“Masterpiece,” by Roy Lichtenstein (1962). Photo by Lindsey Davis, via Creative Commons

Art collector and patron Agnes Gund has sold the 1962 artwork “Masterpiece” by Roy Lichtenstein for $150 million – the bulk of which she’ll use to fund the creation of the Art for Justice Fund. In addition to supporting organizations working toward criminal justice reform, the Art for Justice Fund will finance a select number of artistic initiatives aimed at addressing mass incarceration. Currently president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, Gund will work with the Ford Foundation – whom she’s partnered with to administer the fund – in hopes of encouraging other art collectors to follow her lead and doubling her $100 million seed money over the next five years. The peer pressure appears to be working: at least four additional “founding donors” are selling some of their holdings to contribute to the fund. Among them is Laurie M. Tisch, a chairwoman of the board at the Whitney Museum, who donated $500,000 to the Fund with proceeds from a Max Weber painting.

Snapchat gets in the original content game. The media giant Time Warner recently signed a $100 million deal to produce content exclusively for the social media platform Snapchat. Running no more than seven minutes, the made-for-Snapchat mini-shows are designed to assure Snapchat’s advertisers that its users are spending plenty of time engaging with the platform, while the benefit to Time Warner is unfettered access to market its other holdings – including HBO, Turner and Warner Bros. – on the app. Time Warner’s $85 billion deal with AT&T last year is expected to go through by the end of 2017 (despite President Trump’s intentions of blocking the deal), meaning Snapchat is potentially getting in bed with the largest media company in the nation. The deal is yet another example of service providers following Netflix and Hulu’s leads by developing original content for streaming (see also: Apple, The Onion, Sony and Buzzfeed).

Shakespearean depiction of Trump prompts outrage and debate. A recent performance of Julius Caesar depicting the authoritarian Roman dictator in the image of Donald Trump has sparked a wide-ranging debate about free speech in the arts. The show was staged in Central Park by New York’s Public Theater, whose artistic director Oskar Eustis, among others, defended the provocative production as a commentary on current events. Despite theater critics’ appeals to free speech rights and reminders that the play does not condone assassination, right-wing activists have vehemently opposed the Caesar/Trump parallel, rushing the stage at a performance, threatening other theater companies performing Shakespeare (even ones that had nothing to do with Julius Caesar), and speaking out online in conservative-leaning media. In the wake of the controversy, corporate sponsors Bank of America and Delta Airlines withdrew their funding of the production (though a 2012 production of Julius Caesar funded by Delta in Minneapolis depicting a likeness of president Obama as Caesar got to keep the check), while the City of New York and the lead sponsor Jerome L. Greene Foundation have stood by Eustis and the Public Theater.

Malaysian film company in hot water over money laundering scandal. Associates of the film production company Red Granite are under investigation for embezzlement after allegedly diverting $4.5 billion from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) fund. Red Granite was co-founded by Jho Low and Riza Aziz, who is stepson of Malaysia’s prime minister Najib Razak. Razak established the 1MDB fund to promote economic development in the country, and several top officials in the government are accused of participating in the scheme by stashing its money in offshore accounts. As part of the investigation, the U.S. Justice Department is seeking the rights to two films funded by Red Granite: Dumb and Dumber To and Daddy’s Home. Additionally, Leonardo DiCaprio has agreed to hand over three pieces from his art collection (including a $3.2 million Picasso) that are tied up in the scandal, which had been gifted to DiCaprio after the production of another Red Granite film, The Wolf of Wall Street. DiCaprio had intended to auction the artwork for his charity, but instead they are now en route to the FBI, which is attempting to recover an additional $100 million worth of art thought to be acquired by Jho Low with 1MDB money. Works by Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, Yves Klein and Roy Lichtenstein are among those on the list.

Facebook hate speech rules are under scrutiny. Facebook’s stringent policies regarding images – specifically its hard line against nudity – have long been a topic of conversation in arts circles, with artists and journalists whose work depicts nakedness or content otherwise deemed offensive by Facebook unable to present their work on the world’s biggest social media platform. Now, a ProPublica investigation of internal documents at Facebook is shedding new light on the company’s hate speech policies. Giving equal weight to all races, ethnicities and religions in defining what constitutes “protected groups,” Facebook’s policy is an attempt to create a more unilateral approach that might be perceived as fair across the world, rather than guided by the norms around free speech and political expression prevalent in the United States. But these rules can counterintuitively favor white men (because race and gender are both “protected” categories) over marginalized groups who may be more likely to experience threatening or inflammatory speech online. To make matters worse, content is reviewed by actual people, and therefore subject to human biases; many exceptions to the rules – such as when then-candidate Donald Trump got a pass on exclusionary statements about Muslims, a violation of Facebook’s written policy, at the behest of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg – have been granted. Another concern: Facebook’s lack of transparency about what is and isn’t allowed on the platform presents potential barriers to artists, who rely on free access to the network’s two billion users as one of their most effective tools for promoting and selling their work.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS:

• Upheaval continues in the print publication world: after a late-May announcement that the staff and board of the arts-focused publication Brooklyn Rail would be dissolved, longtime publisher/editor Phong Bui says it will relaunch with a bigger staff and no planned break in the publication schedule. Meanwhile, publisher Louise Blouin – whose publications include Art + Auction and Modern Painters – has terminated all of her full-time employees, giving them the option to re-apply as contract freelancers.
• Christine Morse has announced her retirement as CEO of Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies. She will stay on as the organization’s board chair and will be CEO Emeritus through January 2018. The foundation’s current president, Paul Busch, assumed the CEO role on July 1.
• The president of New York’s F.B. Heron Foundation, Clara Miller, will step down in December.
• Cleveland-area arts leader Tom Schorgl recently announced he will retire from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture ‏at the end of the year.
• DataArts president and CEO Beth Tuttle announced she will step down from her role October 6 to become president of the American Horticultural Society.
• The executive director of Alternate ROOTS, Carlton Turner, is likewise stepping down to lead the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production.
• The Montana Arts Council announced Tatiana Gant as its new executive director. Gant was previously executive director for the Illinois Arts Council.
• Kansas City’s Mid-America Arts Alliance has secured its interim director Todd Stein for the permanent position. Stein has filled the director role since Mary Kennedy’s retirement in August 2016.
• SueEllen Kroll has been named the Barr Foundation’s program officer for arts & creativity.
• Vanessa Camarena-Arredondo joins the Oakland-based Akonadi Foundation as its new program officer.
• Louise Bernard, former director of exhibitions at the New York Public Library, has been named museum director for Chicago’s future Obama Presidential Center.
• American University is seeking Arts Management faculty for the 2017-18 academic year.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE:

• The latest Arts & Economic Prosperity report is out from Americans for the Arts, estimating that arts-based nonprofits generated $166.3 billion in spending in 2015. (Read Createquity’s analysis of an earlier edition of Arts & Economic Prosperity here.)
• A new Creative Artists Agency study indicates diverse casts are good for box office revenues.
• According to a report by Themed Entertainment Association and an engineering firm called AECOM, which ranks public attractions worldwide, the National Museum of China in Beijing was the world’s most-visited museum in 2016.
• Neighborhood walkability is a factor contributing to the success of large arts organizations, according to a study published in Economic Development Quarterly. Renting gallery spaces in affordable neighborhoods widens the gap between smaller, independent organizations due to a lack of foot traffic, the study says.
• While New York and Los Angeles remain arts meccas in the U.S., arts and culture sectors in southern and western states are growing at a faster pace. A report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and Grantmakers for Southern Progress looks at opportunities in which philanthropic investments may be used to preserve local culture and build wealth in marginalized communities.
• A Pew report says kids are going to the library, with millennials leading the way.
• Research conducted at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum analyzes differences in how adults and children view works of art.
• Studies in California and New York City have found focusing on academics in pre-K yields stronger students overall, with no significant social or emotional consequences. In response, New York Times writer Dana Goldstein argues that play-based learning enhances, rather than competes with, academic rigor.
• An analysis published by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences indicates a significant drop in humanities majors at four-year colleges, while the number of liberal arts degrees at community colleges has increased. Data from the United Kingdom’s Department of Education also indicates that graduates obtaining arts degrees go on to earn the least of any other major.
• High degrees of “donor governance,” in which donors have control over how their money is used, has been shown to shift organizational focus more toward programming, and may strengthen and stabilize nonprofit arts organizations.
• Charitable donations in the U.S. grew to $390 billion in 2016, according to a report by Giving USA. Data analysis showed the third straight year of record-breaking growth, though the 1.4% increase in giving last year reflects a slight slowdown of the recent upward trend.
• The 2016 Columbus Survey profiling more than 250 community foundations is now available as part of a new interactive platform.
• The Center for Effective Philanthropy surveyed 150 program officers at foundations to gain better understanding of their critical role in foundations and non-profits.
• A study conducted by the Council on Foundations found persistent gaps in age, gender, race, and ethnicity throughout the philanthropic sector. And a report from the Building Movement Project and the Annie E. Casey Foundation indicates that people of color aspiring to jobs in nonprofit leadership face unique stressors and challenges, including being held to higher standards than white candidates with similar education.
• A study conducted by CUNY students taking an “Arts in NYC” course claims that 80.5% of artists represented by NYC’s top 45 galleries are white. Meanwhile, the Actors’ Equity Association reports that women and minority actors and stage managers have fewer available jobs and receive lower pay than their white male counterparts.
• A new Association of Art Museum Directors survey breaks down average salaries among museum employees, ranging from museum directors to security and volunteer management.
• According to paper published in the journal Human Relations, dual leadership can alleviate tension between artistic and economic goals in arts organizations, but the complexities that come with multiple directors can trickle down the organizational hierarchy.
• A report commissioned by the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre blames a lack of professionalism among theater workers on poor work environments, low pay, and a “damaging culture of overwork.”
• Media strategist Tracey Friesen’s new book, Story Money Impact, compiles case studies and interview data to suggest best practices for using media to effect change and impact in the philanthropic sector.
• IFACCA wraps up the 2016 World Summit on Arts and Culture with a revised discussion paper on 21st century cultural leadership.
• A new report out of the UK, “Towards Cultural Democracy,” strategizes how to frame policies promoting increased public engagement with arts and culture.
• Researchers publishing in Cultural Trends caution against Arts Council England’s use of quality metrics in the granting processes.
• Netflix and Amazon are predicted to outperform U.K. cinema box offices by 2020, says the consulting firm PwC.
• A study analyzing the “long-tail effect” in smaller publishing companies indicates that e-commerce could be a beneficial way to extend the shelf-life of niche products.
• A report of a new study by Robert W. Crandall argues that net neutrality “isn’t as big a deal as you might think.” The claim is based on the finding that recent public-utility regulations on broadband services had effects that were short-lived and/or minimal.

“I am the walrus” by Steven Coutts | via Flickr (Creative Commons)

A controversial editorial published by the Writers’ Union of Canada’s magazine Write has resulted in resignations from the author of the piece, Hal Niedzviecki, and an editorial board member, as well as a formal apology from the union and statement from its Equity Task Force. Niedzviecki had made the interesting choice to publish an editorial brushing off the harms of cultural appropriation and calling for a tongue-in-cheek “Appropriation Prize” as the introduction to an issue of the magazine dedicated to the voices of indigenous Canadian writers. Niedzviecki’s prize would have encouraged writers to reach outside their personal experiences to “imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities.” The backlash was swift, but many top members of Canada’s literary community defended Niedzviecki’s statements on Twitter – which in turn led to editor-in-chief Jonathan Kay’s resignation from The Walrus, a highly esteemed literary magazine. Debates about cultural appropriation and representation in the arts world appear to be only intensifying in recent months. Also in May, the Walker Arts Center in Minnesota decided to work with Native American elders to dismantle a sculpture by a white artist evoking the hanging of 38 Dakota men in 1862 that it had started to install in a public park, following a public outcry that echoed the strong opposition to a white artist’s painting of Emmett Till’s casket showcased at the Whitney Biennial earlier this year. Meanwhile in the theater world, the Edward Albee estate’s decision to block the casting of a black actor in a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is likewise stirring widespread contention.

Terrorists make arts and culture targets the new normal. The May 22 suicide bombing killing 22 and injuring more than 100 people outside an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England signaled a direct attack on young people enjoying a cultural event and engaging in leisure activities. On the heels of the one-year anniversary of the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, the Manchester atrocity came just days before terrorist attacks – with responsibility claimed by ISIS – on an ice cream parlor in Baghdad and unassuming pedestrians on London Bridge. The attacks point to a larger trend: the desire to bring chaos to cultural products and turn places of joy into tragedy. It remains to be seen whether and how heightened security measures at live events and heritage sites will alter the ways in which people engage in arts and culture.

Federal arts agencies get a boost – for now. Despite the potential threats of federal slashing of agencies such as the National Endowments for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Corporation for Public Broadcasting that made headlines in January, February, and March, arts organizations can breathe a small sigh of relief: the final federal spending bill for fiscal year 2017 spares the CPB and actually increases the budgets for both the NEA and NEH through September. The Trump administration had sought to cut the current year’s budget as well as next year’s, but those recommendations met opposition on both sides of the aisle, with several key Republicans among those fighting to maintain arts funding. Nevertheless, with President Trump’s proposed 2018 budget officially released this month. Entitled “A New Foundation for American Greatness,” the budget, if enacted, would take deep bites out of funding for the arts, education, scientific exploration and scholarly research – it remains to be seen whether the future will be sunny on Sesame Street.

Seattle’s art tax goes to the ballot box. King County residents will vote in August on whether or not to raise sales taxes in an initiative intended to fund more than 300 arts organizations across the region. Modeled after the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District in metropolitan Denver and other tax initiatives in places like St. Louis and Cleveland, the bill imposes an additional 0.1% sales tax hike, yielding approximately $67 million a year toward Seattle-based arts and culture. Amid concerns that the arts would get a bump over critical issues such as homelessness, poverty, and the criminal justice system, council members ultimately altered the measure to ensure the county’s outlying areas see an equal share of the money in an effort to encourage Washingtonians to start and maintain arts organizations in rural locations.

New rights and protections for NYC and Hollywood freelancers. On May 15, New York became the first U.S. city to enact a law aimed at shoring up protections for freelance workers. The Freelance Isn’t Free Act places harsh penalties on employers who withhold payment from independent contractors or fail to pay on time or in full. The law rose out of an extensive 2015 report created by the Freelancers Union illustrating the impact of freelancers and the high percentage of workers who have struggled to receive payment. Under the new law, New York freelancers stiffed by their employers can file a complaint with the city, which will intervene on their behalf. The news follows the announcement earlier in the month of a new labor agreement between the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood studios which was widely seen as a win for struggling television and movie writers.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS:

• Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities William D. Adams unexpectedly announced his resignation on May 22. Deputy Chair Margaret Plympton will serve as acting chair until a replacement is named, which could be a while since that replacement would have to be nominated by the Trump administration.
• Publisher Françoise Nyssen has been appointed the new Culture Minister of France.
• Jaime Dempsey will be the new Executive Director at the Arizona Commission on the Arts in August. Previously deputy director of the agency, she succeeds Robert Booker, who will retire after 40 years in the arts.
• Rose Ann Cleveland will retire from the D.C.–based Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation in October.
• Executive director Eloise Damrosch of Portland’s Regional Arts & Culture Council will retire at the end of June.
• The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving announced its new president, Jay Williams, will begin in July.
• Motion Picture Association of America chief Chris Dodd will leave his post five months before his contract ends, to be replaced by Charles Rivkin. Rivkin was an assistant Secretary of State for economic and business affairs during the Obama administration.
• Juilliard has named Damian Woetzel as its seventh president. The former New York City Ballet star was previously the director of the Aspen Institute Arts Program.
• The New York Review of Books named Ian Buruma as its new editor after the death of founding editor Robert B. Silvers.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE:

• A recent study from Berlin promotes incentives for donors, with results indicating that those provided with a certificate stating the quality of the charitable product or organization gave approximately 10 percent higher contributions. However, a study by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy indicates that President Trump’s proposed tax reforms could reduce charitable giving by as much as $13.1 billion in the United States.
• The first ever World Cities Culture Finance Report analyzes how cities fund cultural activity. Results indicate that Paris, Moscow and London spend the most on arts and culture.
• A new report analyzes results from a pilot program by the National Endowment for the Arts aimed at increasing access to arts education in rural areas. Access is proving to be key: A deeper analysis of the 2016 National Assessment of Educational Progress in the Arts indicates that access and opportunity take precedence over achievement in the arts.
• A policy briefing from the Brookings Institute provides a framework for implementing the goals of the Every Student Succeeds Act and measuring success in arts education.
• Aesthetic Perspectives is a new framework produced by Americans for the Arts’s Animating Democracy program. It establishes 11 attributes that may be used to describe and assess creative work intersecting community engagement and social justice.
• Across the pond, the UK’s Department for Culture, Media & Sport published an in-depth review of Arts Council England’s priorities and positioning. A House of Lords report indicates that theater patronage in the UK is “still dominated by rich, white people.” These findings are supported by additional survey data indicating a 7 percent drop in participation among Asian audiences across all artforms in the UK over the last 10 years. And MyCake founder Sarah Thelwall completed her fourth annual ‏report on the Arts Council’s grantees, analyzing income sources across creative organizations, and differences between small and large organizations.
• George Windsor and Cath Sleeman have completed an analysis of job advertisements in the country to determine what skills creatives need to be successful professionals in the UK.
• A new publication explores the current status of urban cultural policy at local levels across Europe and outlines the challenges that lie ahead.
• People from working-class backgrounds tend to view themselves as relatively more interdependent with and connected to others, according to new research.
• Some librarians really hate those cute “Little Free Libraries.” Research indicates that they are most present in upper-middle class, white neighborhoods – areas that already have increased access to public libraries.
• Apparently rainy days motivate people to visit museums, but more so if storms ease up in the afternoon. And though tourism and leisure are many visitors’ primary goals when visiting museums, measurable learning occurs even when it’s not their intention.
• UNESCO-funded initiatives safeguarding and rebuilding indigenous architecture in Vanuatu following the 2015 Tropical Cyclone Pam are evaluated in this final report.
• New data indicates that automation will affect jobs in Las Vegas and California’s Inland Empire more than the so-called “Rust Belt.”
• A visual interpretation of research spanning three years, 75,000 concerts and 7,000 bands analyzes the chances of a band “making it” big in New York City. The odds? Roughly 0.3 percent.
• The fiction books you read can shape your world view and tilt your moral compass, according to newly published research in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Poetry may also have a profound effect: scientists researched physiological responses to “this is your brain on poetry” and discovered that responses differ from those of music or movies.
• Research suggests a gap between fact and myth in what music teachers believe about music and the brain.
• Last but certainly not least, is the Biebs responsible for killing the good, old fashioned love song? According to the journal Sexuality & Culture, hit songs are more likely than ever to be all about sex.

For the past decade, Createquity has taken a technocratic approach to covering arts policy in the United States and beyond. We’re not mindless cheerleaders for arts funding; we recognize that governing requires making tradeoffs in the face of limited resources, and have argued against certain types of government arts support in the past. Nevertheless, we believe that the National Endowment for the Arts and other targeted federal agencies do valuable work and are worth saving.

Here are some perspectives on the current budget situation that you may find of use:

Are all these cuts actually going to happen?

Probably not, but that doesn’t mean the danger isn’t real. It appears that Trump’s budget was heavily influenced by staffers from the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has long targeted agencies including the NEA and CPB out of an ideological belief that the government shouldn’t be funding the arts and humanities at all. Nevertheless, the budget proposal is already running into opposition from Congressional Republicans, who are seeing it as unrealistic and poorly targeted. Furthermore, eliminating the NEA and NEH will require an actual act of Congress, not just a ratification of the president’s budget. All of that suggests it’s unlikely (though possible) that the agencies will disappear completely, at least in FY18.

That said, it seems virtually certain that we will see at least some cuts. Trump’s budget is so aggressive in so many areas that pushing back on all fronts simultaneously will be very difficult—indicative of a classic hardball negotiation technique.

How will regular people be affected if these agencies are actually eliminated?

It depends on where they live. The vast majority of foundations and individual donors concentrate their giving in the immediate geographic area around where they’re based, which means that the areas with the most wealth (largely big cities on the coasts) are also the ones that receive the most philanthropic funding. As a result, resources are few and far between for arts organizations and public radio and television stations alike in rural America.

In the NEA’s case, the agency has made a point to provide direct funding in every congressional district in the country. Perhaps even more important, though, is the NEA’s system of partnerships with state and regional arts councils, which come with a carrot of matching funds from the federal government in exchange for appropriations from state budgets to their respective state arts councils. In the years following the Great Recession when state budgets were under severe pressure, many of these state arts councils survived in no small part because of this matching fund arrangement. Meanwhile, an external assessment estimates that eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would mean 12 million people losing their access to over-the-air public television, mostly in isolated areas.

As for arts organizations, museums, and public broadcasters in other regions of the country, some will have a tough time to be sure, but the overall effect on the ecosystem would be subtle. The United States didn’t have the NEA, the NEH, CPB, or IMLS for the first 190 years or so of its existence. We believe these agencies create more value than we spend on them, but if they are eliminated, arts and culture will soldier on.

Speaking of creating value, I read that the NEA gets a return of $9 for every dollar invested. Is that true?

No, and we wish arts advocates and the agency itself would avoid using this misleading statistic. It falsely assumes that none of the matching funds leveraged by the NEA would otherwise be there for grantees if the federal funding went away. In reality, matching funds are fungible to a large degree, meaning that the non-federal money is often already committed and it’s really the government that is providing the match, not the other way around. (The big exception here is matching funds for low-budget state arts councils, as discussed above.) Framing it as a “return on investment” is even more misleading, as this implies an astronomical multiplier effect to the spending that simply has no basis in evidence.

Right. So why can’t the arts just fend for themselves on the free market?

They already do. The United States is an outlier among developed-world economies in that its arts funding system is highly decentralized and market-driven. Just 1.2% of arts organizations’ budgets comes from the federal government, so artists and arts organizations have no choice but to sink or swim in the private sector. And as noted above, for all conservatives’ trumpeting of the free market, private philanthropy isn’t very generous to the rural areas and red states that helped Trump get elected. In any case, getting rid of the NEA doesn’t get the government out of the business of funding the arts. In fact, the most significant federal arts funding sources are the Smithsonian ($840 million) and the Department of Defense ($437 million for military bands alone). Yep, that’s right: we spend three times as much on military bands as we do on the entire budget of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Not to mention, it’s a little rich to complain about nonprofit arts organizations drinking from the government trough when we give away billions of dollars in free money to for-profit industries including oil & gas, corn, and airlines.

Wait, so if the NEA is so insignificant, why bother fighting for it? Wouldn’t it be easier to just take the money and create a parallel private endowment with the same mission?

Yeah, that does sound nice, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it probably wouldn’t work. Just to maintain current funding levels, which are well below the agency’s inflation-adjusted peak from 1992, one would have to raise an endowment of approximately $3 billion, which would rank up there with the nation’s largest private foundations. Interestingly, Kansas tried to do something like this several years ago—Governor Sam Brownback terminated the Kansas Arts Commission with the plan of setting up a new private entity, the Kansas Arts Foundation. The plan never got off the ground due to poor fundraising results, and the next year, the arts council was brought back to life under a new name.

The NEA’s budget is slight, but as a result it’s had to learn to accomplish a lot with a little (by federal government standards, anyway). The agency does important knowledge infrastructure work, most notably by organizing the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA), conducted every five years in collaboration with Census Bureau. The SPPA provides us with widely-used statistics about arts participation that would be extremely hard to replicate with the same accuracy in the private sector, because the imprimatur of government is so important for reliable surveys. As a government agency, the NEA also possesses an important power to help set agendas in an otherwise leaderless ecosystem. The contemporary creative placemaking movement was almost entirely incubated at the NEA under the leadership of former Chairman Rocco Landesman, which looms as one of the Endowment’s biggest policy wins in recent history.

What about the argument that the arts and media are better off operating outside the influence of government?

We largely agree with this—it’s one reason why the United States is better equipped to withstand creeping authoritarianism than democracies with more centrally controlled institutions. But as noted above, America’s arts funding system is already far too weak to make political work risky for artists in the way that it is risky in some other countries. Thus, while protecting freedom of expression could be a valid argument against increasing the agencies’ budgets by too great an amount, it is not an argument for decreasing them.

What about other agencies? Is the impact on the arts limited to the Endowments, IMLS, and CPB?

Unfortunately, no. The Trump budget is very wide-ranging in its targets, and includes relevant cuts to the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Interior Department’s National Heritage Areas, funding for after-school and summer enrichment programs within the Department of Education, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, which helps fund low-income artist housing initiatives.

Is it wise to put energy into defending the NEA and these other agencies when there’s so much else going on (climate change, threats to immigrants, international relations, etc.)?

That’s a tough call, but we believe the answer is yes. The Trump administration represents a unique challenge for America today, and picking battles seems to play into its strategy. Legislators make the budget, legislators for the most part want to keep their jobs, and they respond to pressure from their constituents. So you know what to do. #SavetheNEA.

Cover photo credit: Felix Russell-Saw

“Why ask why” sign from Defenestration: an art installation in San Francisco. Photo by Lynn Friedman via Creative Commons

Amidst the storm and thunder leading up to the Trump administration’s first days in office last month, The Hill reported that advisors to the president had suggested privatizing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which supports PBS and NPR) and eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of a broader effort to reduce federal spending. Coming from former staffers from the far-right Heritage Foundation and drawing heavily on past Heritage Foundation positions, the proposal was not entirely unanticipated, but it certainly met with immediate resistance. As a number of commenters have pointed out, cutting the NEA and NEH wouldn’t do much to balance the federal budget, given that they account together for just $296 million out of a four trillion dollar total. Because of this, the NEA’s contribution to national arts infrastructure has often been described as “symbolic.” Yet that description ignores the fact that the agency’s state and local partnerships create significant impact at the state level, where its policy of offering matching funds for state arts councils helps a lot of those councils stay in existence. (It doesn’t help that about a third of US states have little to no local infrastructure for arts advocacy and rely heavily on federal resources.) The NEA’s research initiatives would likewise be hard to replace if they went away, particularly core activities like the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts conducted every five years in partnership with the US Census Bureau. Losing the NEA and NEH is far from a done deal: Trump would need the support of Congress to make it happen, and Americans for the Arts reports that there are “about a dozen procedural steps that Congress and its committees must take” before either agency can actually be eliminated. And it’s far from clear to what extent that plan represents the actual intentions of the administration, which seems to change its mind about major policy positions from one day to the next. In the meantime, life goes on for the NEA, with the administration already having appointed representatives to liaise between the West Wing and the Endowment.

Arts advocates who are laser-focused on the survival of the NEA may be missing the forest for the trees, though. In a move some see as an even bigger threat to the arts, the president nominated Ajit Pai to head the Federal Communications Commission. Pai is an avowed foe of net neutrality and his ascendancy at the agency is almost certain to bring the controversial measure back into government consideration. Meanwhile, executive orders affecting people’s ability to travel and obtain health care are leaving many artists bewildered, worried, and angry. As much as losing the Endowment would be a loss, the sad irony is that if we had a stronger agency to begin with, our arts infrastructure would presumably be under even more direct threat right now.

South Korean artists face consequences amidst controversy. Concerns are growing about artistic freedom in South Korea as the scandal surrounding President Park Geun-hye continues to unfold. Park’s questionable friendship with the daughter of a cult leader named Choi Tae-min resulted in corruption charges and Park’s impeachment. Now, the New York Times reports that government aides have blacklisted thousands of artists, quietly collecting information and threatening legal action against those whose work is critical of their recently ousted leader. The moves only deepen the scandal in South Korea, which when compared to its neighbors to the north and west — North Korea and China — is considered a mecca of artistic freedom and opportunity. South Korea is one of only a few countries to increase arts and culture spending in the last decade and its artists earn roughly 77% of the country’s average income. The state-funded Artist Welfare Act of 2012 insures nearly 60,000 artists with a form of workers’ compensation. Despite these promising stats, there’s a clear agenda for promoting nationalism and prioritizing positive depictions of South Korea in arts and culture, an ongoing effort since the end of the Korean War. The emergence of this situation in a country as democratically-oriented as South Korea indicates the tension between artists’ (and citizens’) rights to freedom of speech and expression and countries’ desire to control the narrative observes fewer national boundaries than we might have hoped.

A crack in art’s black market. An investigation involving 18 countries has resulted in the arrest of 75 people allegedly affiliated with an international crime ring smuggling historical artifacts and other pieces of art out of Middle Eastern countries under siege by ISIS. The investigation found that items from Syria, Iraq, and Libya, among other countries, were systematically transferred to Western countries and resold on the black market, very likely helping to finance the Islamic State’s reign of terror. Authorities say many of the 3,500 items recently recovered were found in Spain and Greece. In a landmark case last September, jihadist Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi was convicted and sentenced by the International Criminal Court to at least nine years in prison for war crimes after ordering the destruction of shrines in Timbuktu, Mali. It could be a precedent for what lies ahead in this latest investigation. Historians, archaeologists, and artists are attempting to retrieve and restore, and in some cases, recreate the important artifacts that have been recovered or destroyed in the conflicts. A team at St. Petersburg’s State Hemitage Museum is developing a 3-D model of Palmyra, Syria, and a 25-square-meter replica of an authentic Syrian home sits in the middle of Norway’s flagship IKEA store. Last year, the Roman Colosseum featured reproductions of Palmyra’s archive room of Ebla and the Temple of Bel. And last month it was reported the National Archives of Finland has taken custody of digital copies of key Syrian documents for safekeeping in case the originals don’t survive the country’s civil war.

The Lucas Museum finds a home in LALA Land. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is expected to open in Exhibition Park in Los Angeles by 2021. More than a Star Wars museum, the $1 billion project will house items from George Lucas’s extensive personal art collection and Hollywood artifacts. The Marin County native’s museum was initially meant for San Francisco, but met strong opposition to the proposed site near the Presidio. The project then looked toward Chicago, where Lucas became embroiled in two years of negotiations over prime real estate on the city’s lakefront. A community group called Friends of the Parks filed suit — much to the dismay of Mayor Rahm Emanuel — contesting the notion that Chicago’s lakefront is public property, despite the fact that the site Lucas wanted (and on which he refused to budge) is currently occupied by a parking lot. The filmmaker eventually gave up on the idea, looking again to the West Coast at new locations in San Francisco and LA. LA won the sweepstakes, and area residents and local officials appear to be anxious for the project’s completion.

Apple wants what Netflix is having. Apple says it plans to begin creating movies and TV, hoping to capitalize on consumers’ hunger for streamed original series. The technology giant is experiencing a slump in sales for the first time in 15 years, back when Netflix was still primarily a mail-in-your-DVDs model. Netflix’s massive investment in original content ($5 billion last year) is paying off in spades, yielding the company’s biggest quarter in history last month amid hit after hit. Others are scrambling for a piece of the action and estimates indicate the number of original scripted television shows may soon surpass 500. Netflix remains the leader, but Hulu, Apple, AT&T (via Amazon), and Sony are all in hot pursuit. In an unusual twist, the satirical news giant The Onion signed a deal with Lionsgate to develop three feature films in partnership with Serious Business, an affiliate of Comedy Central. The move follows the lead of a recent Buzzfeed partnership with Warner Bros. to produce the film Brother Orange.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• The Rockefeller Foundation named board member Rajiv J. Shah as the foundation’s next president.
• Writer and historian Tristram Hunt has resigned his seat in the British parliament to lead the Victoria and Albert Museum.
• Andrea Noble-Pelant has been named executive director of the Alaska State Council on the Arts, consolidating the position with her role as the visual and literary arts program director.
• After 24 years with the agency, Nevada’s Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs Administrator Susan Boskoff is retiring this March.
• Deana Haggag is leaving The Contemporary to lead United States Artists, a Chicago-based granting organization.
• The Barack Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s south side is hiring a museum director.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• Major UK government agencies have partnered to launch a pilot study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of crowdfunding matches on arts and heritage organizations. And the Center for Effective Philanthropy offers recommendations for measuring fundraising effectiveness.
• The initiative Community Catalyst has produced an in-depth report on strategies for museums and libraries to strengthen and evaluate social impact.
• A number of studies measure characteristics of art to determine social and economic impact, but few consider perceptions of quality, according to the NEA’s Sunil Iyengar. Meanwhile, a systematic review of arts papers in accounting journals discusses the challenges of evaluating the artistic performance of publicly funded organizations; similarly challenging is predicting the price of art, which doesn’t appear to follow specific trends.
• Lawyers Lena Saltos and Angela Lelo take a look at the legal precedent for applying copyright law to street art.
• A 2015 census by Americans for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts shows promising growth for arts agencies on the local level.
• Norway gets the top spot in the World Economic Forum’s new Inclusive Development Index. Factors included in the index go beyond GDP to include employment status, life expectancy, poverty rates, and dependency ratios. The United States, on top by GDP alone, ranks 23rd on the IDI.
• Children emulate superheroes’ aggression, but not their valor, according to a 2017 study on the behavior of 240 preschoolers.
• Research summarized by the New York Times column The Upshot illustrates how regional choices in TV are related to consumers’ political views. On a related note, studies suggest that viewing diverse characters in television and movies can increase empathy and reduce prejudice. And new data indicates that cultural attractions aren’t just competing with other organizations, but also with potential patrons who’d rather remain in their PJs on the couch.
• Colombian researchers found that recording in a daily dream journal boosts creativity.
• Millennials are often given credit for the migration revitalizing many American cities and invigorating arts and culture in downtown districts, but an article in The Upshot questions whether that now-aging generation will stay downtown for the long haul. Offering a strong rebuttal to the piece in CityLab, Joe Cortright predicts that Millennials are likely to remain in cities as they age and have children.
• According to a study by Isaac William Martin and Kevin Beck, renters are more greatly affected by gentrification than homeowners, and rising property taxes aren’t dissuading owners from staying.
• A report by the Association of British Orchestras notes that strategies to restructure ticketing and audience engagement may eventually leave them in the red. Over a three-year period, a 7% increase in the number of events produced only a 3% increase in audiences.
• Research confirms what musicians already know: that music training results in faster reaction times than that of non-musicians.
• The Louvre announced a $10 million loss and a sharp decline in visitors in 2016. An analysis of museum visitor numbers in the UK indicated a similar decline. The chief reason, say researchers, is that overseas visitors are staying home because of the fear of terror attacks. On the bright side, a new report suggests that London grassroots music venues are in the black for the first time in a decade.
• The UK also saw a 5% increase in book sales compared to last year, thanks to J.K. Rowling’s latest installment of the Harry Potter series and publications by fitness guru Joe Wicks. Despite speculation that digital readers would lead to the book’s demise, a Gallup poll indicated that Americans still read books at a rate comparable to that of 15 years ago, while ebook sales are starting to slip.

The Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland, CA (Photo by Jim Heaphy, via Creative Commons)

A deadly warehouse fire taking the lives of 36 people during a concert in Oakland, CA has ignited a series of legal and political flames throughout the country. Known as Ghost Ship, the warehouse flew under the radar operating as a music venue and DIY live/work space for the city’s artists without proper permits. The tragic events have brought forward conversations about the crushing cost of rent in American cities, the primary hubs of artistic activity. In the wake of the fire, underground spaces like Ghost Ship are facing increased pressure to get their buildings up to code, spurring forced closures in Nashville, Denver, Los Angeles and Baltimore so far. A group of right-wing whistleblowers mobilizing on the 4chan message board, calling themselves the “Safety Squad,” is using the Ghost Ship tragedy as an opportunity to crowdsource permit and fire code violations in these “hotbeds of liberal radicalism and degeneracy.” The call to action may have resulted in as many as 16 closures nationwide in a push that recalls the alt-right’s attacks against artists associated with #Pizzagate and attempt to take over science fiction’s Hugo awards.

On the bright side, Ghost Ship has brought the dire need for affordable artist housing to the attention of public officials and foundations. Just days after the fire, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced a previously-planned $1.7 million grant initiative involving her office and three Bay Area nonprofits establishing a capital fund to acquire affordable spaces for artists. Elsewhere, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh announced a new task force to create “safe art spaces” following a shuttering of the Bell Foundry warehouse, and the Austin Creative Alliance debuted an $100,000 program to aid displaced arts and music venues.

Will Rocky “Make Art Great Again?” Wide-ranging cabinet picks have been appearing in the news nearly every day, which means that it’s likewise time for the incoming Trump administration to select a new head honcho for the National Endowment for the Arts. Donald Trump has reportedly floated Sylvester Stallone as a potential pick, causing many an arts administrator’s head to explode over the past few weeks. On the other hand, Stallone’s recognizability, deep connections, and career-long love affair with big-budget box office hits could bode well for shoring up political support for the perpetually beleaguered agency. Though the actor (and sometimes painter) has praised Trump’s “bigger than life” persona, Stallone stopped short of endorsing his run for President. Stallone, reportedly flattered by the idea, doesn’t appear wholly interested, feeling he’s better suited to a job in veterans affairs. Regardless of who gets the job, the new Chairman of the NEA could well push a conservative agenda, with implications unclear for the Endowment’s otherwise promising, newly announced five-year research agenda and new research projects.

Diversity, coming soon to a theater near you (if you live in the UK). Beginning in 2019, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) will no longer give prominent awards to films or television shows lacking diversity onstage or backstage. According to Slate, projects will need to meet diversity standards in at least two of the following categories in order to be considered: “on-screen characters and themes, senior roles and crew, industry training and career progression, and audience access and appeal to underrepresented audiences.” The UK equivalent of the Oscars is perhaps hoping to avoid a controversy similar to the #OscarsSoWhite (and subsequent #OscarsStillSoWhite) blowups of the past two years after consecutive years of all-white contenders in the Academy Award acting categories.  Further policy changes at BAFTA include a new rule about voting members, in which candidates no longer require an endorsement by two existing members, echoing a similar move by the Academy Awards on this side of the pond. Britain has likewise been criticized for a lack of diversity in live theater, noted by playwright Andrew Lloyd Webber in a new research report that calls the industry “hideously white.” A report from the Arts Council of England, however, cites a significant uptick in representation for people of color working on the staffs of Council-funded theaters.

A new law could help you get Hamilton tickets. Despite the unprecedented success of Hamilton, it should be making even more money. Approximately $30,000 per performance is going to third-party vendors, who buy up huge swaths of seats and resell them at astronomical prices. Unlike ticket reselling services like Ticketmaster, which has a contract with concert venues, it has been estimated that third-party sales via ticket brokers are bringing in $12.5 million annually on Hamilton alone. In a report by New York’s Attorney General, less than 50% of all tickets to the city’s highest grossing concerts are made available to the general public, many of which are purchased en masse by automated ticket “bots” and resold far above market price. The controversy has gained some attention in Congress, and the bipartisan Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, aimed at curbing online scalping by banning such bots, was passed into law December 14. Beyond the direct impact of this piece of legislation, its quick emergence out of a bitterly divided Congress is a very pleasant surprise.

Christmas tragedy in the Black Sea. A plane carrying the Alexandrov Russian Army Song and Dance Ensemble to Syria crashed in the Black Sea on December 25, killing all 92 passengers. Among the dead are 64 members of the Russian Army’s music and dance ensemble, known for promoting Soviet nationalism with military songs and traditional Russian instruments, which was on its way to Syria to perform for troops stationed at the Khmeimim Airbase in Latakia. Only three of the group’s singers survived, having stayed behind in Moscow for personal reasons. Though Russian officials have discredited accounts of the crash as an act of war or terrorist attack, the news has nevertheless sent shockwaves of sorrow across Russia with the loss of a beloved performing arts group. Perhaps the last transportation accident this disastrous for the arts was the 1962 crash of Air France Flight 007 that killed 106 Atlantans, many of whom were prominent figures in the city’s arts and culture sector.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS:

• Grantmakers in the Arts president and CEO Janet Brown announced plans for her departure from the Seattle-based service organization at the end of 2017.
• Robert Rauschenberg Foundation chief Christy MacLear is moving to Sotheby’s, where she will expand the auction house’s capacity to advise living artists and foundations. Meanwhile, Guillaume Cerutti takes the top spot at Christie’s, as Patricia Barbizet steps down.
• Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Isaac Luria have been announced as the new joint directors of the Voice, Creativity & Culture program at the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
• Ballet B.C. Executive Director Branislav Henselmann will move into the public sector to lead cultural services in the City of Vancouver.
• Mark Sebba is the appointed chair of the newly formed MutualArt Group, a merger between the Artist Pension Trust and MutualArt.com. Both organizations were formerly led by Moti Shniberg.
• Arts criticism continued its slow decline at newspapers this month, with the Austin American-Statesman laying off Jeanne Claire van Ryzin after 17 years without announcing a replacement. Meanwhile, arts reporter and critic Mark Stryker posted a public statement to Facebook announcing his departure from the Detroit Free Press after 21 years.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE:

• Despite some progress, a group of actors set out to collect data on diversity in Broadway shows. The results of the Asian American Performers Action Coalition study indicate that nearly 80% of roles on Broadway are played by white actors, and audience demographics match those of the cast.
• The National Endowment for the Arts’s guide on community-engaged arts and health research is now available for free online. The guide is the latest of a series of resources produced by the NEA’s Federal Interagency Task Force on the Arts & Human Development. And a new book from the NEA includes essays and case studies illuminating the practice of creative placemaking.
• The US Bureau of Labor (BLS) has planned a new survey in 2017 that will make it easier to measure the economic impact of freelance workers. Known as the most reliable source of labor statistics in the country, the BLS has previously failed to provide an accurate picture of the “gig economy,” yielding mixed results about the size and impact of independent contractors.
• A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research is the first to produce concrete evidence suggesting that increased investment in schools really does result in better education.
• A study out of West Chester University suggests that arts education among low-income preschoolers may reduce stress and improve psychological functioning.
• New research investigates how musicians’ brains work while playing instruments. A study from Hong Kong suggests that MP3 compression of recorded music elicits a different emotional response than that of live instruments.
• “Don’t underestimate the effects of consistently communing with Hugh Grant,” says Pacific Standard’s Tom Jacobs in his piece synthesizing new research on the relationship between watching romantic comedies and moral sensitivity.
• Results of a Pew Research Center study indicate that the incidence of “information overload” is down, although the group’s findings suggest that anxiety produced by too much information depend on the situation.
• The Center for Effective Philanthropy gathered insights from more than 200 foundation CEOs captured in a new report titled “The Future of Foundation Philanthropy: The CEO Perspective.” Interview and survey data indicated that CEOs believe foundations make significant contributions to society, but are not fully exploiting opportunities to do so.
• A report by the Global Impact Investing Network shows solid growth for impact investments between 2013 and 2015.
• An Arts Council of England report shows promising growth of private investment in the UK, with arts and culture organizations drawing 18% of their total income from individual donations in 2014-15. The impact was higher for small budget organizations, with private investments comprising 29% of total income for those grossing less than £100,000.
• Defined as a physical or virtual space for creative individuals to gather, a new British Council report finds that creative hubs are “still largely misunderstood and undervalued” and provide professional and artistic opportunities beyond that of working alone.

“Artificial Intelligence” by Flickr user GLAS-8

Each year since 2009, Createquity has offered a list of the top ten arts policy stories of the past twelve months. And let’s be frank: some of those years are a little…what’s a polite way to put this? Boring. (Looking at you, 2013.)

2016 was not one of those. When the fifth-largest nation in Europe decides to give the equivalent of a year’s allowance to every 18-year-old in the country to spend on culture, and that only barely cracks #10 on the list, you know it’s been a consequential year. (To be fair, it also reflects the global perspective we take in our methodology for ranking stories, described more fully last year.) Amidst all the uncertainty, one thing is for sure: 2017 is going to tell us a lot about our collective future.

As has been the case for the past few years, creation of this list is distributed amongst our editorial team. Authorship of individual items is noted at the end of each story.

10. The Italians launch a cultural voucher program

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who resigned this month after a bruising referendum, may not have achieved everything he had set out to accomplish, but his government did leave one cultural legacy for the country’s young people. Beginning this year, Italian teens will receive a €500 “cultural bonus” from the Italian government along with their right to vote on their 18th birthday. The money will be available for a full year, and, yes, keeping to its millennial audience, is administered entirely through an app. In its first year, a total of €290 million in government money will be apportioned out to some 574,000 teens–both Italian natives and foreign-born residents. The program is intended to foster affinity between the country’s youth and its arts sector by providing Italy’s youngest adults with incentive to consume culture on their own terms, and is part of a larger package of programs aimed at “fighting terrorism through culture” that was initially announced in November 2015. Though vouchers are viewed as efficient ways to provide social benefits (Brazil implemented a cultural voucher program in 2014; Canada and Finland are experimenting with broader programs), critics of Italy’s program question the wisdom of its launch in a struggling economy and its ultimate ability to empower workers in arts and culture. It’s unclear what will happen to the program under the new administration, though Paolo Gentili, tapped to succeed Renzi, seems, for now, to be following in Renzi’s center-left footsteps. –Michael Feldman

9. The era of Peak TV is upon us

2015 was the year that the number of original scripted television series available in the US surpassed the 400 mark–coming in at 409 shows, up almost 9% from 2014 and nearly double that of 2009. FX Networks CEO John Landgraf dubbed it the year of “Peak TV,” and assured us the decline was nigh (a welcome thought for many). He was, by his own admission, wrong. By his new accounting, the peak will hit in 2017, and possibly carry through to 2019, with the tally soon to cross 500. Netflix is primarily to be blamed (or congratulated) for the push; the streaming video industry as a whole is projected to earn nearly $7 billion this year. The business of too much TV is a complex one, with numerous winners and losers: short-term boosts in salaries and profits don’t necessarily translate to long-term profits; more scripted shows means more room for voices in the writers room but also fierce competition for crew and equipment. And the irony is it’s more expensive than ever to produce a TV show: according to Landgraf, the price for making and marketing an hour of television has gone up about 20% in the past 5 years, to $4-$5 million an hour. Beyond the benjamins (and the fear the good times will come crashing down around us), there’s another side to consider: with the explosion of scripted shows from small producers aimed at niche audiences, it’s becoming increasingly easy to create our own television bubbles, creating a narrative space populated with characters who look and think exactly as we want them to. As we look towards a Trump presidency, fake news, and filter bubbles, it will be imperative to keep an eye on the role of television. We watch as much as five hours a day, after all. –Clara Inés Schuhmacher

8. Ghost Ship brings underground artist spaces into the light of day

Described as one of the worst U.S. structure fires in over a decade, the tragic Ghost Ship warehouse fire took at least 36 lives in Oakland, CA on December 3. The warehouse, whose owner had an industrial permit (but not a residential or event permit), served as the illegal residence of some 25 artists, and was the site of an electronic dance party the night of the fire. The tragedy has pulled back the curtain regarding the crushing cost of rent and inavailability of safe spaces in which artists can afford to live and work, in Oakland and beyond. It has also triggered a flurry of investigations into code and permit violations across the country that has resulted in heavy scrutiny of similar spaces, and the subsequent closings of DIY event venues and live/work spaces in Nashville, Denver, Los Angeles and Baltimore, with more likely to come. Sadly, the issue has become politicized: as of December 24, the East Bay Times reported that the so-called Right Wing Safety Squad, an extremist group on the anonymous message board 4chan, was claiming at least partial responsibility for 16 closures after a call to action December 7 to “Make America Safe Again” by alerting authorities to potential code and permit violations in DIY artist spaces. A counteractive push from foundations is aimed at recognizing that urban artist communities operating in spaces like Ghost Ship are in desperate need of affordable real estate, and artists from marginalized communities are especially affected. Three days after the fire, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf issued a statement regarding a coordinated response to the Bay Area’s real estate problem, involving three local foundations in a $1.7 million grant initiative aimed at “preventing displacement, growing the capacity of the city’s artists and cultural organizations, and enhancing municipal resources for the cultural sector over the long haul.” –Lauren Warnecke

7. Impact investing and equity crowdfunding gain ground

Interest in impact investing–taking a financial stake in ventures designed to create social, economic, cultural or environmental impact–is growing: the 2016 U.S. Trust Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy and the First National Benchmark Survey of Family Foundations found that fully one third of those surveyed are interested in impact investing. The arts have been latecomers to this game, largely because it’s tricky to create a competitive return on investment in many areas of the arts sector. Despite $2.4 billion annually in corporate impact investing, the arts’ best chance may be with individuals, and many are working on making the arts appealing to folks with deep pockets. Upstart Co-Lab, a startup nonprofit headed by former NEA Senior Deputy Chairman Laura Callanan, has forged an agreement with the Calvert Foundation to create a Community Investment Note for impact investment opportunities like low-income artist housing developments. Another way for corporations and foundations to “make an impact” with their investing, of course, is to choose who they don’t invest in. Such divestment movements have been floating around for some time now, but the Brooklyn Community Foundation has taken it further than most, committing to divest all its interests in corporations or initiatives that, in its judgment, harm communities of color. Upstart and Calvert’s Community Investment Note, however, is primarily aimed at individual investors, who now have even more options than before thanks to 2012’s Jumpstart our Startups (JOBS) Act. The JOBS Act lifted regulations on capital investments that kept average Americans from seeking a financial stake in new companies, and this November, the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo announced a new partnership with Microventures to provide vehicles for regular folks who want to invest in new companies. –MF

6. Turkey continues its crackdown on artists and intellectuals

We first wrote about Turkey’s alarming trend towards artistic censorship in 2014 (the story made our Top Ten), and–unfortunately–the news continues to worsen. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was first elected as prime minister in 2003, was once considered a relatively moderate leader. Over the past decade he has gradually manipulated the political system to remain in power, increasingly targeting journalists, artists and intellectuals in his continued drift toward authoritarianism. A “culture war” that began in 2012 when Erdoğan felt his daughter was disrespected during a theater performance has since spurred attempts to exercise control over the state arts funding apparatus, attacks on public art and television, and going after satirists and museums. Erdoğan used an unsuccessful coup attempt earlier this year as an excuse to crack down even more on free speech, shutting down and seizing the assets of 29 publishing houses accused of aiding the enemy, imprisoning more than 120 journalists, blocking social media networks, silencing writers, closing universities, shutting down TV and radio stations, charging the editors of a Turkish daily with espionage, jailing academics on charges of promoting terrorist propaganda, and forcibly overtaking Zaman, Turkey’s largest-circulation newspaper. Freemuse claims that Turkey, along with Russia, China, Iran, and Syria, belongs to “a special league of countries that systematically repress freedom of expression,” with more than half of the recorded violations against artists worldwide originating in those nations. As Ian noted in his recent article on the Trump presidency, artists and media are often among the first to be singled out when an authoritarian government seeks to impose itself on the people. We can only hope that Turkey’s creative class continues to resist. –CIS

5. Audiobooks and podcasts break records

Books and radio, whose death has alternately been heralded and bemoaned for years, are making a comeback–in scrappy start-up form. No longer just the stuff of road trips and bad jokes, audiobooks are the fastest-growing format in the book business today. Fueled by the ubiquitous smartphone, revenue from downloaded audiobooks grew 32.3% in the first half of 2016 compared to last year. By comparison, hardcovers and paperbacks grew by 0.9% and 8.8%, respectively, and e-books revenue declined 20% in that same period. Some 35,574 titles were published as audio in 2015, up from 7,000 in 2011. Edison Research found that 43% of Americans over the age of 12 have listened to an audiobook, and some audiobooks are even outselling their print counterparts. Everyone is looking to get in on the action: publishers are hiring high profile actors, and testing out original dramas; authors, such as Stephen King and Fred Armisen, are writing new work specifically for audio. Meanwhile, the conditions and format advantages that are propelling audiobooks forward are likewise helping podcasts, which are finally breaking into the mainstream after first debuting more than a decade ago. By a recent iTunes count (which does not host all the podcasts out there), there are some 200,000 podcasts in the iTunes library, 40% of which are active, and one-fifth of which are not in English. Edison Research estimates that 36% of the US population over the age of 12 has listened to at least one podcast–21% in a given month. Legacy media organizations including the New York Times, WNYC, the Wall Street Journal and the Des Moines Register have all announced podcasting investments, and media startups are getting in on the frenzy, including Slate, Buzzfeed and Gimlet Media. As with audiobooks, podcasts are still a small sliver of the pie, representing but 2% of the total time Americans spend listening to audio, and some say we’re approaching a glut. Still, the field shows no signs of slowing down yet. Even Createquity has jumped on board–we launched a podcast in collaboration with Fractured Atlas in March. –CIS

4. Virtual reality and augmented reality establish themselves as new art forms

By most accounts, we are living in the future. You can now teleport to a helicopter flying over the Swiss Alps, then back in your living room just by strapping a cardboard box holding your phone in front of your eyes. You can sit on stage, smack in the middle of a live performance by an orchestra, ballet or play, without ever entering a hall. You can experience the Tate Britain’s iconic collection alongside real-time news cycle without traveling to London. You can even walk down your own street and battle it out with your favorite Pokémon characters via Pokémon Go, downloaded to your smartphone. It’s the era of augmented and virtual reality, and, in reality, we’re just scratching the surface of possibility. Interest in virtual reality rose exponentially this year, while the popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go broke through to the mainstream with 100 million downloads worldwide, 30 million daily users, and extensive media coverage. The medium’s potential impact on the arts is far-reaching: arts organizations are putting audience members in the middle of the action, radically challenging notions of interactivity, narrative and site-specificity. Visual artists are pushing the boundaries of their work (see here, here, here), and VR experiences are making their way into film, making a splash this year at Sundance. VR is even changing how news stories are told, with the New York Times leading the charge. It’s changing the world of gaming, too: in South Africa, you can book a spot to play video games in virtual reality at the VRCade, and fend off zombies approaching you from your periphery. With Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard putting VR in the hands of the masses, it will be interesting to see how the medium continues to evolve. The Onion may just turn out to be right–on some counts, anyway. –Benzamin Yi

3. China expands holdings in (and censorship of) arts and entertainment

As Clara predicted, China dominated the news again this year, finding itself on this Top Ten two years running. The country’s economy continues to grow at a breakneck pace, and is predicted to overtake the United States as the world’s largest by 2018. China can thank the entertainment industry for much of this growth, including plans for a new $2 billion film studio in Chongqing, homegrown worldwide blockbusters, and buying up big players such as Dick Clark Productions, Legendary Entertainment, and Dalian Wanda (the Chinese conglomerate that now owns AMC Theatres.) This rapid entertainment biz expansion has raised some concerns in Congress about the potential of Chinese nationalism and socialist propaganda infusing American arts and entertainment. Those concerns are not without merit. China ranks 176 out of 180 on the World Press Freedom Index–a report by Reporters Without Borders which calls President Xi Jinping a “predator of press freedom”–and the government’s grip on content continues to tighten. Its airtight Great Firewall includes bans on most social media networks and news sites that report a negative image of the country (notably including the New York Times and Bloomberg); this censoring led Google to pull out of the market in 2010. This year, the government passed a law promoting Chinese nationalism in films, updated restrictions on television content, and scaled down relationships with Apple and Disney (despite these companies’ unbridled popularity in the country). It has also continued its intimidation of neighboring Hong Kong: the disappearance of five prominent booksellers in 2015 has virtually everyone in Hong Kong’s publishing industry scared they will be China’s next target. Still, it appears the lure of an enormous untapped global market is hard to turn down. American filmmakers have started producing films that obey the country’s strict regulations regarding content, thus dodging its quota on the release of foreign films, and gaming console manufacturers like Sony and Nintendo are getting back in on the game after a fourteen year ban was lifted last year. Corporations and media companies are adopting an “if we can’t beat them, join them” approach too–even Google is preparing for its return to China and is prepared to follow the government’s rules. Of course, it’s anyone’s guess how things will change once the Trump administration is in the White House, and we find ourselves once again with a case of wait and see on the China front. –LW

2. The United States elects Donald Trump

No top ten list for 2016 would be complete without mention of the election and the now certain inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. As the entire nonprofit sector holds its breath waiting for the effects of a Trump presidency on its business and constituents, predictions about what will come to pass in the coming years run the gamut from apocalyptic to status quo. There are few clues as to how Trump and his Republican majority in Congress might address the arts sector. His responses to Alyssa Rosenberg’s questionnaire about arts policy in March suggest a free market approach, similar to other policy areas like healthcare and education. The delegation of major decisions to Congress, and the recent proposed appointment of Sylvester Stallone to the top arts position in the administration, underscore Trump’s habit of relying on others (often supportive friends with little government experience) to figure out policy details, especially when they fall outside of the core issues that defined his campaign. While tensions between Congress and the National Endowment of the Arts have eased significantly since the culture wars of the 1990s, there is nevertheless a risk that the Republican Congress may revive attempts to defund the NEA in the context of a larger effort to rein in government spending. Meanwhile, the GOP and Trump administration’s promised policy adjustments to the Affordable Care Act (which provides insurance for many independent artists), and planned tax reforms (including the possibility of a rollback of the tax incentive for charitable giving) could both have immediate effects on the financial security of individual artists and small to mid-sized arts organizations. Most concerning of all is Trump’s threats to freedom of the press and his authoritarian impulses, which could expand constrictions on freedom of expression in a country that has prided itself on being one of the safest places for speech in the world. While the likelihood of overturning a mountain of legal precedent protecting the first amendment is relatively slim, Trump’s attempts at intimidation (like lashing out about flag burning or lecturing Mike Pence at a Hamilton curtain call), not to mention the ease with which his supporters can be goaded into threats of violence against vulnerable individuals and populations, are worrying to say the least. The bizarre and uncharted landscape we’ve found ourselves in has inspired much reflection, from calls to action and lessons learned from the campaign, to the role of the arts in promoting fantasy over fact. One thing is clear–artists will play a role in public discourse over the next four years, and we’ll be right there with them. –Rebecca Ratzkin

1. Artificial intelligence comes into its own

Wait, what?! Donald Trump in the Oval Office is not the top story of the year? Amazing as it may seem, events of 2016 make clear that the march of technology promises greater long-term disruption for our society than even our Tweeter-in-chief can muster. Chief among these developments was the March tournament victory of AlphaGo, a computer application developed by Google’s DeepMind team, over Korean Go grandmaster Lee Sedol. While it was expected that an artificial intelligence would eventually topple a human in the ancient Chinese game, the milestone was achieved nearly a decade earlier than anticipated when AlphaGo bested Lee in four out of five matches. To understand how consequential this is, consider that the number of potential positions in Go is exponentially greater than the number of atoms in the universe, putting the game beyond the power of the brute-force computational approach that has enabled computers to defeat humans at games like chess. Instead, the DeepMind team trained AlphaGo to learn from past games in order to develop new strategies for itself in real time–not unlike what a human would do. Google has used similar techniques, more recently, to have its Translate product churn out translations of literature that are almost indistinguishable from human efforts.

The implications for the arts are at least twofold, both enormous. First, the accomplishments of machine learning are directly tied to the accelerating trend of automation pervading all aspects of society, manifesting most recently in self-driving vehicles and fast-casual spots that replace cashiers with iPads. As more people’s jobs become redundant with what machines can do, unemployment rates could rise substantially, creating far more collective leisure time–and far more opportunity for creative expression. (How exactly that leisure time is spent will, clearly, depend a lot on what we decide to do about our social safety net, which is why many people in the tech community favor a universal basic income.) That could be amazing for the cause of art, though perhaps not so great for professional artists, who are already facing competition from the likes of Jukedeck and Google Brain itself. A grimmer view of artificial intelligence’s advances points to the specter of AI as, essentially, a new life form that could compete with humans for dominance of the earth. Given the rate at which machine learning applications are developing, a lot of smart people have begun to conclude that this isn’t just science fiction–to the point that increasing resources are flowing toward the cause of ensuring that the development of an artificial superintelligence, if and when it happens, won’t destroy the human race. Lest you get too freaked out, be reassured that this worst-case scenario is still considered a low-probability outcome by most observers…but perhaps now you can understand why we think this outranks The Donald. –Ian David Moss

Honorable Mention:

• The Pulse nightclub shooting targets social dancers
• Brexit shakes up the landscape for UK artists and organizations
• Google Books ruled to be fair use (and Stairway to Heaven is not plagiarized)
• Artistic quality metrics controversy at Arts Council England
• Canada Council holds grantees accountable for diversity (and other changes)
• Black Lives Matter and US Department of Arts and Culture release policy platforms

Best wishes for 2017 to all!

Trump mural, Downtown Los Angeles, California, USA (Credit: Cory Doctorow, via Creative Commons)

A bitter and divisive 2016 Presidential election is finally over, and Donald J. Trump’s seat in the Oval Office awaits him, with Republicans holding their grip on both houses of Congress. Trump’s views on the arts are vague; the Irish Times reported that, when asked his position on the arts, Trump spoke of decorating his promised border wall with Mexico so that it “looks real nice.” His main connection to the arts is through architecture, although he has a contemptuous relationship with the critics and an American Institute of Architects letter congratulating his victory left many of the organization’s members reeling. (For whatever reason, a similarly congratulatory message from Americans for the Arts escaped an analogous public backlash.) As with nearly every other sector, questions abound about what a Trump presidency will look like. The litany of artists’ concerns include the future of public arts funding, the fate of the Affordable Care Act (which provides insurance for many independent artists), the possibility of a rollback of the tax incentive for charitable giving, and fear of moving backward after decades of work to ensure equity for all Americans. Trump’s authoritarian impulses could have a major impact on freedom of expression, including in the arts: while the likelihood of overturning a mountain of precedent favoring the first amendment, be it flag burning or lecturing Mike Pence at a Hamilton curtain call, is relatively slim, Trump has many legal and quasi-legal means at his disposal to intimidate policymakers, journalists, and artists. The bizarre contours of the election likewise have “provided significant thought-fuel for cultural organizations” and called into question the role of truth and evidence in public dialogue. On the plus side, several pro-arts ballot measures passed electoral muster on November 8 (the most significant of these being the reauthorization of a $50+ million public funding stream in the Denver area through 2030), several museums publicly affirmed that they will continue to provide safe spaces and work to ensure the arts and culture are available to all, and healthcare robber baron Martin Shkreli is keeping at least the first part of his promise to release the only known copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album in the event of a Trump victory.

Yet more regulations in the rapidly growing Chinese film market. A new law further promotes nationalism in Chinese films. According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, the law imposes massive fines against companies that fabricate box-office earnings or other data, and further states that films should “serve the people and socialism, prioritizing social benefits and bringing about harmony of economic returns and contribution to society.” The growing film industry in China is second only to the United States, and may soon take over the top spot with plans to build a new $2 billion studio in Chongqing. Anxious to join the Chinese market, U.S. studios have been able to avoid the country’s quota to release just 34 foreign films per year by incorporating Chinese characters and plot lines. China appears equally anxious to find a grip in the U.S. market, with the Chinese firm Dalian Wanda picking up big swaths of the entertainment industry, buying AMC Theatres in 2012, and more recently adding Legendary Entertainment and Dick Clark Productions for $3.5 billion and $1 billion, respectively. As the world’s largest media conglomerate, Dalian Wanda’s recent moves made Congress sit up straighter, raising concerns about the potential influence of Chinese nationalism and socialist propaganda infusing the American entertainment industry.

Is impact investing finally hitting its stride? The arts could benefit from an emerging trend among wealthy donors. Of those surveyed in the 2016 U.S. Trust Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy and the First National Benchmark Survey of Family Foundations, the Denver Post reported that a third are interested in impact investing, or taking a financial stake in ventures designed to create social, economic, cultural or environmental impact. The arts are a little late to the game, because it’s tricky to create a competitive return on investment in many areas of the arts sector. So despite corporate donations of $2.4 billion annually toward impact investing, the arts’ best chance for joining the trend may be with individuals. At least that’s what the folks at Upstart Co-Lab believe; the startup headed by former NEA Senior Deputy Chairman Laura Callanan has forged an agreement with Calvert Foundation to create a Community Investment Note for opportunities like low-income artist housing developments. For corporations and foundations, impact investing is partly about who they give to, and partly about who they don’t. The Brooklyn Community Foundation is leading the charge in this area, committing to divest all its interests in corporations or initiatives that harm communities of color.

Equity is the newest Indiegogo perk. The crowdfunding platform Indiegogo announced a new partnership with Microventures, joining the lesser-known Crowdfunder, OurCrowd, and EquityNet as vehicles for regular folks who want to invest in new companies. Budding entrepreneurs can now offer potential investors a financial stake in their companies (think Shark Tank on the Internet) instead of the traditional crowdfunding model that trades products and other perks for donations. Equity crowdfunding became possible in 2012 due in part to President Obama’s Jumpstart our Startups (JOBS) Act lifting regulations on capital investments that kept average Americans from seeking a financial stake in new companies. Rival crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, whose main difference from Indiegogo is its “all-or-nothing” model, remains committed to project-based funding over entrepreneurial pursuits, and does not currently have plans to implement equity crowdfunding.

Philly parks and libraries get a facelift. The William Penn Foundation announced it will give up to $100 million to the city of Philadelphia’s Rebuild initiative to enhance community parks, libraries, and recreation centers. The gift, which is the largest in the foundation’s history by a factor of four, covers more than 80% of the city’s fundraising goal for foundations and private donors. Penn intends not only revitalize Philadelphia’s infrastructure but also make a significant social and economic impact by creating jobs and promoting community engagement. The big news follows on the heels of executive director Laura Sparks’s departure from the foundation, the latest in a series of such transitions for Penn that has prompted a renewed call from the author of a previously published critical report to diversify its board and delegate greater authority to staff leadership.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• University of Iowa Museum of Art names former Congressman and National Endowment for the Humanities head Jim Leach as its interim director.
• Former Colorado Business Committee for the Arts head Deborah Jordy has been appointed as the new executive director of Denver’s Scientific and Cultural Facilities District.
• Ken Tabachnick will be the new executive director of the Merce Cunningham Trust.
• A tenure-track Assistant Professor position is available at the University of Arizona in the Division of Art and Visual Culture Education
• University of Oklahoma’s School of Visual Arts seeks a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Art, Technology & Culture.
• Queens Museum seeks a full-time Director of Education, supervising in-school and community programs and New New Yorkers, an arts and literacy initiative for and with adult immigrants.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE:

• A new study on tax filings by the Institute for Policy Studies found that U.S. giving is top-heavy, with more than half of donations coming from the top 10%. Market Watch summarized the report, noting that the middle class is giving less to charity compared to 10 years ago while those earning at least $100,000 annually have increased donations by 40%.
• GLAAD reported record-high representation of LGBTQ, black, and disabled characters on broadcast television series this season.
• New evidence further links viewing of reality TV to narcissism. And a study out of Michigan State University explains why we gravitate toward ideological bubbles, surrounding ourselves with those who agree with us. The short version: it’s more comfortable.
• U.S. orchestras fare relying more on donations than ticket sales, according to a report by League of American Orchestras. With subscriptions down and donations up, the shift is forcing organizations to revisit funding models and mission statements. Similarly, the Arts Council of England reports that UK nonprofits are increasingly relying on private funds, with revenues dropping despite an uptick in charitable giving.
• The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s data dashboard reveals online giving trends to arts and culture, among other causes, using data from the Network for Good platform.
• The MacArthur Foundation released an evaluation of a loan fund program designed for small and mid-size arts and culture organizations.
• Women in the arts are not exempt from the wage gap between genders, according to a study in the journal Social Currents. And men are the most creative of the sexes…and the least, says Pacific Standard’s Tom Jacobs in a review of the literature.
• New research at the University of Waterloo makes the case that arts experiences should be accessible to all because they are tied to wellbeing.
• European researchers may have found the heart of creativity, locating structures in the brain that form novel connections between known and new information. Meanwhile, a new study funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China suggests that the brain responds differently to classical music compared to popular music. And Keith Sawyer discusses interesting new research on musical improvisation and the influence improvisers have on each other’s contributions in a jam session.
• A study from Fort Collins, CO yields promising results about music’s positive effects on delaying and perhaps preventing dementia. Sadly, though, a survey of 2,200 musicians conducted by the charitable organization Help Musicians UK found high rates of anxiety and depression.
• Belgian researchers find that even experts have a difficult time discerning between fake art and real art.
• The New England Foundation for the Arts published “Moving Dance Forward,” an in-depth report analyzing the dance field’s pressing needs and the impact of the National Dance Project.
• Theater is a more popular leisure activity than sports for Brits, according to a survey by Birmingham’s Town Hall Symphony Hall. The results suggest that younger generations are even more likely to attend a show, with nearly two-thirds of respondents under age 25 saying they enjoy live performance across all genres.
• A new Slover Linett report highlights the changemaking potential of the Levitt chain of music venues (disclosure: Createquity founder Ian David Moss was an advisor to the project).
• Chicago-based Ingenuity’s report on “State of the Arts” in Chicago Public Schools indicates that access to arts education during the school day is on the rise.
• UNESCO’s Culture for Sustainable Urban Development initiative aims to become a policy framework to support governments in promoting arts and culture as a means of sustainability.
• A meta-analysis published in EPJ Data Science claims that most fiction falls into one of six core story lines.
• Tim Robbins’ “Improv for Inmates” expands to 10 California correctional facilities next year, as promising data from a preliminary study by the California Department of Corrections suggests that the program reduces recidivism.
• A study from the McKinsey Global Institute suggests that robots will eventually take over nearly a third of our jobs.

From Flickr user Ian Brown: “The Twitter logo mod is from graffiti seen on a wall during [the 2013 Gezi Park] protests in Turkey.”

Let’s take a minute to stew on that. Commanders-in-chief of the United States have gotten involved in the arts before, but mostly to resolve disputes, not create them; to celebrate artists, not berate them. Moreover, unlike most of the controversies from the late 1980s and early 1990s at the height of the so-called culture wars, the contested speech did not involve desecration of treasured religious symbols or explicit sexual content. Only a statement of less than complete fealty to the administration-in-waiting.

It’s reasonable to wonder what the election of Donald Trump means for the arts. Trump’s was actually the only campaign during the primary season to answer Alyssa Rosenberg’s questionnaire about arts policy priorities back in March. His responses mostly articulate a free-market, libertarian-ish approach to arts policy and a willingness to delegate most of the decision-making to Congress, though he does state his opposition to net neutrality. (Oddly, he also makes a point to say that there is “no Constitutional obligation” for the president to host artists at the White House.) The day after the election, Americans for the Arts was out with a statement that emphasized bread and butter issues for the organization, including support for the National Endowment for the Arts and arts education. A few publications and organizations have attempted to grapple with the reality of Trump as president both before and after the election, trying to read tea leaves from random clues like the fact that he once trademarked the name Trump Art Collection but has yet to use it, or that Mike Pence’s wife is a painter.

But zeroing in on arts-specific policy is usually the wrong way to understand the most important issues in the arts, as my colleague Lauren Ruffin deftly pointed out in a recent post on the Fractured Atlas blog. Even for those who were predicting (or rooting for) a Trump win, the news of his accession to the Oval Office is a shock to the status quo of governance style and priorities for the Earth’s richest and most powerful nation. Trump potentially represents such a tectonic shift that events that would once have been considered drastic, like having the NEA disappear completely, could end up being small potatoes in the face of what’s to come.

At present, no one really knows what to expect from the Trump administration. Predictions are flying fast and furious, and run the gamut from our core institutions and policies will remain intact to Trump won’t even get through his first full term to Trump will usher in a new era of authoritarian dystopia from which we may never recover. Though wildly disparate, I would argue that these three basic paradigms – the aspirational statesman, the incompetent nepotist, and the dictator-in-chief – in combination form a good model of what to expect, as I think we have seen all of them in Trump and his team throughout the campaign and now during the transition period.

While the paradigms are not mutually exclusive, it matters a lot for our collective wellbeing which of them ends up becoming dominant, and which of them are reinforced by the rest of our governing infrastructure and society. This is true not only for the United States but the rest of the world as well. Arguably never before in human history has so much power been placed in the hands of someone with so little respect for convention and so unbeholden to anyone other than himself. President Trump is about to have at his disposal the world’s largest military and nuclear arsenal, the vast spying powers of the NSA, and a massive regulatory and law enforcement apparatus. In peacetime, the nation’s system of checks and balances — Congressional oversight committees, whistleblower protections, etc. — may be robust enough to prevent significant abuses of that power. The truly telling moments are likely to be those that take place just after a major terrorist attack on American soil, or after a naked provocation by the likes of North Korea, when US citizens will be under tremendous pressure to close ranks and show loyalty to the commander-in-chief. How we respond to moves on the administration’s part to consolidate power will be hugely consequential for the future of our democracy.

And that’s where the arts come in. If Donald Trump wants a playbook for bending the democratic institutions of the United States to his will, he unfortunately has plenty of recent examples from which to draw:

• In Russia, of course, Vladimir Putin has effectively instituted one-party rule by using the power of the regulatory state and control of the national media (not to mention, allegedly, targeted assassinations) to neutralize political opponents and grassroots opposition alike. It’s important to remember that though he now seems to rule Russia with an iron fist, Putin originally came to power via the will of the people; he was democratically elected President of Russia in 2000. Art and media are by no means exempt: Putin’s Russia shames cultural dissidents on national television, engages in modern propaganda techniques and “information warfare” to pursue its agenda abroad, and crushes local cultural planning efforts if they are too independent, just to name a few recent examples. The Denmark-based organization Freemuse deemed Russia the third-worst enemy of artistic expression in the world last year, as measured by confirmed instances of politically-motivated prosecutions, threats, and physical attacks against artists.
• In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is following in Putin’s footsteps in many ways, despite tensions between the two leaders. Erdoğan was first elected Prime Minister in 2003, and has gradually manipulated the political system to remain in power since then. Once considered a relatively moderate leader during his first years in office due to his pro-Western orientation (Turkey has been trying to gain membership in the European Union for over a decade), Erdoğan rapidly accelerated his embrace of repressive policies after the 2011 elections. A “culture war” that began that year when Erdoğan felt his daughter was disrespected during a theater performance when she was in the audience (sound familiar?) has since spurred increasing attempts to exercise political control over the state arts funding apparatus. Erdoğan used an unsuccessful coup attempt earlier this year as an excuse to crack down even more on free speech, shutting down and seizing the assets of 29 publishing houses accused of aiding the enemy, and jailing more than 120 journalists. (In researching this item, I discovered that a Turkish publication Createquity linked to when reporting on these controversies two years ago was among the victims of this purge.) The aforementioned Freemuse claims that Turkey and Russia belong, along with China, Iran, and Syria, to “a special league of countries that systematically repress freedom of expression,” with more than half of the recorded violations against artists worldwide originating in those nations.
• In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (who has already received an invitation to Washington from President-elect Donald Trump) pushed through a series of legislation and constitutional reforms tightening controls on the media with the help of an elected parliamentary supermajority following his election in 2010. The ensuing changes to the environment have prompted the watchdog organization Freedom House to downgrade Hungary’s press environment rating from “Free” to “Partly Free.” Meanwhile, a shadowy right-wing organization called the Hungarian Academy of Arts has asserted increasing control over arts institutions in the country following its transition from an independent private organization to an official government body.
• We are arguably seeing the earliest iterations of this story now in Israel, where controversial culture minister Miri Regev has made no secret of her desire to reshape Israel’s cultural establishment in her ultranationalist image. A former chief censor for the military, she has expressed contempt for the notion of an independent public media. And a group of Israeli artists and arts organizations is suing her ministry over threats to withdraw funding from organizations that refuse to perform in Israeli settlements in the West Bank and other so-called “loyalty tests.”

We see in each of these examples how the arts, artists, and media are often among the first to be singled out when an authoritarian government seeks to impose itself on the people. Indeed, when considering issues in the arts globally, freedom of expression is arguably at or near the top of the list, given that well over a billion people live under a regime in China that actively seeks to control its citizens’ access to information and ideas. With a Trump presidency on its way, that issue looms with new urgency over the United States as well. In the coming months, Createquity will be watching the administration and Congressional leadership closely for any attempts to consolidate power or exert control over the media, as these issues are now intricately connected with the health of the arts ecosystem in America.

Other arts issues and research questions that have arguably become more urgent, present, or resonant with this election outcome include:

• Under what conditions are arts for social change efforts and arts-based anti-oppression strategies effective at shifting societal attitudes towards greater tolerance and empathy for others?
• What are the ingredients of successful social movements, and do the arts have a role to play?
• Are there disparities in access to the arts and opportunities to make a living as an artist by geography, particularly in rural areas, and does this have an effect on political discourse?

If we are looking for ways the arts and artists can play a productive role in the healing of our nation, the above questions are most likely to get us there. The 2016 election laid bare not only a seething undercurrent of bigotry and xenophobia in our midst, but also just how politically and culturally segregated America has become. Are the arts part of the solution? Have they been part of the problem? We ought to find out.

Twisting a vibrant democracy such as the United States toward authoritarianism is hard work, and it’s not clear yet whether Trump will be up to the challenge. But make no mistake: we are in a vulnerable position. Support the media sources you trust, by subscribing or donating, as they will need your help more than ever. Support organizations such as the ACLU that will be looking to contain abuses through the judiciary system. Talk frequently to the Trump supporters who may be in your life and seek to understand them so they may be more inclined to understand you. Lobby your elected officials and start organizing now to prevent an expansion of the administration’s reach in Congress in 2018 and beyond, which also means getting involved at the state and local level (state legislatures will be redistricting Congressional districts for the next decade in the next two years). Watch out for any move on the part of the Senate to eliminate the filibuster – if that happens, it is a bad sign.

And finally, don’t forget to support artists. If we don’t, who will?