A heat map of museum activity in Asia would show the whole region aglow. At first glance, if you’ve been getting your story from mainstream American media, you might think Asian institutions are becoming just like us, or beating us at our own game: the National Museum of Cambodia recently put its collection online thanksRead More
Video-blogging from GIA: Day 3
Our third and final Grantmakers in the Arts conference video blog is our meatiest yet, covering curation as a moral imperative, rethinking the grant panel, expanding outside of our arts silos, and the nature of radical change. Oh, and there is some gratuitous giggling at the end. We’ve had a great time in Philadelphia thisRead More
Around the horn: Lois Lerner, we hardly knew ye edition
(This edition prepared by Createquity Writing Fellow Dan Thompson) ART AND THE GOVERNMENT Never afraid to speak his mind, Rocco Landesman shares a few more words about his experience as NEA head, this time with the Public Theater’s Public Forum Podcast. MUSICAL CHAIRS Ken Corbin, a 27-year IRS veteran, will take over as acting head of theRead More
Art and Democracy: The NEA, Kickstarter, and Creativity in America
(This article was first published on NewMusicBox on April 4, 2012. I’m grateful to Molly Sheridan, Kevin Clark, and Frank J. Oteri for their helpful comments on previous drafts.) Every once in a blue moon, an arts policy story breaks into the mainstream media—and as with most poorly understood subjects, it’s usually for some profoundlyRead More
On Michael Kaiser and Citizen Critics
Michael Kaiser is so hit or miss. Last week he published this truly unfortunate commentary on the slow death of professional arts criticism, and the rise of citizen critics as a result: [T]he growing influence of blogs, chat rooms and message boards devoted to the arts has given the local professional critic a slew of competitors….Many artsRead More
Around the horn: European debt edition
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT: DOMESTIC AFTA’s Narric Rome shares the latest on how arts education has fared in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (aka No Child Left Behind) reauthorization, which Jennifer Kessler reported on earlier this year. Mostly good news, from what it sounds like. Looks like net neutrality advocates dodged a bullet when the Senate rejected anRead 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
The Critical Supporting Role of Curation in Making Innovation Possible
(This post was originally published on Americans for the Arts’s ARTSblog as part of the “Emerging Ideas: Seeking and Celebrating the Spark of Innovation” salon going on this week. Read the other contributors’ posts here.) Through the work of the Emerging Ideas Committee this year, I’ve become acquainted with a wealth of new approaches toRead More
Emerging Ideas Blog Salon on ARTSblog
This week, a number of folks including yours truly will be participating in a salon discussion on Americans for the Arts’s blog, ARTSblog. The topic is “Emerging Ideas: Seeking and Celebrating the Spark of Innovation,” which came from a subcommittee of the AFTA Emerging Leaders Council that I’ve had the honor of co-chairing this yearRead More
TEDx Talk
“Never Heard of ’Em”: Why Citizen Curators (not Daddy’s Money) Should Decide Who Gets to Be an Artist.