ART AND THE GOVERNMENT The NEA has unveiled a new four-point plan for its arts education program, and Kristen Engebretsen has the details. Yo-Yo Ma gave this year’s Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy at Arts Advocacy Day, and you can watch the video here. Fascinating account of the Norwegian jazz scene and how government fundingRead More
Around the horn: Argo edition
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT The dreaded sequester began Friday, affecting all federal accounts including that of the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA will lose 5% of its budget, which works out to about $7.3 million. Grants and administration will be reduced by the same percentage. The reductions only apply through March 27, however,Read More
Around the horn: Blago edition
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – DOMESTIC Americans for the Arts’s Narric Rome provides a vital update on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, also known as No Child Left Behind), and what it all means for arts education, as it makes its way through the Congressional committee process. Proposed copyright legislation called theRead More
Around the horn: Siri edition
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, isRead More
Arts, Inc.: brevity version
This article is a much shorter version of this. If you want the full force of my verbosity, read that one. In Arts, Inc., Bill Ivey, former Chair of the NEA, makes the case that our artistic heritage is a set of public assets that should benefit all, but instead are often squandered by existing cultural institutions.Read More
Arts Policy Library: Arts, Inc.
This is a long piece. If you’d like the very short version, you can find it here. In Arts, Inc., Bill Ivey, former Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1998-2001 and Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University (more expansive bio here) makes the caseRead More
Around the horn: Egypt edition
Stand Up and Represent First it was the state arts agencies; now the NEA is under attack. It turns out that the federal budget for the current fiscal year was never actually finalized, but instead was paid for bit by bit. As a result, the Republican House has called for a $22.5 million, or 13%,Read More
Around the horn: March to Restore Sanity edition
Ron Ragin’s guest stint over at the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, covered in last time’s round-up, continues with a meditation on general operating support in uncertain times and, my favorite from this series, lessons learned from grantee interactions. In the latter, Ron tackles the subject that no one in philanthropy likes to talk about:Read More
Creative Placemaking (and Panelmaking) with the NEA
(Originally posted at the Fractured Atlas blog.) Two weeks ago, I traveled down to DC to take in the “Creative Placemaking” discussion organized by the NEA and hosted by the Canadian Embassy. (Two of the panelists, Tim Jones of Artscape and Richard Florida of all things Richard Florida, are current residents of our neighbor nation to the north.)Read More
The Phoenix in Baltimore
A while back, the Washington Post had a nice series of articles on DC’s neighbor to the north. Baltimore tends to be associated in the popular imagination with the kind of frightening crime depicted on TV shows like The Wire (frankly, it doesn’t exactly give one confidence when cabbies have signs saying “DRIVER CARRIES NO MORERead More