Lincoln Center (photo by flickr user Peter Miller)

Raising money is tough, and raising money for the arts can be particularly so. And yet, at this moment in New York, sixteen arts institutions in Manhattan alone are in the process of raising a whopping $3.47 billion for ambitious capital projects–from a revamped building for the New York Philharmonic (price tag: $500 million) to the long-awaited new home for the Irish Arts Center (price tag: $60 million). While there’s no one way to raise this kind of dollar, the New York Times has a compelling explanation of the various strategies cultural institutions are using to bring home the bacon. Lurking underneath all the glitz and ambition, however, is an unasked question: is this all a good idea? After all, cultural equity and disparities of wealth among cultural institutions is an issue with increasing resonance both in New York City and nationally, and in many ways the current administration’s proposed cultural plan has been seen as a step towards addressing those issues. Will this giant slate of capital projects claim resources that might otherwise have been available to a broader constituency? And given the dim results of past research on the long-term effects of building projects, are these decisions that even the institutions themselves will come to regret?

Violence Threatens Free Expression in the Internet Age. On October 26, SXSW Interactive, the annual media festival held in Austin, Texas every March, canceled two sessions for its 2016 event, citing threats of violence. The panels–”SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community” and “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games“– were seen as #Gamergate panels, though the movement was not specifically invoked by either. The decision drew outrage from various corners of the internet world; media heavy-hitters BuzzFeed and Vox threatened to withdraw altogether from the conference if the panels were not reinstated. In response to the backlash, SXSW was forced to develop a full day’s worth of programming, an online harassment summit, which will include a significantly expanded list of panelists such as Congresswoman Katherine Clark (D-Massachusetts) and former Texas senator Wendy Davis. Threats of violence are terrible enough, but on the Indian subcontinent this month intellectuals are increasingly victims of the real thing. Two Bangledeshi publishers were stabbed to death purportedly for having printed the work of Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-American known for his critical writings on religious extremism. (Roy was himself assassinated in February of this year.) This comes amidst a protest among many of India’s most prominent writers in response to prime minister Narendra Modi’s failure to condemn recent violence by Hindu nationalists in that country.

Colorado’s Small Arts Organizations Lose the Resource Equity Battle. The Denver area’s Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, which oversees the distribution of some $50 million in sales tax subsidies to some 300 arts organizations, is up for a third reauthorization in 2016. In May, the SCFD proposed a plan for the next decade that would keep shares of arts funds close to what they are now. Small arts groups–especially the 270 organizations in “Tier III” who under the proposed plan would split a mere 15.7% of the pie–revolted, arguing the distribution is unfair and biased toward Denver’s big cultural institutions. In response, a group called the Friends of Arts and Cultural Equity presented a plan with a more equitable distribution of resources. This month, the SCFD rejected calls for a redistribution, reaffirming its own funding recommendations to the legislature. The question now becomes: will the legislature send the reauthorization to ballot, or take control of funding measures themselves?

Nonprofits Crowd In On the Crowdfunding Pie. Since it first launched in 2008, Indiegogo–and hundreds of similar crowdfunding platforms–have revolutionized how and for what individuals raise money (Greek bailout, anyone?). This month, Indiegogo launched Generosity, an Indiegogo spinoff where nonprofit organizations can host campaigns–for free. Unlike its competitors, such as Razoo and FirstGiving, the only fees collected on Generosity by Indiegogo will go to the credit card processor. The demand is there: in the last five years, Indiegogo has hosted some 15,000 nonprofit fundraisers. Indiegogo’s main competitor, Kickstarter, doesn’t allow fundraising for charity, but that hasn’t stopped the company from making its own recent moves towards the altruism bandwagon, having announced its reformation as a public benefit corporation and raised money for Syrian refugees at the request of the Obama administration. Crowdfunding won’t replace grants and major individual giving any time soon, but as anyone who’s put in time on the development side of the nonprofit world knows, every little bit counts.

Not All Is Lost: An Alt-Weekly Newspaper Revival. We’ve heard it before: “print is dead” and especially so when it comes to newspaper print. Alt-weeklies, the scrappy punk siblings of the Times and Chronicles of the world, have been hit especially hard, and October witnessed the demise of yet another one: Philadelphia’s much loved City Paper. Yet in an interesting twist, this same month New York City’s storied Village Voice was essentially rescued by Pennsylvania newspaper man, Peter Barbey. Barbey, president of the Reading Eagle Company, a family-owned media company that has published newspapers in Pennsylvania for more than 200 years, bought the paper from Voice Media Group, and has already announced big plans for the sixty-year old circular, including an increase in cultural coverage.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Poet, essayist, playwright, and scholar Elizabeth Alexander was named director of the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression program.
• Terry Carbone has been appointed director of the Henry Luce Foundation’s American Art program. She succeeds Ellen Holtzman, who served in the role for 23 years.
• Veteran art museum curator and director Maxwell Anderson was named Director of Grant Programs for the New Cities Foundation.
• Lynne McCormack, longtime Director of Providence’s Department of Art, Culture + Tourism, is leaving to become the national program director for creative placemaking at LISC.
• Reynold Levy, who was president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts from 2002–2014, has been appointed president of the Robin Hood Foundation in New York.
• After 14 years, Susan Patterson has announced she will retire from her position as director of the Charlotte program at The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation at the end of 2015.
• MK Wegmann has announced she will retire from her position of President and CEO of the New Orleans-based National Performance Network/Visual Artists Network in January 2016. A search for her replacement is underway; deadline December 1, salary $125-130k.
• The Arts Consulting Group, Inc. seeks Vice Presidents for its expanded Canada office. Posted October 5; no closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• A study conducted at the University Hospital Erlangen in Germany and published in journal PLoS One suggests that actively participating in art-making keeps the brain healthy.
• Michigan State University analyzed several data sources, and found that Nobel prize winning scientists are 2.85x more likely than average scientists to have a significant artistic hobby.
• A new report by the University of Maryland’s DeVos Institute of Arts Management, “Diversity in the Arts,” reviews the economic picture of African American and Latino nonprofit museums and performing arts companies and suggests some controversial solutions.
• The Creative Diversity report, published this month by Creative Industries Federation in partnership with Music of Black Origin, suggests that theater is significantly less ethnically diverse than other creative industries.
• Two studies published this month looked into the question of music consumption. The first, by two Irish psychologists, looks at the many reasons why people choose to listen to music. The second, published in the journal Poetics, examines what your musical tastes say about you.
• Columbia Law School program and the Urban Institute released preliminary findings that, despite rapid increase in the number of 501(c)3 organizations–in 2014 the rate of newly formed entities nearly tripled– states are doing little to hire new regulators to police charities.
• A survey conducted in the UK this month reveals that “one in four performing arts careers are halted by parenthood.”

• The IRS has proposed a new Form 1023-EZ, which would allow some smaller organizations to apply for tax-exempt status with much less hassle. The National Association of State Charity Officials has objected out of a belief that completing the longer form is an important educational experience and a fear that applications could skyrocket.
• A report from the R Street Institute argues that copyright terms, which have ballooned while patent terms have barely inflated, are so long that they are not only stifling to creativity but actually unconstitutional.
• With the recent passing of Cornelius Gurlitt, hoarder of over 1,000 works of art suspected to be looted from Nazis, the official investigation into the provenance of the artworks in his collection ended. Unexpectedly, Gurlitt bequeathed his trove to the Kunstmuseum Bern, reopening legal and ethical questions surrounding the new acquisitions.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• MacArthur President Robert L. Gallucci will step down when his term expires on July 1. Julia Stasch, VP for US programs, will act as interim president while the board searches for a replacement.
• Jarl Mohn, chairman of Southern California Public Media and former MTV executive, is the new head of National Public Radio. Mr. Mohn has the enviable charge of pulling NPR out of its deficit, sowing harmony among member stations, and figuring out how to fundraise in the post-pledge drive era.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The Knight Foundation has awarded Theaster Gates $3.5 million to transform an office space on the south side of Chicago into an incubator “where neighborhood residents will come together with artists, designers and urban planners to work on revitalization projects through art.”
• Reflecting on the Hewlett Foundation’s recent announcement of the end of its Nonprofit Marketplace Initiative, Tony Proscio wonders whether the funder pulled the plug too soon. Meanwhile, in another frank self-assessment, Hewlett undertook a field scan of evaluation spending and found room for improvement in its own practice, particularly regarding embedding evaluation strategies in the early life of programs. As a result, the foundation plans to up its evaluation spending from roughly 1.2 percent to 2.3 of its overall grant budget.
• Bad news for “cultured professionals” looking to buy art at auctions: the average price for fine art has doubled over just four years, leaving many to settle on prints. And in other art market news, between 2012 and 2013 online art purchases increased 83 percent. Total sales have finally exceeded $1 billion.
• Angie Kim summarizes the origins and history of the 5 percent payout rule for foundations and argues a variable payout rate, based on a foundation’s performance over 25 years, would better ensure that foundations’ wealth does not grow disproportionately to their support of the greater good.

IN THE FIELD

• The San Diego Opera’s financial situation is looking up: in the last two weeks, the organization has raised more than $1 million through a crowdfunding campaign and received a $500,000 matching gift challenge – although, in the other column, the city is expected to cut its funding for the opera by $223,000. The Opera’s new board leadership’s desire to save the company now has the vocal support of the members of the San Diego Opera Association and the solo singers’ union. They aren’t out of the woods yet, though, since a 2015 season will still require about $2.7 million in additional funds.
• After seven years, the Seattle Dance Project is shutting down as artistic director Timothy Lynch moves to Ohio’s BalletMet. And the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra‘s next season will be its last after over 100 years of performances in Wisconsin.
• Say what? The Colorado Symphony Orchestra will host a series of bring-your-own marijuana events in collaboration with Edible Events, a pro-pot company, as a way to be more inclusive and raise money for the orchestra.
• We have no idea how much Comcast and Verizon are charging Netflix for more direct access to users’ homes – and that’s not a good thing.
• Some remarkable numbers from the academic field about the extent to which hiring for administrators has outpaced the hiring of professors. A similar dynamic to arts organizations, perhaps?

BIG IDEAS

• As Piketty-mania continues to drive interest in income inequality, a comparison of the prices of various goods in the United States over the last ten years yields grim insights about its effects. While the cost of education and health care — i.e. services that can’t be outsourced — has risen dramatically, the cost of electronics, clothing, and other personal goods has fallen. One commentator sums things up nicely: “Prices are rising on the very things that are essential to climb out of poverty.”
• Mania being what it is, it’s not surprising that some conversations about income inequality have taken an interesting turn, suggesting that the widening gap between rich and poor may be good for artists. As at least one author has pointed out, that argument fails to demonstrate that the arts are “more dynamic under high inequality than… under conditions of low inequality,” and even if great art has been produced in awful social conditions, that by no means justifies those conditions. Add to that mix confusion about the difference between rising wealth creation and wealth inequality, and you’ve got a growing debate on your hands.
• Design methodology is increasingly used to solve unwieldy social problems at a policy level in the European Union, but the US has been slow to catch on. The National Endowment for the Arts contracted the Design Council to organize a webinar addressing how to use design “to create public services around the people who use them, to introduce new methods into the civil service skill set, and as a tool to aid the process of public policy development” as part of the Learning from Abroad series.
• The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy has launched Philamplify, a collection of in-depth assessments of the top foundations in the country. Assessments of the Lumina Foundation for Education, William Penn Foundation, and Robert W. Woodruff Foundation are included at the moment, though the site plans to add about one hundred more within the next few months. Website visitors can indicate whether they agree with Philamplify’s recommendations for the foundations and add comments.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Arts marketing specialists LaPlaca Cohen released the sixth edition of their CultureTrack report on participation in cultural events and held a panel discussion about it. The report characterizes American audiences as promiscuous (we range across media) and social (we hate to go alone, and personal recommendations and invitations are among the main drivers of participation). The verdict on attendance is mixed: more people are attending museums, musical theater, and classical music each year (though not straight plays, theater, or opera), but overall they are going less often.
• A new study by researchers at the London School of Economics concludes that engaging in the arts makes people happy – as happy as if you paid them $100-150 per month. Michael Rushton, as is his wont, argues caution.
• The NEA has an update on three current projects that aim to support continuous learning in the field: 1) an assessment of the artistic excellence of grantees’ work products, 2) a pilot survey of grantee organizations’ audiences, meant to measure the extent to which they were engaged and moved by arts experiences, 3) a new evaluation by the Urban Institute of the the NEA’s Arts & Livability Indicators.
• inBloom, a massive educational data collection effort supported by the Gates Foundation, is shutting down following mounting concerns voiced by parents regarding their children’s privacy. Besides serving as a cautionary tale of how philanthropic efforts can stumble when they lack appropriate buy-in, the example may portend a backlash against collecting data on children — and arts audiences of all types.
• Of 7,000 Victorian novels, only a few dozen are read today. How does an author pass the test of time? Salon interviews cultural historian Franco Moretti, who uses big data to analyze bad books.
• Speaking of not getting read today, do you ever feel like posting reports online is adding to a virtual wasteland of PDFs that will never be opened? You’re probably right. The World Bank decided to test that feeling by running analytics on its website and discovered that a whopping one-third of its research reports have never, ever been downloaded. Only 13% were downloaded more than 250 times.

ETC.

• Positive reviews on sites like Yelp and Amazon translate into real money for businesses – even though as many as a third of reviewers may be fake and the real ones may not be representative of customers.
• The Gray Lady suddenly appears to find itself in the business of hiring actors, thanks to a new “Verbatim” series that features “recreations of actual events from the halls of law and government” by “transform[ing]… legal transcripts into dramatic, and often comedic performances.” The first one comes courtesy of a 2010 lawsuit involving photocopying public records. It has to be seen to be believed.

• In a reversal, the FCC has drafted new net neutrality rules that critics claim are unworthy of the name: they would allow broadband companies to provide a “fast lane” for content providers willing to pay a “commercially reasonable” fee. The FCC’s public comment period opens on May 15. Related: if the Comcast-Time Warner merger is approved, “the combined company’s footprint will pass over 60% of US broadband households.”
• A belated tax tip for artists: emigrate to Mexico. Or, for those committed to staying in the US of A, consider launching a worker cooperative as a means of upping income while maintaining time for artistic pursuits. For those on the collector side, there’s always lending your new purchases to a museum in Oregon, Delaware or New Hampshire first.
• Several record companies have filed suit in New York against Pandora to secure royalties under state law for the use of recordings made before 1972, which are not protected by federal copyright. Sirius was targeted by a similar lawsuit last fall.
• Classical musicians may now have a harder time leaving and re-entering the United States thanks to a ban on ivory meant to protect African elephants.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Grant Oliphant, former Pittsburgh Foundation leader, will begin a new role as president at Heinz Endowments this June.
• Also in June, the Canada Council for the Arts will welcome its new CEO and president Simon Brault. Brault was previously vice-chair of Canada Council’s board before moving to the National Theatre School Montreal, and will serve in his new position for a five-year term.
• Michael Kaiser, a man who wears many hats, will add another one in co-chairman of IMG Artists, which will also involve managing a new cooperation between IMG Artists and DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland.
• Jonathan Fanton, former president of the MacArthur Foundation and of the New School, has been named President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Former president Leslie Cohen Berlowitz resigned last July in the wake of a scandal over her compensation and qualifications.
• Lorin Dunlop will join the M. J. Murdoch Charitable trust this June as Program Director. Most recently, Dunlop was responsible for public safety grant programs of the Oregon Criminal Justice System.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• PonoMusic, a new high-def digital audio business, raised $6.2 million on Kickstarter to become the third-best-funded project in the site’s history. Neil Young, who started Pono to provide a higher-quality alternative to current digital formats, set the initial goal at $800,000.
• Yet another contender is trying to elbow its way into the crowdfunding game: Crowdrise, a new(ish) platform dedicated exclusively to nonprofits, just received an additional $23 million in financing.
• The Walter & Elise Haas Fund, working together with the Foundation Center and Mission Minded, has developed an open-source, free solution that any grantmaking entity can use to make its grantmaking data searchable, publishable, sharable, and fully accessible. You can see “Open hGrant for WordPress” in action on the Haas site.

IN THE FIELD

• The San Diego Opera has outlined a new fundraising strategy to avert closure and announced a meeting on Monday of its 850-person membership. It’s been a bumpy ride: half of the 58-member board has resigned; a new chair, Carol Lazier, has taken over and personally pledged $1m to save the organization; general and artistic director Ian Campbell has been placed on indefinite leave; and protests by unions and members have added financial and legal complications. The opera’s plan includes a new $1m crowdfunding campaign with a deadline of May 19; it is actually only one of several San Diego cultural institutions that have been shuttered or are imperiled.
• A closer look at the end of the Trey McIntyre Project.
• A bid by a group of philanthropic organizations to buy out Pittsburgh’s failed August Wilson Center for African American Culture was dropped, with the foundations claiming a preference on the part of the Center’s court-appointed receiver for a commercial developer.
• New York City is facing a sudden rash of failing institutions. The Incubator Arts Project is closing, citing — you guessed it — difficulties raising revenue. The Brecht Forum, a Marxist educational and cultural space, is buckling under the weight of a lawsuit for back rent. And Manhattan’s legendary Canal Street art supply store Pearl Paint has shut its doors and is mourned.
• Is an arts-centric Coursera in our future? Barry Hessenius decries the state of professional development in arts administration and calls for a virtual “one stop shop” of on-demand courses, articles, and networking/mentoring opportunities.
• A handful of arts organizations have been experimenting with a lesser-known organizational structure called the “disregarded entity,” which may offer non-profits a more flexible alternative to independence on the one hand and fiscal sponsorship on the other.
• In The Foundation Review, authors Gary Cunningham, Marcia Avner, and Romilda Justilian of the Northwest Area Foundation note declining philanthropic investment in communities of color and make a pointed call for foundation leaders to commit to reducing racial inequality. And across the pond, British comedian Lenny Henry is leading an effort to secure better representation for minorities on the BBC.

BIG IDEAS

• National Arts Strategies’s Sunny Widmann suggests arts organizations create their own Skunk Works® divisions — originally conceived by Lockheed Martin and not as stinky as the name suggests — to nurture innovate programs and practices.
• We hear a lot about the intersection between creative placemaking and gentrification, but is dealing with it just a matter of saying hi to your neighbor and identifying your privileges? At The Atlantic Cities, Daniel Hertz suggests that if we really care about gentrification, we should be paying a lot more attention to housing policy.
• Global inequality of wealth is at a 100-year high, with the infamous 1% owning half of the planet’s wealth, according to a hot new book by French economist Thomas Piketty. One consequence: “professionals have now been priced out of the [art] market and it’s shifted more toward investment bankers.”
• Barry Hessenius is looking for the next set of big ideas – and the people behind them – with another edition of the Arts Dinner-vention. Nominations are due May 15.

RESEARCH CORNER

• A music psychologist found that introducing random repetition into a piece of music makes it more appealing – and makes people think it was more likely to have been composed by a human being.
• Research suggests literary fiction can help short-circuit ethnic stereotypes.
• A new paper examines the intersections of the arts and health via case studies from Cleveland on interventions including art therapy and the artistic design of healthcare facilities.
• The NEA is out with a new report on the Education Leaders Institute Alumni Summit, a five-year effort on the part of the NEA to strengthen arts education policies at the state level. The Endowment’s Arts Education director Ayanna Hudson discusses the report in the context of the agency’s new strategy.
• A new center at Stanford will focus on meta-research in the medical sciences and examine how much publication bias — which raises questions about all research fields, including the arts — really is a problem.
• The Pew Research Center has published a new report on demographic and generational trends in America. The findings themselves are what you might expect – our population is aging, becoming more diverse, and moving away from religion; immigration and interracial marriage are on the rise; and Democrats and Republicans are at odds – but the presentation brings these and other trends to life.
• Seen any good movies at the theater lately? Probably not, according to new data on film reception by month of release as aggregated by Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. The numbers show that the summer and holiday seasons have the best pickings. Don’t believe it? You can play around with the data yourself.

• The even playing field that is the Internet might be about to tilt in the favor of the powerful, in this case AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and the like. Net neutrality is in the hands of the DC Circuit Court.
• The National Initiative on Arts & the Military has released a new advocacy white paper on arts and health in the military context, just as the NEA has announced that it will expand its Creative Arts Therapy Program through a new three-month pilot at the Department of Defense’s Fort Belvoir Community Hospital.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Ralph Remington is stepping down as the NEA’s Theater/Musical Theater Director to become the western regional director and assistant executive director at Actors Equity Association. He had been at the NEA since 2010.
• Los Angeles has a new mayor, and will soon have a new head of cultural affairs. Olga Garay-English, who served as Executive Director of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs since 2007, announced she is stepping down January 4.
• Kenneth Foster, former Executive Director of the Yerba Buena Center for Arts, has kicked off his tenure leading the new Arts Leadership Program at the University of Southern California and offers some words of wisdom on how funders can best serve the performing community, and why  “best practices” aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
• Continuing a string of recent layoffs of classical-music radio staff, Houston’s KUHA has cleaned house. The station claims that the move will actually lead to more coverage of local arts groups.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Consider arts crowdfunding thoroughly kickstarted. Crowdfunding raised more than half a billion dollars for the performing and recording arts last year, almost 20% of the total money raised for all purposes through crowdfunding platforms, according to industry research. Lucy Bernholz is interested in investigating the small but increasing role U.S. foundations seem to be playing in driving this trend.
• Risë Wilson, the new Director of Philanthropy at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, makes the case – and offers a model – for arts grants as risk capital in an interview about the Foundation’s SEED grant program.
• Like many other downtowns, Philly’s is booming these days. But residential developer Carl Dranoff attributes the revitalization of the South Broad Street area to the Avenue of the Arts project, and insists that “anyone who says it would have happened anyway has a very short memory.”

IN THE FIELD

• In his coverage of last month’s 2013 Future of Music Summit for the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot describes a frustrated yet resolved music industry, “Music is generating a ridiculous amount of money, none of it flowing to the people who create it.” Check out the write-ups from day one and day two.
• Nina Simon responds to the backlash that her novel programming at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has generated in recent months locally and, to a lesser extent, nationally. The contention is that encouraging active participation so strongly erodes the traditional museum environment of quiet contemplation, distracting the MAH from its historical charge. Simon argues that the new approach allows for both kinds of experiences, while “balancing priorities, embracing creative tension, including diverse voices, and staying true to our mission.”

BIG IDEAS

• The ambitious Sustain Arts project aims to bring the wonders of Big Data to the cultural sector over the next three years, ultimately strengthening the nation’s cultural infrastructure. The first wave of work is happening now in the San Francisco and Detroit regions; Marc Vogl, Bay Area Field Director of the initiative, explains what he’s up to and how Bay Area folks can get involved.
• New Bonfils Stanton Foundation president Gary Steuer weighs in on the “is ‘innovation’ a nefarious buzz-word” debate (which is really the ongoing argument over how funders find the sweet spot of nurturing, not hindering, their grantees) and provides other thoughtful comments on the recent National Innovation Summit for Arts + Culture. (All 27 talks from the Summit, by the way, are now available online.)
• Google has launched Helpouts, a service that provides live on-demand chatting with experts in fields ranging from the arts to cooking and electronics. Udi Manber, VP of engineering, believes Helpouts will offer users a more “precise” mode of online learning.

RESEARCH CORNER

• WolfBrown is out with a multi-pronged report on how to engage college students in the performing arts. It includes case studies of best practices and a survey of student attitudes toward the performing arts across seven different schools.
• The Wallace Foundation has released new research on the challenges of after-school arts programs in low-income urban neighborhoods. The study draws on hundreds of interviews with young people, their families, program leaders and others to provide some answers, including ten principles for developing effective programming.
• More evidence that art therapy helps patients with Alzheimer’s.
• Elizabeth Merritt reviews a new report from European consultancy Arup on Museums in a Digital Age.
• The U.S. may be out of UNESCO, but the work continues: the international cultural agency and the United Nations Development Program have just released a Special Edition of the United Nations Creative Economy Report concluding that world trade of creative goods and services more than doubled from 2002 to 2011, to $624 billion. Unlike the 2008 and 2010 editions, many of the case studies and recommendations this time around focus on the role of culture in sustainable development at the local level, especially in poorer countries.
• So many charts, so little time! The Foundation Center has launched the eminently clickable Foundation Stats, where you can find “the answer to almost every basic statistical question about the collective work of U.S. Foundations.” Emphasis on the “basic” here, but as an added bonus the data is open and free. Meanwhile, A new report from the Foundation Center, Media Impact Funders, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation shows that foundations are stepping up in a big way to support traditional media organizations struggling to adjust to the digital age.
• As cultural asset mapping projects continue to gain popularity, this quick overview of where to get spatial data, and what you can do with it, is particularly timely. And speaking of cultural asset mapping, Philadelphia’s massive CultureBlocks initiative is barely six months out of the gate and there is already an academic paper on it.

• The National Endowment for the Arts has shared a draft of its strategic plan for FY14-18, and in what I believe may be a first, is inviting public comment on it via SurveyMonkey. Ah, these modern times we live in. Now let’s just hope House Republicans don’t succeed in slashing its budget by 49%.
• A new report from the Wagner School of Public Service at NYU and the Center for an Urban Future details 15 policy innovations for cities that are “novel, proven and scalable.” While no arts-specific innovations made the list, one of the ideas is a type of “digital badging” program found in Philadelphia, Providence and Chicago that “allow[s] students both inside the K-12 system and outside to earn credentials for skills they learn in a wide variety of educational settings, from digital tools workshops at public libraries to art classes at museums.”
• The City of Buffalo is at risk of losing over $1 million worth of donated musical instruments if it follows through with cuts to music programs in its schools.
• The City of New York has taken over management of the financially troubled South Street Seaport Museum.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The McKnight Foundation has hired Arleta Little as arts program officer, replacing Laura Zimmermann. If she’s looking for advice on how to settle into her new role, she can check out this completely awesome video Laura made as a goodbye kiss to her old employer.
• After 25 years in various positions at the Ford Foundation, philanthropy data nut and friend of the blog Kyle Reis is now Senior Director of Global Data Services at TechSoup. Here he is writing about the Foundation Center’s Reporting Commitment.

IN THE FIELD

• Doug Borwick offers a range of thoughts from the Americans for the Arts Convention.
• So long Codaex, a European classical music distributor.
• A new national network of Latino theater companies has formed in Southern California. Service organizations will note with interest that a Theatre Communications Group conference was the forum that provided the initial push.
• In very sad news, Rick Lester, founding CEO of arts marketing consultancy TRG Arts, passed away suddenly last weekend while participating in a bike ride for charity. TRG, which is notable for its management of nearly two dozen community arts patron databases across the country, has a memorial page up with a myriad of touching tributes from colleagues past and present.

BIG IDEAS

• The NEA’s Jason Schupbach reflects on the Our Town program now that its third round of grants has been announced.
• The Internet is democratizing all sorts of things, not just the arts. Here, the Atlantic reports on the rise of citizen cartography.
• Rather than trying (or refusing) to do more with less, why not use the challenge as an opportunity to explore constructive partnerships?
• Two more than worthwhile perspectives on the past and future of online marketing, from Seth Godin and Adam Thurman.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Attention study-at-home MBA candidates: the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Phil Buchanan points us to a motherlode of Stanford philanthropy case studies made available for free recently via Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen’s ProjectU. CEP also has some tips for communicating with grantees.
• Rick Noguchi of the Irvine Foundation offers an inside look into grant deliberations and explains how the foundation made some of its decisions in the most recent round of the Exploring Engagement Fund.
• Streaming music services in general, and Spotify in particular, have come under increasing criticism from musicians for their ultra-low royalty payout rates. Most recently, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and several associates decided to pull their music from the site in protest. But is Spotify actually undercutting music piracy rather than album sales? As usual, the folks at Future of Music Coalition have turned in the most thoughtful analysis we’ve yet seen on this issue.
• Thinking about starting a crowdfunding project and not sure how to figure out the budgeting? You might want to try Taylor Davidson’s financial modeling template in Excel.

RESEARCH CORNER

• A new report from Americans for the Arts details the mostly modest salaries of local arts agency employees. But who says you can’t get rich being an arts administrator? Indeed, the NEA’s Sunil Iyengar has a long post on income inequality in the arts, and the idea that it may be portending changes in the economy as a whole. And Diane Ragsdale considers the interesting question of whether being paid too much “crowds out” one’s existing intrinsic motivation to work.
• Can we make a dent in poverty just by teaching parents how to parent better? A long-term study from Jamaica suggests maybe so. Meanwhile, the achievement gap between rich kids and poor kids is now twice as large as that between black children and white children. The cause of poor performance by poor students? No one’s quite figured it out yet, but it’s not bad teachers, nor is it moms on crack. (Seriously – a 23-year longitudinal study in Philadelphia has revealed that being born to poverty affects kids’ cognitive development far more than whether or not their mothers were on crack while pregnant. Think about that one for a bit.) Here’s a map of poverty and race in America.
• Boston’s Charles River is finally swimmable again – a concrete example of a data-driven policy success. (And it took nearly two decades to make it happen.)

ETC.

• Congratulations to Andrew Taylor on a full decade of his blog, the Artful Manager. That is quite a milestone in this space! Andrew had it going on pretty much light years before any of us.
• Ben Huh, the head of I Can Has Cheezburger (better known as the home of LOLcats), on “bad art”:
  

  [W]e are entering an age where there is very little in the way between an idea and an expression online, and that means more and more people are participating in ways of expressing themselves. What we do is encourage that artistic expression even if we don’t recognize their creations as “fine art.”

  Human beings have this incredible desire to connect and express themselves and that is what is filling up our time on the Internet, and I don’t think that is bad. It is actually a wonderful thing.

Government Policy and the Arts

• Gladstone Payton details the sequester’s effects on the governmental agencies that provide funding for the arts.
  
• Will New Jersey pass legislation requiring cultural and sporting events to only issue e-tickets? Many of the state’s smaller arts institutions hope not.
• There is a movement brewing to get arts education included in the federal education budget, headed by two Congressmen from Illinois and Oregon, respectively. Oregon has already pioneered this work by proposing funding in the state budget to “to support partnerships between schools, arts organizations and businesses to increase opportunities for students in grades 6–12 to connect with creative industries.”
• The City of New York is refusing to pay into the pension funds of a number of cultural institutions based in the city due to suspicion of fraud.

Market Research, Data Analysis, and Cultural Organizations

• Chad Bauman details his experience with data analysis and market research during a transitional period at the Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. The specific recommendations provided by detailed market research and analysis helped the theater through a risky period of transition.
• There have been a few articles recently about how much personal data is collected and put up for sale, often without our knowledge.
  
• Again, market research demonstrates that museums and cultural institutions should be careful about making assumptions about their audience, especially in the context of the major demographic changes in the United States.
  
• Adam Thurman’s TedXBroadway talk offers an interesting look at how to think about marketing in a more innovative way that can yield effective results.
• Western social science researchers are becoming more attuned to the fact that their cultural bias greatly skews the outcomes of their research.

Culture and Economic Development

• Measuring the impact of the arts or the contribution of the cultural sector to local and national economies has grown in popularity lately. UNESCO recently released a study which reviews the different methodologies various countries use to determine how much culture contributes to economic development.

Changes in New Models of Arts Funding

• The number of Kickstarter projects being started has slowed down, according to a report from NextMarket Insights. Is this a sign that artists and practitioners feel that the risk of crowdsourced funding is not as reliable as previously thought? Or are entrepreneurs being more selective about which projects they choose to fund in this manner? This week’s massive response to the Veronica Mars movie would suggest the latter. Conversely, in an interview with the NEA Arts magazine, the creators of Kickstarter discuss how the internet and start-ups like Kickstarter have changed the idea of audience and creative place.
• For some musicians, the dream of sustaining themselves by allowing fans to pay what they want for music has proved to be exactly that–a dream. The reason why may be not be that surprising (hint: it involves streaming services like Spotify).

Shake-ups in Philanthropy, Media

• The past month had some changes in management across the philanthropic and arts sectors: the Grey Lady has a new Arts & Culture editor with a long history of music journalism experience;  the president of the Ford Foundation, Luis Ubiñas, has announced he will step down in September; and the McKnight Foundation’s arts program officer Laura Zimmermann has also resigned.
• Pittsburgh, PA’s McCune Foundation plans to spend down approximately $343 million by 2029. The Foundation plans to do so in part by making “transformative multimillion-dollar grants that strengthen the broader community.”
  

Food for Thought

• The argument that music education can lead to other academic benefits for students is strongly challenged by journalist Lydia Denworth.
  
• The Wall Street Journal takes a long look at the burgeoning relationship between Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs and the art world. Previously separated by geography and ideology, it appears that the new tech elite are following the example of their Wall Street colleagues and are getting more involved in the art world by establishing connections to galleries and museums. Have readers in the San Francisco-area noticed a shift in the culture of your local cultural institutions due to the tech boom?
  

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• Three perspectives on the fiscal cliff deal: from Nonprofit Quarterly; from Americans for the Arts; from the Performing Arts Alliance.
• Musicians vs. airlines – and government security. One wonders if the more cello-friendly attitude musicians report encountering in days of yore has anything to do with declining rates of arts education?
• A window into the Turnaround Arts initiative, a high-stakes gambit to amp up arts programming in a few select low-performing schools around the country.
• Rocco offers Barry’s Blog some last words on his way out the door.
• Exotic dance = art? Judith Lynne Hanna makes the case (and part 2).

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Senior program officer Lynn Stern is leaving the Surdna Foundation’s Thriving Arts and Cultures program.
• The New York Times‘s veteran culture editor Jonathan Landman has accepted a buyout from the Gray Lady.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Mark Zuckerberg has committed half a billion dollars to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. This is interesting in that community foundations have been increasingly seen as a relic of past generations of donors, with new millionaires and billionaires choosing to distribute their philanthropy with the help of private wealth advisors instead. This gift, coming as it does from one of the scions of the technology world, could change that in a big way. Dan Lyons reluctantly gives Zuck the slow clap.
  
• Brooklyn’s new Barclays Center may be plenty controversial, tearing up as it did significant chunks of the neighborhood, but one thing that’s pretty great about it is that none of the concessions stands are operated by national chains. Instead, “you can get barbecue from Williamsburg’s Fatty ’Cue; Cuban sandwiches from Fort Greene’s Habana Outpost; pizza from Gravesend’s Spumoni Gardens; and, in an inspired old-school-new-school mashup, a confection called a concrete that combines Junior’s black-and-white cookies with ice cream from Blue Marble.” Here’s hoping other developers take the hint and start buying local.

IN THE FIELD

• After a period of impressive growth, Ovation, the only cable channel exclusively devoted to the arts (as traditionally defined), is being dropped by Time Warner Cable. The story is well worth a read, as it is an object lesson on what happens in the commercial marketplace for culture when profit maximization is the goal. Despite costing Time Warner a mere seven cents per subscriber, it (along with other low-rated networks) is being shed to help pay for major increases in the network’s most expensive channels, mostly sports-related. If you’re a Time Warner customer and would like to voice your concern, Ovation has set up a website for the purpose.
• Greg Sandow has been offering an interesting series on “mavericks”/bright spots in classical music, including this profile of the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra in Houston.
• More on the mysterious Woodruff Arts Center embezzlement fiasco.
• Crowdfunding French style means helping the Louvre acquire $3 million ivory statuettes.

BIG IDEAS

• Some end-of-year looking back and prognostication: Nonprofit Law Blog recounts the big nonprofit moments of 2012; Thomas Cott crowdsources arts predictions for 2013, and Barry Hessenius says nothin’ much will change this year. (I think Barry’s got it right.) Meanwhile, Tim Mikulski possibly reveals too much in recounting the top posts on AFTA’s ARTSblog in 2012.
  
• Smithsonian Magazine has a fascinating interview with Jaron Lanier, an internet pioneer and futurist who has now turned against many of the hacker-derived “information should be free” principles he once embraced. In explaining his change of heart, he cites the music industry as exhibit A of what went wrong.
  

  “I’d had a career as a professional musician and what I started to see is that once we made information free, it wasn’t that we consigned all the big stars to the bread lines.” (They still had mega-concert tour profits.) “Instead, it was the middle-class people who were consigned to the bread lines. And that was a very large body of people. And all of a sudden there was this weekly ritual, sometimes even daily: ‘Oh, we need to organize a benefit because so and so who’d been a manager of this big studio that closed its doors has cancer and doesn’t have insurance. We need to raise money so he can have his operation.’ “And I realized this was a hopeless, stupid design of society and that it was our fault. It really hit on a personal level—this isn’t working. And I think you can draw an analogy to what happened with communism, where at some point you just have to say there’s too much wrong with these experiments.”

  And then there’s this:

  “To my mind an overleveraged unsecured mortgage is exactly the same thing as a pirated music file. It’s somebody’s value that’s been copied many times to give benefit to some distant party. In the case of the music files, it’s to the benefit of an advertising spy like Google [which monetizes your search history], and in the case of the mortgage, it’s to the benefit of a fund manager somewhere. But in both cases all the risk and the cost is radiated out toward ordinary people and the middle classes—and even worse, the overall economy has shrunk in order to make a few people more.”

  Read the whole thing.

RESEARCH CORNER

• A new website called AidGrade might give Createquity fave GiveWell a run for its money. It takes a quantitative approach to aggregating and analyzing randomized controlled trials of various international aid program types (like microfinance, deworming, and bednets), and offers some pretty cool features.
• “It’s all driven by seventh-grade arithmetic and a whole bunch of data.” Rick Lester breaks down patron segmentation and analysis in this podcast from Technology in the Arts.
• Is creativity linked to dishonesty? Keith Sawyer analyzes a new study and finds that the answer may be yes.
• Fascinating interview with Jennifer C. Lena, a sociologist studying cultural economics and the spread of musical taste.
• This was just cool: 2012’s year in maps, from the Atlantic Cities.

ETC.

• Here’s some advice from a pro on live-tweeting events and conferences in an official capacity.
• “My five-year-old could have painted this” is so over. Now it’s, “my pet snake could have painted this!”

• Two bills under consideration by Congress would adjust the music licensing rates paid by internet streaming radio services like Rdio, MOG, and Spotify to match what cable and satellite providers pay.

IN THE FIELD

• Artists often neglect to realize that crowdfunding campaign money isn’t free – in addition to the fees you have to pay Kickstarter or one of its competitors like Indiegogo or RocketHub, the perks offered to donors often cost money as well. This handy web toy from Reuben Pressman helps you think through how much money you really need to raise if you’re thinking about starting a Kickstarter campaign (or really any crowdfunding operation).
• Still not seeing a ton of post-recession nonprofit mergers, but here’s one in New York City: the Urban Arts Partnership has acquired the operations of the Manhattan New Music Project, which had recently won several large Department of Education grants for arts residencies for special-needs students.
• Nina Simon takes on public voting for winners in art competitions, noting that only a small percentage of those eligible actually take the time to vote. She sees positive implications for engagement but possibly negative ones for artistic integrity; I see further evidence for the need for a hybrid approach.
• Typical: just as games (including video games) are being touted as the next big new thing in arts circles, in the rest of the world their business model is collapsing.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Barry Hessenius has a short interview with Regina Smith, Senior Program Officer for Arts and Culture at the Kresge Foundation and Board Chair of Grantmakers in the Arts.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Creative placemaking giant ArtPlace has been busy lately. Now accepting applications for its third round of grants (letters of inquiry are due tomorrow, November 1 UPDATE: deadline has been extended to Monday, November 5), the funding collaborative released a short thought piece detailing thirteen “principles for successful creative placemaking” in late summer.  And earlier this month, ArtPlace “soft launched” its vibrancy indicators, a research effort accompanying its two-rounds-and-counting of creative placemaking grants. While the indicators aren’t totally done yet – data points covering value creation and racial/economic diversity have yet to be fully defined or published, and a promised website showing vibrancy in various corners of the country has not yet materialized – these two documents provide the most detail available to date on ArtPlace’s efforts to understand and measure creative placemaking. Andrew Taylor and Linda Essig offer initial reviews, and stay tuned to this space for more in-depth analysis from a special guest.
• The fall issue of the Grantmakers in the Arts Reader has a very interesting feature taking a look back at historical research studies that, in the opinion of guest editor Alexis Frasz, deserve a second look. One of the studies in question is a re-release of 1988’s “Autopsy of an Orchestra: An Analysis of the Factors Contributing to the Bankruptcy of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra Association” by Melanie Beene, Patricia Mitchell, and Fenton Johnson, now available for the first time in digital format. Each study comes with two responses, one from an “established” and one from an “emerging” grantmaker. Other studies (re)considered include Gifts of the Muse (Createquity’s take here), “Art and Culture in Communities: Unpacking Participation,” “Crossover: How Artists Build Careers Across Commercial, Nonprofit and Community Work,” and “Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning.”
• WolfBrown researcher Jennifer Novak-Leonard declares crowdfunding the fourth mode of arts participation (the other three being arts creation/performance, arts engagement through media, and attendance at arts events). Quoth she: “I also suggest that this information [about the relationship between crowdfunding activity and other modes of arts participation] would be valuable to each of the platforms currently helping crowd-funding grow and thrive. This is a shameless pitch to these platforms to engage in dialogue with me about how to get this research effort underway… ideally in a timeframe that would inform and expand the conversations that will begin in 2013 as we begin to see the results from the 2012 [Survey of Public Participation in the Arts].”
• The Foundation Center’s march toward establishing a data standard for grants continues, with 15 foundations now having signed on to share their grants data publicly via the Glasspockets website. Among the arts supporters participating in the initiative are the Annenberg, Getty, Hewlett, MacArthur, and Rockefeller Foundations.
• The UK’s Mark Robinson offers his take on the NEA’s new “system map” and research agenda, “How Art Works.”
• Cool social network visualization here: the Seattle Band Map illustrates connections between musical acts via shared band members or project collaborations.
• Direct mail advertising campaigns are getting a bad rap, and research shows that they’re surprisingly effective at reaching consumers, says TRG’s Will Lester.
• William Baumol has a new book out summarizing his decades of thinking on cost disease. Joe Patti has more.
• “Back in 2001, when it started, economists would not have predicted Wikipedia’s success; nor can they really explain it now.“
• Great Q&A with Nate Silver (one of my blog heroes) about his upcoming book about forecasting. A couple of choice quotes:
  

  Q. When predictions involve human ‘systems’ & behavior (social, economic, political etc) that are by their very nature ‘adaptive’, how do you deal with the tricky “Heisenberg Principle” — like effect where the very act of predicting itself becomes a factor that adds information that alters the system and influences individual and/or collective behavior? –John

  A. This is a gigantic problem. In the book, we discuss how consumers, politicians, and businesses make plans based on economic forecasts that can have a host of problems. We also look at how this manifests in disease modeling. If you accurately forecast a very bad flu, it may cause people to stay home, which is good but cancels your forecast. But, the forecast served its purpose because it made people aware of their circumstances.

  and

  Q. What’s your assessment of economics as a discipline, judged in terms of its ability to make politically useful predictions? For example, can economists predict with any reliability what the economic impact of a tax cut or a government spending program will be? –Dan Schroeder

  A. The view of macroeconomic prediction in the book is pretty harsh. Economists have shown no real ability to predict a recession more than six months out. See the Wall Street Journal panel that predicted there would be no recession in December, 2007. It’s hard to measure the economy. Revisions can be as substantial as 5% in some quarters. Therefore, it is hard to predict and judge what the right policy is and what the implications of any policy are. So, we should be skeptical of anyone who predicts the impact of policy with a high degree of certainty. Humility is key.

• Really scary stuff about political meddling in editorial content at the Alabama public television network. Seems like one of the underreported stories of the year.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Congratulations to Randy Engstrom on his appointment as interim director of the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, replacing Vincent Kitch who left abruptly in August. Engstrom won the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader Award a few years back for his pioneering work with the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center in Seattle.

IN THE FIELD

• Victor Kuo offers a good overview of FSG Social Impact Advisors’ work in Cincinnati to develop shared outcomes across a range of funders and help build “backbone organizations” in the region.  Kuo will be presenting with ArtsWave’s Mary McCullough-Hudson and me at the Grantmakers in the Arts Conference later this month.
• Is crowdfunding a good fit for museums? The recent experience of the Hirshhorn and Contemporary Art Museum Houston suggest not. On the other hand, with the help of superstar web cartoonist The Oatmeal, a campaign to build a museum honoring the inventor Nikola Tesla has raised over $1.35 million on Indiegogo.
• What it’s like to (not) make a living as a poet.

THE MYSTIQUE OF CITIES

• Diana Lind on the revitalization of Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood: “It becomes harder to complain about gentrification when investment returns to the community the benefits of street lights, restored facades, new trees and eyes on the street.”
• Burning Man is not just an inspiration for artists – according to this article by burner Jessica Reeder in Utne Reader, it also could be a model for city planners. A well-written, thought-provoking piece.

THE (NOT SO?) DISMAL SCIENCE

• Interesting list of economists who support, or are practitioners of, the arts. Be sure to read the comments too.
• Check out this super fascinating interview with young economists about the future of their field. Some quotes of note:
  

  Although we have accumulated considerable evidence showing that people do not always behave rationally, we do not have as good a sense of how they actually do behave and what this means for policy.

  [W]e are far from a unified, versatile, believable alternative to the rational-actor model.  I am hopeful, though, that this might be overcome—in part because of progress in the sister disciplines (psychology and neuroscience) and basic modeling, and also because empirical anomalies are forcing the economic profession to be more open-minded.  Contributions by computer scientists and physicists will help inject new perspectives into economics.

  In his famous 1945 article, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” F. A. Hayek argued that despite their inequity and inefficiency, free markets were necessary in order to allow the incorporation of information held by dispersed individuals into social decisions.  No central planner could hope to collect and process all the information necessary for social decisions; only markets allowed and provided the incentives for disaggregated information processing.  Yet, increasingly, information technology is leading individuals to delegate their most “private” decisions to automated processing systems.

  Economics is in the midst of a massive and radical change.  It used to be that we had little data, and no computing power, so the role of economic theory was to “fill in” for where facts were missing.  Today, every interaction we have in our lives leaves behind a trail of data….The tools of economics will continue to evolve and become more empirical.  Economic theory will become a tool we use to structure our investigation of the data.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Cool visualization of the top-selling artworks from the past four years. I recommend checking out the “men / women” view.
• Lots of people are talking about Walk Score, but some users (including me) find its ratings a bit unreliable in practice. Urbanist Steve Mouzon thinks it’s because Walk Score misses the crucial point that some places are simply much more pleasant to look at than others, and that affects how far people are willing to walk. Two adjacent suburban strip malls might have lots of amenities clustered in one place, but no one wants to walk from one to the other, because walking through parking lots is soul-destroying. So Mouzon has developed the interesting concept of Walk Appeal as a potential next-generation index of walkability/livability.
• Amazon releases its book sales data in the context of an interesting political “heat map,” which suggests that GOP voters buy more politically tinged books, proportionally speaking, than their Democratic counterparts do.
• Michael Hickey is examining the details of nonprofit arts organization budgets in New York City in a multipart series for his new blog, Man About Town. In his first post, he finds that four institutions (which he doesn’t name, but I’m guessing are the Met Museum, the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall) received nearly half of all the dollars granted by the city to arts organizations in 2010. His next entry discusses the mysterious “Other Earned Revenue” budget category that accounts for more than 20% of earned income across all organizations. A third includes testimony to the NY City Council on the impact of the arts on small businesses and community vitality. And finally, Hickey makes a passionate argument for data aggregation tools for New York City (hmm, that sounds familiar). The Municipal Arts Society of New York (which absorbed the research functions of the Alliance for the Arts after the latter organization dissolved last year, and for which Hickey has done some consulting) has a new report out exploring some of these topics in more depth.

ETC.

• Cool story from Michael Kaiser about getting fathers involved in their kids’ ballet dancing.
• Great, hilarious taxonomy of jazz musician career archetypes. One of the categories is simply called “The Industry,” which includes this definition of the “arts administrator”: “This well-fed, parasitic middleman—typically a jealous amateur musician formally trained in non-profit business administration—may work either directly for the government or for a government-funded non- profit presenting agency. Either way, he or she enjoys a salary and accompanying benefits unthinkable for a working jazz artist.”

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• Bob Lynch reports out on the recent activities of the US Travel & Tourism Advisory Board.
• Americans for the Arts was out in force at the Republican national convention, organizing a panel with a Mesa mayor who skipped his own election to be there (he was running unopposed), former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, and, uh, “jazz musician” Bernie Williams.
• Future of Music Coalition legal intern Joseph Silver looks into how the first sale doctrine, which affords consumers the right to lend or resell copyrighted works they lawfully purchase, is adapting to the digital age.
• Shannon Litzenberger reflects on her two years as the first ever Metcalf Arts Policy Fellow and describes five models for fundraising and “friendraising” for the arts from the US, Canada, and Australia.
• The Economist hosted a weeklong debate on the topic of “Should government fund the arts?” Such debates pop up at least once a year (I participated in one in May), but this one is notable for its distinctively English flavor and also for a guest appearance by Adam Huttler on day 4.
• Jo Mangan has a substantive report from the first-ever International Culture Summit in Edinburgh.
• Did you know that the mayor of Reykjavik, Iceland is a comedian? As in, a real comedian, not a career politician who does some stand-up on the side?

LIFE EVENTS

• RIP Louise Nippert, heiress (by marriage) of Proctor & Gamble fortune who gave many millions of dollars to the arts in the Cincinnati region over her lifetime.
• Congratulations to Jennifer Ford Reedy, the new president of the Minnesota-based Bush Foundation (no relation to the two US Presidents). Reedy had been chief of staff and vice president of strategy for Minnesota Philanthropy Partners.
• …and to Carolyn Ramo, new executive director of Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue.
• Sadly, arts philanthropy has lost a rising young star in Deepa Gupta, who jumps from program officer for the MacArthur Foundation to director of education initiatives and strategy for the Boeing Company in Chicago. Great news for Deepa, though, and perhaps there will be opportunities for her to be a voice for the arts in her new role.

IN THE FIELD

• Boston’s public television station WGBH has acquired Public Radio International, which produces Ira Glass’s “This American Life” among other programs.
• It’s apparently contract renegotiation season, and the orchestra world is absolutely filled with stories of hardball negotiations between musicians and management. Witness: the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, previously lionized in these pixels for its innovative marketing, slapped musicians with a proposal for 57%-67% cuts (subsequently moderated); the Indianapolis Symphony proposes to cut wages by 45%; the Minnesota Orchestra might be headed for a lockout after offering musicians a 34% cut; San Antonio is on the brink; Philadelphia may be out of bankruptcy, but is not out of the woods. Meanwhile, perhaps inspired by their teacher compatriots, the Chicago Symphony musicians went on strike for three days even though they were offered an increase in base pay in their new contract, because it came with a corresponding increase in health care costs. The CSO players are among the best-compensated in the country. And even museum workers are getting into the act, with employees of San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum and Legion of Honor trotting out the ol’ inflatable rat in front of the grounds. Diane Ragsdale wants to know why can’t we all just get along? Well, I like this approach: the Atlanta Symphony musicians said sure, we’ll take a pay cut, as long as you administrators take one too. And here’s a novel idea: the Milwaukee Symphony just hired its principal trumpeter – and union representative – as its new chief executive.
• For-profit NYC rock venue takes to crowdfunding site, builds audience, avoids bankruptcy. Indie bookstore in Palo Alto converts to hybrid corporate form, raises nearly $1 million. (part 1; part 2; part 3) Are artists and nonprofits about to get a whole lot of fundraising competition from well-loved businesses that can no longer pay the bills?

THE DISMAL SCIENCE

• “Art is what is left over after you have automated everything you can.” Adam Huttler reflects.
• There is consensus among economists that the GOP is full of shit. Or is there?

RESEARCH CORNER

• Here’s some more reaction to the new research report on cultural facilities, “Set in Stone,” from Joe Patti (and again) and Janet Brown.
• Keith Sawyer has another (very lucid) take on last week’s NEA “How Art Works” convening and the accompanying system map.

ETC.

• Starting next year in Kansas City, Google will offer super high speed internet for about what you’re paying Time Warner or Comcast – and basic internet for free.
• I’m sometimes characterized as a “numbers guy” in the arts, but the reality is that I rarely find myself performing mathematical operations more complex than arithmetic. That being the case, I can get on board with this:
  

  ”Why do 50 percent (probably closer to 70%) of engineering and science practitioners seldom, if ever, use mathematics above the elementary algebra/trigonometry level in their practice?” If algebra is the limit for most engineering and science professionals, why does a typical citizen need algebra? As Hacker says, much more useful than algebra is quantitative literacy: being able to estimate, judge the reasonableness of numbers, and thereby detect bullshit. Our world offers plenty of practice.

  …and here’s more from Dr. Mahan, on long division:

  I’ll illustrate with an actual example of division. For my environmental-protection lawsuit, now in the Massachusetts Supreme Court, I needed to divide 142,500 by 4655. Here is the long-division calculation, my first use of the method in 30 years: [snip] The calculation took me a few minutes with paper and pencil, some of the time to reconstruct the algorithm details and to get the bookkeeping straight — even though I already knew the answer quite accurately. I knew the answer because I had already applied a more enjoyable method: skillful lying.