see what these two women will come up with over the next five months. An arts consultant, painter, and longtime lover of murals, Katherine Gressel will use her Fellowship term to delve into the thorny questions surroundingRead More

Racism is alive and well

…and it manifests in housing markets: The findings from this exercise indicate that the preference estimates derived from our dynamic approach differ substantially from estimates derived from a comparable static demand model. For example, the per-year willingness to pay to avoid a 10-percent increase in the number violent crimes per 100,000 population is $586 (inRead More

Around the horn: straw poll edition

It’s been sitting there quietly for a little bit now, but Createquity now has a Facebook page. Feel free to sign up – I post interesting links there that don’t make it into the Around the Horn round up for one reason or another. PUBLIC POLICY AND THE ARTS – FEDERAL Teresa Eyring has aRead More

Conversations with a Curator: Douglas Laustsen

In the spirit of the recent conversation on ArtsBlog, Emerging Ideas: Seeking and Celebrating the Spark of Innovation, I thought it would be interesting to talk to a curator about how he makes room for the unfamiliar in his work. Douglas Laustsen is a music educator and trombonist based in New Jersey who runs aRead More

Does academic journal content want to be free?

Last month, hacker activist (hacktivist?) Aaron Swartz was indicted for downloading 4.8 million proprietary academic articles from the JSTOR database via the MIT guest network. For this, he faces up to a $1 million fine and a potential jail sentence of 35 years. For ThinkProgress commentator Matthew Yglesias, the issues raised by the case pointRead More

Around the horn: Debt ceiling edition

Don’t forget the Createquity Writing Fellowship application deadline is this Friday, August 5! PUBLIC POLICY AND THE ARTS – FEDERAL The State Department, though the New England Foundation for the Arts, is funding a major new cultural diplomacy program aimed at bringing foreign artists to small and midsize cities across the United States. Alyssa RosenbergRead More

Cool jobs of the month

Program Analyst, Office of Research & Analysis, National Endowment for the Arts Design, administer, or oversee the design and administration of high-quality research instruments and/or protocols to collect performance data for the Agency’s new strategic and informational measures. Conducts pre-tests and pilot studies of new data collection instruments and protocols as appropriate. Ensure the qualityRead More