Hey, remember Chase Community Giving? And Pepsi Refresh? And the American Express Members Project? The social-media-driven, crowd-powered giving initiatives promised to “redefine corporate philanthropy” and were frothily hailed as a “taste of things to come” just a short while ago. American Express had gotten the trend started back in 2007 with the Members Project, aRead More
Around the horn: Big Brother edition
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT A lot of people are talking about the news that Detroit’s emergency fiscal manager is exploring whether the city-owned art on display at the Detroit Institute of Arts (which I visited for the first time just a few weeks ago) can be considered an asset in the event of a municipal bankruptcy.Read More
Cool jobs of the month
Program Associate, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation seeks a Program Associate in the Performing Arts Program. The position reports to the Program Officer and requires close collaboration with two other Program Associates and an Administrative Assistant. Responsibilities may include, but will not be limited to the following: Conduct proposal review forRead More
Corporate vs. Government Influence on the Arts
Britain’s Independent has a short feature on the growing influence of corporate arts sponsorships in the wake of recent cutbacks from the government. While the article doesn’t offer much in the way of data or even examples demonstrating the purported trend, writer Emily Jupp does manage to get some beautifully candid on-the-record quotes from corporateRead More
Around the horn: Donald Trump edition
I’m happy to announce that I will be speaking in Chicago this Saturday, May 7 at David Zoltan’s TEDxMichiganAve event (you can buy tickets here). The talk is tentatively titled “Never Heard of ‘Em: Citizen Curators and Who Gets to Be an Artist,” and I will be synthesizing themes from my post on artistic marketplaces,Read More
Wrap-up: SOM Philanthropy Conference (Part II)
The first half of this wrap-up is available here. Following the Funder/Grantee Relationships panel, I attended another discussion focusing on the democratization of philanthropy (i.e., bringing more and more types of donors to the funding table). The panelists were Diane Airker and Angel Fernandez-Chavero from the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, Eugene Miller fromRead More