crown – Photo by Flickr user Jason Train, Creative Commons license

Both the NEA and the NEH have new official leaders this month: Jane Chu, head of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, will be the 11^th chair of the NEA; William “Bro” Adams, formerly president of Colby College, will be the 10^th chair of the NEH. Respected internal acting chairs had been manning the ships since Rocco Landesman’s resignation from the NEA at the end of 2012 and Jim Leach’s resignation from the NEH in April 2013. The new appointees are just in time for the Congressional debate over the President’s budget, which requested essentially flat funding for the cultural agencies.

In her previous job, Chu oversaw the mid-recession capital campaign that built the Kauffman Center, a major performance venue that is now home to the Kansas City Ballet, Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. She has a background as a grantmaker, with a PhD in philanthropic studies and a previous post as the vice president of community investment for the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. A former member of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, she may also be well equipped to reach across the aisle – or at least to continue making the case for the economic impact of the arts.

Adams, a Vietnam veteran and intellectual historian, has led arts and humanities initiatives at several colleges, including the Great Works in Western Culture Program at Stanford and a major expansion of the Colby College Museum of Art. His long and varied resume of experience in academic administration marks a shift from Leach, who had been a Congressman for thirty years at the time of his appointment. We hope he will continue his tradition of open forums entitled, “Yo, Bro.”

Glimmers of hope in state and local arts budgets: For the first time in many years, public arts funding is increasing in notable areas of the country. The Florida state budget now officially includes $56.4 million for the state’s Division of Cultural Affairs, vaulting the Sunshine State past New York to take the prize of most generous state arts council overall – even if you exclude the $12.4 million in line-item funding from that total. Not to be outdone, New York City’s 2014-15 budget includes a $23 million boost for arts education, to be directed toward arts specialist positions, facilities, and partnerships with cultural institutions. On the opposite coast, the California Arts Council received a $5 million boost from the state, bringing its total appropriation to about $9 million. Paltry as it may seem compared to Florida’s investment and California’s size, that $5 million is the first significant increase the CAC has received since it was gutted by more than 90% more than a decade ago. Michigan allocated an additional $2 million for the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley gave arts advocates reason to cheer by refraining from vetoing funding for the South Carolina Arts Commission for the first time since 2011.

Debate over equity in arts funding adds to Bay Area arts turmoil: In what may be a harbinger of feuds in other parts of the country, arts advocates in the City by the Bay clashed with one another over funding for arts organizations serving communities of color. A recent report from the Budget Analyst’s Office claims the bulk of funding distributed by San Francisco’s Grants for the Arts/Hotel Tax Fund goes to organizations serving primarily white audiences. Amid calls to address the disparity by boosting funds to the Arts Commission’s Cultural Equity Grants, which target underserved and culturally specific communities, sharp words flew between sub-groups of arts advocates, some of whom felt the Arts Commission and Grants for the Arts were being pitted against each other. The budget for Cultural Equity Grants is now poised to receive $119,000 previously allocated to Grants for the Arts, with further action by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors expected in July. This is all on top of the recent shutdown of the San Jose Repertory Theater after 34 years and the dramatic shrinking of San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts announced last month.

The Detroit Institute of Arts continues on its escape path from the city’s bankruptcy proceedings: The Detroit City Council unanimously approved the museum’s plan to privatize as a charitable trust. The so-called “grand bargain” would ransom the DIA from the bargaining table in exchange for more than $800 million in public and private funds to be paid to the city’s pensioners over 20 years. Foundation money currently accounts for more than $350m of that, including major gifts from Ford ($125 million) and Kresge ($100 million). The museum itself is required to raise $100m of the money; they’re about 70% of the way there, thanks to recent donations from the Big Three automakers ($26 million total) and from Mellon and Getty ($10 million and $3 million, respectively). Even if the funds are raised, the deal must still win the approval of pensioners and the presiding judge – which is not guaranteed, as some creditors are calling for part or all of the museum’s collection to be in play to settle the city’s debts.

Creative hubs compete to offer tax credits for film and TV production: A large majority of states offer tax incentives for film and TV production, but the last several weeks have seen several governments advance the arms race. New Jersey’s state Senate passed a bill that would raise the annual cap for film tax credits from $10 million to $50 million; Austin’s City Council approved reimbursement of up to 0.75% of production companies’ wages; and, not to be outdone, the California state assembly passed a “Film and Television Jobs Retention and Promotion” Act that would add an undefined amount to the current $100 million annual kitty. In Pennsylvania, lawmakers may clarify their tax credit rules to better attract feature films and TV series specifically; the shopping network QVC has received more than $26 million under the program since 2008. Meanwhile, Boston is kickin’ it old-school: the state legislature is considering incentives to lure live theater headed to Broadway or Off-Broadway to Beantown and the rest of Massachusetts. As we noted in January, the ultimate benefit of incentives like these to citizens is not always clear.

MUSICAL CHAIRS/COOL JOBS

• After seven months, Los Angeles has a new arts czar: Danielle Brazell is Mayor Eric Garcetti’s nominee to head the Department of Cultural Affairs. Brazell, who has spent the last eight years corralling the region’s arts advocates as executive director of Arts for LA, will take up the reins in August.
• Los Angeles also added a high-profile art education leader to its ranks: Rory Pullens, head of Washington, DC’s Duke Ellington School for the Arts, will take over Los Angeles Unified School Districts’ arts education branch in July.
• After fourteen years as Deputy Director and Director of Programs, Grantmakers in the Arts’ Tommer Petersen will retire at the end of 2014. GIA has announced a national search for his replacement.
• Simon Greer has left the Nathan Cummings Foundation following a two-and-a-half year stint as president and CEO. Greer noted he and the Board were “increasingly unaligned around the hard choices that are inevitably part of implementation.”‘
• Sad news: Rebecca Blunk, former Executive Director of the New England Foundation for the Arts, passed away on June 22 at the age of 60.
• The San Francisco Arts Commission is hiring a Senior Program Officer for Community Investments. Deadline: 6/16. Salary: $73-89k.
• Artist Trust (based in Seattle) is looking for a new Executive Director. Deadline: 7/3. Salary: $85-95k.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• Three new studies examine the link between arts participation and individuals’ sense of life-satisfaction.
• A University of Messina psychologist has linked creative capacity to hormones. Examining a small sample of visual artists, she found evidence of high prenatal testosterone rates among both males and females. A 1999 study of musicians suggested a similar correlation.
• Music education has been linked to increases in mathematical ability – might it help students with reading as well? Unfortunately, it may not do as much for your kid’s skill with the oboe as Malcolm Gladwell believes: a new study finds a strong genetic component to musical talent.
• Last year we outlined best- and worst-case scenarios for the impact of MOOCs on public education. Now, research on the use of educational technology in affluent vs. non-affluent communities suggests the worst-case scenario may be winning, as children from mid- and high-income families benefit more from fancy gadgets and internet access than their low-income peers.
• The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies offers a snapshot of how its members handle fellowships for individual artists.
• Arts Midwest has released a report on its leadership and strategy development program, ArtsLab, including case studies of eight grantees.
• Researchers affiliated with the Cultural Policy Center are preparing a book on the impact of major cultural facilities projects and the mistakes that can drive unwise investment by cities. The book expands on the authors’ previously-released study.

In her previous job, Chu oversaw the mid-recession capital campaign that built the Kauffman Center, a major performance venue that is now home to the Kansas City Ballet, Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. She has a background as a grantmaker, with a PhD in philanthropic studies and a previous post as the vice president of community investment for the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. A former member of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, she may also be well equipped to reach across the aisle – or at least to continue making the case for the economic impact of the arts.

Adams, a Vietnam veteran and intellectual historian, has led arts and humanities initiatives at several colleges, including the Great Works in Western Culture Program at Stanford and a major expansion of the Colby College Museum of Art. His long and varied resume of experience in academic administration marks a shift from Leach, who had been a Congressman for thirty years at the time of his appointment. We hope he will continue his tradition of open forums entitled, “Yo, Bro.”

Glimmers of hope in state and local arts budgets: For the first time in many years, public arts funding is increasing in notable areas of the country. The Florida state budget now officially includes $56.4 million for the state’s Division of Cultural Affairs, vaulting the Sunshine State past New York to take the prize of most generous state arts council overall – even if you exclude the $12.4 million in line-item funding from that total. Not to be outdone, New York City’s 2014-15 budget includes a $23 million boost for arts education, to be directed toward arts specialist positions, facilities, and partnerships with cultural institutions. On the opposite coast, the California Arts Council received a $5 million boost from the state, bringing its total appropriation to about $9 million. Paltry as it may seem compared to Florida’s investment and California’s size, that $5 million is the first significant increase the CAC has received since it was gutted by more than 90% more than a decade ago. Michigan allocated an additional $2 million for the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley gave arts advocates reason to cheer by refraining from vetoing funding for the South Carolina Arts Commission for the first time since 2011.

Debate over equity in arts funding adds to Bay Area arts turmoil: In what may be a harbinger of feuds in other parts of the country, arts advocates in the City by the Bay clashed with one another over funding for arts organizations serving communities of color. A recent report from the Budget Analyst’s Office claims the bulk of funding distributed by San Francisco’s Grants for the Arts/Hotel Tax Fund goes to organizations serving primarily white audiences. Amid calls to address the disparity by boosting funds to the Arts Commission’s Cultural Equity Grants, which target underserved and culturally specific communities, sharp words flew between sub-groups of arts advocates, some of whom felt the Arts Commission and Grants for the Arts were being pitted against each other. The budget for Cultural Equity Grants is now poised to receive $119,000 previously allocated to Grants for the Arts, with further action by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors expected in July. This is all on top of the recent shutdown of the San Jose Repertory Theater after 34 years and the dramatic shrinking of San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts announced last month.

The Detroit Institute of Arts continues on its escape path from the city’s bankruptcy proceedings: The Detroit City Council unanimously approved the museum’s plan to privatize as a charitable trust. The so-called “grand bargain” would ransom the DIA from the bargaining table in exchange for more than $800m in public and private funds to be paid to the city’s pensioners over 20 years. Foundation money currently accounts for more than $350m of that, including major gifts from Ford ($125m) and Kresge ($100m). The museum itself is required to raise $100m of the money; they’re about 70% of the way there, thanks to recent donations from the Big Three automakers ($26m total) and from Mellon and Getty ($10m and $3m). Even if the funds are raised, the deal must still win the approval of pensioners and the presiding judge – which is not guaranteed, as some creditors are calling for part or all of the museum’s collection to be in play to settle the city’s debts.

Creative hubs compete to offer tax credits for film and TV production: A large majority of states offer tax incentives for film and TV production, but the last several weeks have seen several governments advance the arms race. New Jersey’s state Senate passed a bill that would raise the annual cap for film tax credits from $10m to $50m; Austin’s City Council approved reimbursement of up to 0.75% of production companies’ wages; and, not to be outdone, the California state assembly passed a “Film and Television Jobs Retention and Promotion” Act that would add an undefined amount to the current $100 annual kitty. In Pennsylvania, lawmakers may clarify their tax credit rules to better attract feature films and TV series specifically; the shopping network QVC has received more than $26m under the program since 2008. Meanwhile, Boston is kickin’ it old-school: the state legislature is considering incentives to lure live theater headed to Broadway or Off-Broadway to Beantown and the rest of Massachusetts. As we noted in January, the ultimate benefit of incentives like these to citizens is not always clear.

MUSICAL CHAIRS/COOL JOBS

• After seven months, Los Angeles has a new arts czar: Danielle Brazell is Mayor Eric Garcetti’s nominee to head the Department of Cultural Affairs. Brazell, who has spent the last eight years corralling the region’s arts advocates as executive director of Arts for LA, will take up the reins in August.
• Los Angeles also added a high-profile art education leader to its ranks: Rory Pullens, head of Washington, DC’s Duke Ellington School for the Arts, will take over Los Angeles Unified School Districts’ arts education branch in July.
• After fourteen years as Deputy Director and Director of Programs, Grantmakers in the Arts’ Tommer Petersen will retire at the end of 2014. GIA has announced a national search for his replacement.
• Simon Greer has left the Nathan Cummings Foundation following a two-and-a-half year stint as president and CEO. Greer noted he and the Board were “increasingly unaligned around the hard choices that are inevitably part of implementation.”‘
• Sad news: Rebecca Blunk, former Executive Director of the New England Foundation for the Arts, passed away on June 22 at the age of 60.
• The San Francisco Arts Commission is hiring a Senior Program Officer for Community Investments. Deadline: 6/16. Salary: $73-89k.
• Artist Trust (based in Seattle) is looking for a new Executive Director. Deadline: 7/3. Salary: $85-95k.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• Three new studies examine the link between arts participation and individuals’ sense of life-satisfaction.
• A University of Messina psychologist has linked creative capacity to hormones. Examining a small sample of visual artists, she found evidence of high prenatal testosterone rates among both males and females. A 1999 study of musicians suggested a similar correlation.
• Music education has been linked to increases in mathematical ability – might it help students with reading as well? Unfortunately, it may not do as much for your kid’s skill with the oboe as Malcolm Gladwell believes: a new study finds a strong genetic component to musical talent.
• Last year we outlined best- and worst-case scenarios for the impact of MOOCs on public education. Now, research on the use of educational technology in affluent vs. non-affluent communities suggests the worst-case scenario may be winning, as children from mid- and high-income families benefit more from fancy gadgets and internet access than their low-income peers.
• The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies offers a snapshot of how its members handle fellowships for individual artists.
• Arts Midwest has released a report on its leadership and strategy development program, ArtsLab, including case studies of eight grantees.
• Researchers affiliated with the Cultural Policy Center are preparing a book on the impact of major cultural facilities projects and the mistakes that can drive unwise investment by cities. The book expands on the authors’ previously-released study.

A group of onlookers tours the plant in a detail of Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry, the centerpiece of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The mural was completed during the city’s heyday as auto capital of the world. Photo credit: grifray

Since last May, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) has been at the center of bankruptcy negotiations between the beleaguered City of Detroit and a myriad of creditors and pensioners to whom a staggering $18 billion is owed. When Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s state-appointed emergency manager, included the museum’s art collection among city assets available for possible liquidation, the suggestion that the artwork might be sold to satisfy creditors sent shudders through the art community. Could a world-class art museum, part of America’s cultural foundation, be raided, its cultural treasures sold off to pay the debts of its city? And what would that mean for other art institutions around the country?

The story has captured the attention of the powerful and common alike, with many weighing in on the whether the collection should or would be sold. But even before Emergency Manager Orr brought in Christie’s auction house in August to evaluate the art, a group of influential and deep-pocketed DIA supporters had begun to assemble. Federal bankruptcy mediator U.S. Chief District Judge Gerald Rosen gathered a group of national and local charitable foundations in November to brainstorm and discuss “out of the box” ways to prevent the DIA from being gutted, while still protecting city pensions. The result of Judge Rosen’s roundtable has been nothing short of extraordinary and could have long-term implications for the role of charitable foundations in the future.

Last month, a group of ten foundations with close ties to the city joined ranks to develop an unprecedented rescue plan. Led largely by the Ford Foundation, the consortium has pledged to give $370 million to the city pensioners’ fund under the condition that ownership of the DIA’s collection is transferred to a separate nonprofit organization, thus protecting it from the city’s creditors. With the foundations’ commitment in place, the State of Michigan has also stepped in with its own pledge of $350 million, pending approval by the Legislature. Governor Rick Snyder described the offer as a “settlement” rather than a city bailout and it comes with another caveat: pensioners must drop all lawsuits against the city.

The amount of money flowing in to save the DIA, largely from sources outside of Detroit, is breathtaking in its grandeur. The Ford Foundation’s pledge of $125 million is more than a quarter of its entire grantmaking budget in fiscal year 2012. In second and third place are the Kresge Foundation with $100 million (a whopping 70% of its 2012 giving) and the Kellogg Foundation at $40 million. These developments make for quite a story and may provide comfort to those who feel the 139-year old art museum should be left intact. And yet this sudden infusion of cash raises a number of important questions for the arts field and for the institution of private philanthropy alike.

For example, is the foundations’ commitment to the DIA a distraction from other, possibly better giving opportunities, whether in Detroit or elsewhere? Mariam Noland, president of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan (CFSEM), reported receiving concerned calls from cultural organizations worried their usual grant funds would be diminished as a result of the foundation’s pledge. However, CFSEM and the other foundations claim they are working to ensure this does not happen, either by stretching their contribution payments out over 10-20 years or tapping into their own endowments – another questionable move. Several of the foundation leaders involved – Noland, the Kresge Foundation’s Rip Rapson, the Knight Foundation’s Alberto Ibargüen, and the Ford Foundation’s Darren Walker – wrote an op-ed for the Chronicle of Philanthropy defending their decision, writing, ”our support…aims to accomplish something even larger: helping a great city get back on its feet quickly and on course toward a better future.”

So just how far will the coalition go to protect the DIA from any long-term financial burden Orr tries to impose on it? Historically, charitable foundations like to avoid quick-fix approaches when it comes to supporting public institutions, favoring innovative policy reforms that promote social change instead. However, here, they are bargaining with Detroit’s pensioners, taking a risk, and potentially opening themselves up to a future of wheel-and-deal funding schemes. Indeed, some in the grantmaking world are already voicing concerns about the precedence of conditional giving being set and whether it “amounts to philanthropic coercion rather than generosity.”

Between the foundations and the state, the total amount put forward now surpasses the $500 million contribution requirement Emergency Manager Orr had originally placed on the DIA. And the museum just recently agreed to raise an additional $100 million itself over the next 20 years, bringing the grand total to $820 million – all of which would be disbursed to the pensioners’ fund. If all parties accept this amount and Orr’s plan, then the City of Detroit would immediately transfer ownership of the entire art collection and building to the DIA, the private non-profit that has actively managed it for decades, thereby bringing a swift end to an at times harrowing situation.

But how much danger was the DIA ever in, really? All of the drama of the past year notwithstanding, the DIA hasn’t had any ultimatums placed upon its collection by Judge Steven W. Rhodes, who is presiding over Detroit’s case in federal bankruptcy court. In December, Christie’s auction house completed its appraisal of roughly 2,800 artworks – comprised solely of pieces purchased with city funds so as to avoid any legal action by donors and their heirs. Christie’s estimated the art to be worth between $452-866 million, with a couple of standout pieces valued at nearly $150 million apiece. The assessment was not music to the ears of creditors, who—their hopes no doubt bolstered by multi-billion dollar speculations made in the media early on—accused the city and auction house of purposefully undervaluing the artwork. The consortium of European banks, bond insurers, Detroit retirees, and labor unions requested that an independent committee conduct a separate review of the museum’s full collection – approximately 66,000 pieces, 95% of which were donated or purchased with private funds. Judge Rhodes has since refused the creditors’ request, ruling that he doesn’t have the authority to permit an independent evaluation of the DIA’s entire holdings.

Rhodes has furthermore said he is seriously considering the formal opinion issued by Attorney General Schuette back in June, which declared that the DIA’s collection, though technically owned by the city, is held in a “public trust” and therefore off limits to creditors. If he does agree that the collection is held in a public trust, it would mean the artwork is legally off the negotiation table.

A couple poses in front of the south wall of Detroit Industry. To the left, images of fertility preside over the larger frescos depicting the auto assembly line. Photo credit: Lars K. Christensen

In the final days of 2013, I took a quick trip to Detroit to visit the museum in question, a reconnaissance mission to experience the day-to-day reality of the institution under threat. It was heartening to see that the DIA was absolutely packed with people on the Friday after Christmas. The clerk at the ticket desk informed me that there would be a live concert that evening in Rivera Court, the large atrium home to Diego Rivera’s masterful work Detroit Industry. Executed from 1932-33, the mural was gifted to the DIA by Edsel B. Ford himself. Unanticipated by Ford, however, was the artwork’s socialist overtones, which caused quite a stir at the time it was created. Sited right at the core of the sprawling museum, the mural depicts the auto industry and its workers as the “indigenous culture of Detroit,” using the literal representation of manufacturing to achieve metaphors of power and growth. From floor to ceiling, assembly line workers dominate the scene in numbers and fortitude, while images of fertility—fruits, grain, mothers, and infants—preside overhead. Standing there dwarfed and surrounded by its twenty-seven boldly painted fresco panels, Detroit Industry makes palpable the heart and soul of the once-thriving metropolis whose influence has extended far beyond its city limits.

Despite the very real concerns that have arisen over the philanthropic “rescue mission” to save the DIA, private donations, both large and small, continue to come in from around the world. It seems that, through its ordeal, the DIA has unexpectedly become the public face of the city of Detroit. Its recent plight is a symbol of the gradual destruction of a cultural and economic legacy rooted in the early years of the 20th century, the so-called American century. As the city painfully negotiates the resolution of the narrative at play in Rivera’s masterpiece, the rest of us are provided with an opportunity to reflect on that legacy – not just the art collection, but how an important American city came to be. It seems that by preserving one, the hope is we save the other.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• The value of the creative sector to the U.S. economy? Half a trillion dollars. The value of the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s official inclusion of our sector in its GDP analysis? Priceless. Responses from the field have been mixed. Some are celebrating how full the glass is: the creative sector, led by Hollywood, advertising, and television, accounted for 3.2% of the economy – more than tourism (2.8%) – and employed 2 million workers. Others have focused on the top half of the glass: the recession hit our sector especially hard and to lasting effect, and the bulk of the economic value is from advertising, with relatively little from “independent artists and performing arts.” Still others question the value of glasses entirely: embracing economic measurements of the arts could undermine aesthetic arguments for their necessity – though Createquity’s Jena Lee recently suggested otherwise.
• In the latest installment of the Detroit Institute of Arts saga, museum leaders have joined closed-door negotiations with several of the nation’s largest private foundations, both local and national, to protect the beleaguered institution by raising a whopping $500 million for the city’s underwater municipal pensions. Sources say they could be close to a deal. Meanwhile, efforts to raise private funds to spin the museum off from the city got a boost from biotech millionaire Paul Schaap, who has pledged $5m.
• The Marion Ewing Kauffman Foundation has released a policy paper detailing several strategies for mayors and local government to support cultural entrepreneurship.
• A new report published by old friend Shannon Litzenberger intends to “ignite a conversation about addressing the existing logjam in arts funding in [Canada].”
• Arts Council England wants the the field to “transform itself into a low-carbon, sustainable and resilient sector” — so much so that it requires environmental reporting of its grantees, and is out with a summary of the first year of that effort.
• The Seattle Department of Cultural Affairs is offering $10,000 for an action plan on a Cultural Development Certification — intended to be the arts’ parallel to the LEED designation. Proposals are due January 22.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Deborah Rutter, President of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, will succeed Michael Kaiser as President of the Kennedy Center in DC, with potential implications for classical music programming.  This leaves a number of important vacancies at the capital’s cultural institutions, including the Smithsonian, the Hirshhorn, the Corcoran, the board of the Kennedy Center itself – oh, right, and both the NEH and NEA.
• Detroit’s Michigan Opera Theatre has found its first President and CEO: Wayne S. Brown, current director of music and opera at the National Endowment for the Arts. David DiChiera, the Theatre’s founder and general manager, will transition to serving as artistic director beginning January 1. Brown’s departure continues a recent exodus of top NEA officials, including the directors of Theatre & Musical Theatre, Literature, and Public Affairs/Chief of Staff.
• John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design and prominent advocate of “STEAM” education, is leaving his post at the end of the semester to join a venture capitol firm and consult for eBay – right as eBay announces plans to follow Amazon’s footsteps and launch an online art marketplace.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Debate over effective altruism is raging on, and not just in the arts. Charity Navigator President and CEO Ken Berger slams it as “defective altruism” in a blog post for Stanford Social Innovation Review, and 80,000 Hours co-founder William MacAskill counters. Lest the bickering ruin your holiday spirit, GiveWell released its top charities of 2013 (no, the arts are not included) along with a thoughtful set of notes from staff members on where (and why) they each plan on giving this year.
• The Hewlett Foundation has announced a new grantmaking priority to promote an American governing process that is more productive, more civil, and less polarized.
• A new Center for Effective Philanthropy survey suggests that most foundation CEOs are skeptical that real progress has been made against the major problems they are tackling, but that their own organizations have made substantial contributions. Lucy Bernholz points out that they also lack confidence in their own measures of success and wonders whether boards can effectively hold them accountable.
• Speaking of Bernholz, her annual list of philanthropy’s top buzzwords is out for 2013 and might just be the perfect gift for the “makers” and “solutionists” on your list this holiday season.

IN THE FIELD

• Louisiana ArtWorks, a lavish $25 million art studio construction-project-turned-fiasco that has stood nearly empty since its completion, is up for auction. On top of the $600,000 yearly mortgage left to New Orleans taxpayers, more than $15 million state and federal funds had been sunk into the project.
• A new 300-student charter school for the arts is set to open on the site of a former department store in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
• In the rare positive story from Motown, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is back in the black after a lengthy and debilitating musicians’ strike three years ago. Meanwhile, musicians from the Minnesota Orchestra, having spent the last year locked out in a labor dispute, are going rogue by applying for a 501(c)(3) and organizing their own concert series.
• Philadelphia has been adjusting to the shifting priorities of three major local arts funders, and Peter Dobrin details the ramifications and changes in a three-part series.
• The History Colorado Center takes “visitor tracking” to a new level with a “business intelligence” system that integrates and mines data from all areas of the museum, including “who is visiting, whether they’re members or donors, whether they’re coming as families or in adult pairs or alone, and from where… Whether those visitors eat in the café or shop in the store, what they ate and what they bought.” Not creepy at all…

BIG IDEAS

• With the National Endowment for the Arts gearing up to announce new collective impact funding for arts education next month, now’s a great time to brush up on what collective impact is – and while you’re at it, dig into this new series on measuring backbone organizations’ success.
• Beth Kanter unpacks the developmental evaluation strand of last month’s Next Generation Evaluation conference and offers some insight on its relationship to social change initiative and nonprofit practice.
• The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is partnering with Google, Accenture and other for-profit companies to launch an art and technology lab that will “will award grants and make museum facilities available to help artists explore new boundaries in art and science.” Elsewhere in LA, though, the public school system’s efforts to equip classrooms with iPads seem to be suffering from One-Laptop-Per-Child-like problems, which one pundit blames on “innovation fatigue.”
• Real-estate developers are increasingly cultivating artists and designers as tenants in low-rent neighborhoods who will help transform the area, raise the rents, and eventually move out. One developer calls the process “gentlefication.”
• Now this is a different kind of conference report: Arts & Ideas has created a gorgeous interactive document of The Art of Placemaking conference hosted last month in Providence, RI by the folks at WaterFire.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Dallas’s National Center for Arts Research has released its inaugural report on the health of America’s arts and cultural organizations. The report includes the average performance of organizations in eight indices and an examination of what drives organizations, and introduces the concept of high performance and intangible performance indicators (KIPIs). NCAR is working with IBM to create a online dashboard for organizations to access their own KIPIs.
• Roland Kushner, co-author of Americans for the Arts’ National Arts Index, looks at the relationship between private sector giving and arts index scores between 2000 and 2011. He finds a correlation beyond charitable contributions to the arts increasing the vitality of the sector, arguing that “charitable giving and engagement in the arts may emanate from the same instincts, values, and attitudes.”
• Americans love libraries! Nearly half of adults have visited a library in the past year, and fully 90% believe their community would be adversely affected if the local branch closed, according to a Pew study.
• A new study from Germany suggests that the relationship between studying music and improved academic performance may be causal: when researchers controlled for differences such as parental background, student musicians still out-performed their peers on cognitive tests – especially verbal ones.
• Some interesting findings have been reported by psychologists studying the effects of first-person shooter games. They surmise that players who enjoy these immersive and violent games are satisfying an innate desire for control and split-second decision making that is rarely achievable in today’s society. Video games also got some support from a new study out of Israel’s Center for Educational Technology.
• Korea-Finland Connection, a collaboration between Korean Arts Management and Dance Info Finland, has published an evaluation of its three-year program intended to create long-term  relationships between Finnish and Korean artists and organizations in the performing arts.
• Half of Equity members in Britain earned less than $8,200 in the last year, according to the union’s latest survey.  Additionally, “95.8% said they had never been pressurised to appear nude at a casting.”