• 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.

• A Federal court has overturned the FCC’s “net neutrality” regulations, which have required internet service providers to treat all content equally. Legal details here; implications for artists and ways to get involved here. Meanwhile, AT&T has announced a plan to exempt selected content from wireless data caps; artists are expressing concern.
• How many foundations does it take to keep Detroit’s art in Detroit? Nine and counting: the ad-hoc alliance of funders has pledged to give $330m to reduce the city’s unfunded pension liability if the city’s creditors will agree to allow the Detroit Institute of Art to become a separate non-profit with its collection intact. In a nod to its origins, the Ford Foundation is the largest single contributor. It’s unclear whether this will fly with the creditors, so additional donors are being sought. (This could be part of an alarming trend: the Annenberg Foundation recently had to spend more than $500k to return sacred Hopi artifacts home.)
• Thinking of applying for nonprofit status? You may need to brace yourself for a longer wait time than usual. The recent federal budget agreement gives the IRS $526 million less than last year and mandates the agency spend more time reporting to Congress.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• With Bill de Blasio having taken office, speculation builds around the next NYC Commissioner for Cultural Affairs, with names such as actress Cynthia Nixon, former Alliance for the Arts head Randy Bourscheidt, and Tom Finklepearl being floated as potential candidates to run what may be the nation’s largest arts funder. Meanwhile, Michael Kaiser praises outgoing Commissioner Kate Levin – and says we need her at the NEA.
• Karen Hanan, Executive Director of Arts Northwest, is transitioning to lead the Washington State Arts Commission effective March 1.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• How are arts organizations handling ongoing, recession-related budget pressure? Some are experimenting with curtain times, guerilla art, and other innovations; others are embracing an organizational cultural of abundance. Still others ask, “what budget pressure?”
• On the heels of the NEA’s decision to support collective impact projects for arts education, Ken Thompson of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation observes that despite the flurry of interest from funders, they display an overall “lack of certainty about what collective impact is” and for the most part remain focused on the programmatic rather than systems level. One source of the problem? For all of funders’ efforts to get grantees to collaborate, they aren’t doing much of it themselves.

IN THE FIELD

• After winning hearts and minds across the nation with its making-it-big-in-Idaho story, come this July, the Trey McIntyre Project will disband as a dance company, focusing instead on “other enterprises involving dance, film production, and photography.” Despite TMP’s throwing in the towel, Sydney Skybetter sees a triumph and not a failure.
• In other dance news, choreographer Gina Gibney’s company will take over the former home of Dance New Amsterdam in downtown Manhattan, preserving the space as a hub for dancers from commercial and non-profit companies at a time when space is scarce.
• After a three year lockout (and, as we reported a few weeks ago, an attempt to form their own nonprofit), musicians from the Minnesota Orchestra will return to their orchestra hall next month thanks to a contract settlement that cuts their pay and benefits by roughly 15 percent.
• A painting by Glenn Brown replicating the cover of Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi novel “The Stars Like Dust” has sold for almost $6 million, causing many techies to suddenly find themselves in the unfamiliar position of advocating for copyright enforcement.
• Nonprofit theater makes way for film and television: Atlanta’s Woodruff Art Center has sold its three-stage 14th Street Playhouse to the Savannah College of Art and Design, which will use the space to house TV and film degree programs. Woodruff, in turn, donated $1.9 million of sale proceeds to the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta to establish a new grant fund to support local performing arts organizations.

BIG IDEAS

• We nearly missed this end-of-year roundup of “10 trends and 10 predictions” for the nonprofit sector from NonProfit Quarterly. You’ll recognize several of the items, like the emerging national security state and general government incompetence, from our list of the top 10 arts policy stories, but NPQ adds several others to the table (including an emerging progressive agenda at the local government level) and gives arts organizations a special shout-out – for their “struggl[ing]…business models.” Woohoo.
• Over at Barry’s Blog, social media guru and recent Arts Dinner-Vention participant Devon Smith delves into the potential roles of user experience designers, Google glass, and 3D printers in arts organizations, and offers some insights on the need for think tanks (including ours) in the arts.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The National Endowment for the Arts has posted a batch of working papers and reports resulting from the inaugural year of its Research: Art Works program. There’s a range of goodies to dig into, including a study of the racial and ethnic composition of arts boards, and another look at the arts as a driver of economic growth.
• The Brooklyn Commune Project is out with a new report “on the state of the performing arts from the perspective of artists.” Researched and written by volunteers, it includes an impressive and cogent summary of the economic challenges performing artists face, and thoughtful recommendations for the sector. At 50+ pages it’s not a short read, but a worthwhile one. (More from Andy Horwitz here.)
  
• Another report from the UK examines how artists can support the development of socially responsible, sustainable economies, and identifies three “vital practices” that allow them to do so: 1) critical reflection around how artists maintain their livelihoods, 2) opportunities for artists to “pool their risk” when embarking on new endeavors, and 3) opportunities for artists to access unused spaces in urban environments.
• Amid increased calls for states to track student access to arts education comes this welcome reminder that determining access is more complicated than counting which schools offer which courses.
• In the latest distant-reading study, analysts have crunched “various linguistic characteristics” of a slew of old books against their commercial and critical success, then applied the resulting algorithms to contemporary writers to find that Dan Brown, William Faulkner, and Philip Roth aren’t very successful. Points for counter-intuitive results, at least.