“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.

Hey, remember Chase Community Giving? And Pepsi Refresh? And the American Express Members Project?

The social-media-driven, crowd-powered giving initiatives promised to “redefine corporate philanthropy” and were frothily hailed as a “taste of things to come” just a short while ago. American Express had gotten the trend started back in 2007 with the Members Project, a campaign that drew hundreds of thousands of AmEx cardholders to sign up, nominate and vote for recipients of a couple million dollars in grant funds. Chase upped the ante in late 2009, announcing a partnership with Facebook whereby nonprofits would compete for votes via the social media platform. Whoever got the most votes – and, in the process, recruited the most Facebook fans for Chase – could receive grants of up to $250,000. And Pepsi followed in 2010 by famously foregoing its traditional Super Bowl ads, spending the $20 million budget instead on a year’s worth of grants to ideas in six categories (including arts and culture), all of which would be determined by the frantic votes of fans. Shortly afterwards, American Express revamped the Members Project via a new collaboration with TakePart, a social action network linked to the hit documentaries An Inconvenient Truth and Food Inc.

All three of these and similar initiatives sought to use emerging digital technologies to devolve the power of the corporate purse to the populace, ostensibly under the banner of corporate social responsibility (but funded, especially in Pepsi’s case, primarily with marketing dollars). It wasn’t long before such contests made their way into the daily lives of nonprofit administrators, including arts organizations. As far as philanthropic innovation was concerned, it seemed like it was all anyone could talk about.

That was four years ago. If you haven’t heard anything about these initiatives recently, it’s not a coincidence. It’s because they all appear to be dead.

Pepsi Refresh seems to have had the best-attended funeral, with a well-trafficked media news site pointing out that the soda giant “let its much-vaunted social impact initiative…quietly fizzle away” in 2012.

A key factor in this shift? Business realities. While the Pepsi Refresh Project was running, Pepsi had consistently been losing market share and volume, leading to a humiliating drop to lowly third place behind Coke and Diet Coke. Add to that widespread investor pressure on CEO Indra Nooyi to focus on driving core businesses, and the handwriting was on the wall.

Members Project has gone the way of the dodo more quietly. No official announcement could be found on the web about the project’s demise, but the official TakePart website wants no part of the action, and the Facebook page it points to instead hasn’t been updated since April 2012.

Chase Community Giving’s fate is a bit murkier. The brand’s Facebook page is still active, with an impressive 3.7 million fans. But the posted content consists exclusively of fluff such as “Use your Chase debit or credit card to purchase Beyoncé and JAY Z’s #OnTheRunTour benefitting the Shawn Carter Scholarship Foundation.” The latest announcement I could find of any actual grants awarded was, again, from 2012 – a year when Chase had received reams of bad press for alleged cheating and unscrupulous behavior on the part of contestants and organizer alike. It seems likely the bank finally decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble.

So there you have it. Crowdsourced corporate philanthropy died a year and a half ago, and no one seems to have noticed. What does it mean? Well, to me, it’s a depressing reminder of the tension that exists between corporate philanthropy and corporate goals. Remember, these projects were supposed to be a marketer’s dream, tapping into the idealism and digital savvy of the Obama generation. But either that generation wasn’t that idealistic after all, or the annoyances created by the competition for votes overwhelmed any positive vibes generated by the often modest amounts awarded.

Business school types, at least the kind of folks who were in school with me half a decade ago, really want to believe that profits and virtue go hand in hand – the old “doing well by doing good” mantra. I mean, who wouldn’t love to have your cake and eat it too? Surely such opportunities exist here and there, but if you believe the efficient market hypothesis, if there were vast money-making opportunities involving grants to nonprofits hiding in plain sight, someone would be taking advantage of them already. I suspect that if corporations genuinely care about “doing good” for the world, they’re going to need to separate that agenda out from the profit-maximization mandate, as much as their shareholders might resist. On the plus side, our long national nightmare of annoying solicitations from everyone you know to vote for projects every day for a month seems to be over – for now, at least.

• In a major victory for New York’s arts education advocates, Mayor Bloomberg signed a bill requiring the city’s department of education to report on the availability and accessibility of arts education in each of its schools. This annual report will make public the degree to which schools meet current instructional requirements in music, dance, theater, and visual art. This wasn’t an aberration for Bloomberg, whose legacy after three terms as mayor includes an impressive record of support for the arts.
• Meanwhile, arts groups prepare to woo his successor, Bill de Blasio, who has followed national precedent and failed so far to appoint a new Commissioner of Cultural Affairs. Some speculate – or simply hope – that he will apply his populist spirit to the culture sector.
• Reversing an earlier position, the United States Copyright Office now recommends that visual artists receive a portion of profits when their work is resold. Congress hasn’t taken up resale royalties for visual artists since 2011, when a bill sponsored by Representative Jerrold Nadler failed to gain traction.
• ‘Tis the season of Top Ten Lists, and The Future of Music Coalition has a comprehensive roundup of 2013’s music and technology policy developments, including Congress’s ongoing review of the Copyright Act, a changing of the guard at the FCC, and the looming court decision in the momentous net neutrality case between the FCC and Verizon.
• Construction for major government-supported art facilities in Abu Dhabi — including sparkly new Guggenheim and Louvre campuses — is booming on the backs of migrant workers from Pakistan and Bangladesh, many of whom had to pay a recruitment fee to work on the projects and now toil under atrocious conditions. The International Trade Union Confederation is urging western museums to step in, and a coalition of artists and activists has formed to support the workers.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Steven Tepper, research director of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) and associate director of Vanderbilt’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, is the new dean of Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• George Zimmerman is once again in the media spotlight for selling a painting he made on eBay. The patriotically themed piece sold for $100,099.99, prompting outrage from some and a web-sale response by artist Michael D’Auntuono. In a move the artist calls “hypocritical,” D’Auntuono’s attempt to sell his response piece, and donate part of the proceeds to a charity advocating for crime victims, was censored by the auction website for violation of eBay guidelines.
• Acknowledging that less than 5 percent of its grants for repertory development have gone to women over the last quarter century, Opera America is launching a grant program targeting female composers.

IN THE FIELD

• Is Facebook’s new donate button “good, bad, or ugly” for nonprofits? Beth Kanter argues it does more harm than good, and rallies for a Facebook Ad Grants program similar to Google’s.
• In its quest to make culture “the spirit and soul of the nation,” China opened more than 450 museums in the last year alone, bringing the total number in the country to nearly 4,000.
• Did you finish 1984? New all-you-can-read book services are compiling data on not just what we read but also how quickly we do it, how long we linger over which passages, and whether we finish specific books. (Turns out people are more eager to learn how biographies end than business books.)
• Mara Walker, chief operating officer for Americans for the Arts, reports on her experience as the only American participant at this year’s International Arts Leadership Roundtable, organized by the Hong Kong Art Development Council.

BIG IDEAS

• You’ve Cott Mail readers offered bold predictions for the arts in 2014: ballet will relocate to London, we’ll all stop saying “outreach” (but do it more in our communities), and new artist-led theater collectives will rise up to seize the means of cultural production, among other prophecies.
• The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout, meanwhile, predicts audiences’ growing “on-demand” mentality will continue to spell trouble for nonprofit theater companies, and urges them to embrace and market the “intimacy [of the] small scale, handmade art form.”
• In an interview with Barry Hessenius, WESTAF Executive Director Anthony Radich unpacks his longstanding call to “reimagine” state arts agencies (i.e., embrace more flexible staff structures and find ways to get “free from the negative undertow of state restrictions while retaining that still-important connection to the state government”) and offers insight on the future of state support for the arts.
• Providence, RI has acknowledged how much the city’s future depends on its four main nonprofit higher-ed institutions: Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, Johnson & Wales, and Providence College. Financially reliant on an industry that isn’t requited to pay local taxes, the city of Providence has negotiated an attempted economic revitalization plan that has the schools make sizable contributions to the city in exchange for sweetened deals on land usage and campus expansion.
• Createquity’s own Talia Gibas lays out three different conceptions educators, artists, and advocates draw on when they talk about “STEAM” as the intersection of the arts with science, technology, engineering, and math. She argues that art may primarily represent aesthetics and design, curiosity, or creativity, and that there are important differences among the three.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Foundation Center’s annual “Key Facts on U.S. Foundations” report is out in time for the New Year. Giving is on the rise: the approximately 82,000 foundations in the U.S. gave $45.9 billion in 2010, $49.0 billion in 2011, and an estimated $50.9 billion in 2012. The report also breaks down the largest grants by the largest foundations for 2011 by issue, geography, and a host of other dimensions, revealing among other things that the top 1% of recipients captured half of these grant dollars.
• The McKnight Foundation has released its findings in a study it conducted, with help from the Center for the Study of Art & Community, on artists supported by its fellowship program since its establishment in 1982. The study asked artists six questions that gave them an opportunity to “reflect on the environment, conditions, and motivations that affect their work.”