National Geographic Magazine covers display – photo by flickr user greyloch

In the world of media, the line in the sand between commercial and nonprofit has long been getting washed away, but this past month’s announcements leave behind even less of a trace. First came the news that premium cable channel HBO had struck a deal with the nonprofit Sesame Workshop to bring first-run episodes of “Sesame Street” exclusively to its network and streaming outlets starting in the fall. The deal will allow Sesame Street to double the number of episodes it produces, and alleviates a number of financial pressures. Although new episodes will eventually be available on (free) PBS–the show’s home for the last 45 years–the news raised some troubling questions about mission and access. Lest you think of this as a simple story of a media empire benefiting from the public purse, though, know that Denzel Washington also plans to produce adaptations of all ten of esteemed playwright August Wilson’s works for the network, one per year for the next decade.

As if that weren’t enough, after 127 years, the National Geographic Society, “one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational institutions in the world,” has sold a 73% stake in its iconic magazine and other media assets to a Murdoch-headed partnership in exchange for $725 million. (The relationship is not a new one: the society first partnered with Fox in 1997 to launch the National Geographic cable channel.) Many were dismayed by the news, citing concerns about the “Foxification” of National Geographic, and the effect of the partnership on the magazine’s standards of reporting. Others are more positive: the new joint venture (and a newly bolstered endowment) will give the National Geographic Society the “scale and reach to continue to fulfill [its] mission long into the future,” and allow it to double spending on research, science and other projects.

Cultural Colonialism or Sound Business Strategy? Vivendi to Open Venues in Africa. This month, French media group Vivendi announced it will build ten performance venues in Africa to “enhance access to culture and entertainment in countries frequently lacking such facilities.” The venues will be built in Cotonou (Benin), Brazzaville (Congo), Conakry (Guinea), Dakar (Senegal) and other locations to be determined, and will operate under the name CanalOlympia. These venues, which will serve a concert halls, theaters and cinemas all-in-one, are part of Vivendi’s strategy to reinforce the Group’s presence in high-growth markets, where an emerging middle class is consuming more content. They will also include recording studios and a rehearsal rooms, in support of Vivendi’s strategy of identifying and supporting new talent (key to its growth in international markets,) and will form a network of sites for the organization of tours by Island Africa, an initiative of Universal Music Group.

LA Philharmonic Goes Virtual (Reality). Free concerts in the park. HD screenings in movie theaters . Classical music institutions have long played with innovative and accessible ways to take their performances out of the concert hall and into the community. This month, the venerable Los Angeles Philharmonic took it to the next level: with artistic director Gustavo Dudamel at the helm, the orchestra is going on a virtual reality tour. A bright yellow van, nicknamed (of course) VAN Beethoven and outfitted with Oculus virtual reality goggles, Samsung headsets and half-dozen seats from the Walt Disney Concert Hall, is hitting the road for five weeks, stopping at county fairs, street food festivals, and everywhere in between. Individuals will be invited in to experience four minutes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, complete with Fantasia-like visual effects. For those already in on the VR game, you can watch it at home.

The Islamic State vs Digital Archaeology. In March, the Islamic State’s seemingly endless destruction of Mideast antiquities made our roundup of top arts stories. The destruction has continued in recent months, and if anything, is accelerating. In May, ISIS militants occupied the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra–a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In June, they blew up a tomb. In July, they attacked a dozen ancient statues. In August, they leveled two more temples of great cultural significance (and beheaded an expert who was fighting to protect the city’s relics.) As this newsroom “goes to print,” news arrives that the 1,800 year old Arch of Triumph is the latest cultural casualty. The situation is dire, and archaeologists have been galvanized into action, racing to capture Middle East’s historical sites with digital renderings before they’re destroyed. In the coming months, the Institute for Digital Archaeology, a joint venture between Oxford and Harvard universities, plans to distribute thousands of low-cost, high-quality 3D cameras across the Middle East with the help of UNESCO and New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. These cameras will capture 3D renderings of a (for now secret) list of ancient sites and artifacts for preservation and, ultimately, recreation.

Despite Changes at the Helm, Future of Australia Arts Council Remains in Question. Australia made Createquity headlines in May with the news that Arts Minister George Brandis had diverted a whopping $104.8 million from the arts council budget to a newly established policy, the National Programme for Excellence in the Arts, managed by his own ministry. The move made many enemies of the Arts Minister among Australia’s cultural sector. This month, the sector celebrated the news that Brandis had been removed from his post. Unfortunately, the celebrations may be premature: although the $104.8 million has not yet been spent, incoming Arts Minister Mitch Fifield has indicated for now that he is planning to move ahead with Brandis’s agenda.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Sharon Alpert, currently the Vice President of and Strategic Initiatives at the Surdna Foundation, has been appointed president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She will be the foundation’s fourth president and first female leader.
• Music coverage at metropolitan dailies took a hit in September: Jim Farber was let go from the Daily News (New York) where he’d been writing since 1990s; longtime music writer Brian Mansfield left USA Today; and the New Orleans’ Times-Picayune dissolved its music department in its entirety.
• H.E. Shaikha Haya bint Mohammad Al-Khalifa has joined the Culture & Archaeology Authority of Bahrain as its new director of Culture & Arts, Dawa Gyeltshen was formally appointed the Cultural Affairs Minister of Bhutan, and Trinidad and Tobago has named Dr. Nyan Gadsby Dolly its new Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts.
• The Institute of Museum and Library Services is hiring a Program Analyst. Posted September 14; closing date October 9.
• Grantmakers in the Arts invites consulting firms/individuals through an RFP process to submit a proposal to conduct an audit of GIA with respect to the organization’s goal of racial equity in arts philanthropy. Posted September 22; closing date October 26.
• The Walton Family Foundation seeks an Arts and Culture Program Officer for its Region Program. Closing date October 31.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• A new survey conducted by the CECP and Conference Board finds that corporate giving is, and is expected to remain, stable. On the other hand, a report from the consulting group Camber Collective suggests that better meeting donors’ needs and preferences could open up access to quite a bit of additional giving.
• A couple of studies from this past month look into the question of gender gaps. One study suggests that disparity stems from a reflexive tendency to link masculinity & creativity, implying that similar work by women will be deemed less creative simply by being executed by women. The second suggests that the gender imbalance among the highest level positions in some cases may in part be the result of differences in lifestyle preference.
• Recently released research suggests that television has the potential to be used in teaching tolerance, increasing political tolerance, and eliminating racism, sexism, and heterosexism.
• Several studies out of the UK this month bear mention. One suggests that arts participation is strongly correlated not with class, but with education, which paints a slightly different picture from Createquity’s previous research on the topic. A second, from the UK Office for National Statistics has crunched the numbers and found that net financial wealth does correlate with happiness quite well, thank you. The third, a survey of theater goers in the UK reveals that recognizable cast members is the biggest driver of ticket sales. And on the topic of theater, a report published by the Creative Industries Federation suggests that theaters and performing arts organizations are markedly less ethnically diverse than other creative industries.
• Two new studies released this month suggest that music does in fact have the power to influence us, though not always in a good way.
• A survey of social media use in USA published this month shows that Facebook and Twitter usage has plateaued, while Instagram and Pinterest users have doubled.

The Dance to the Free the Arts – photo from Melbourne Web Fest

Cuts to arts council budgets are commonplace, but the news that the Australia Council will see $104.8 million slashed from its budget over the next four years isn’t your usual tale of shifting budget priorities amid tough economic times. What makes this story alarming (instead of just sad) is that the money didn’t disappear from the arts; rather, Arts Minister George Brandis moved it–to a newly established policy, the National Programme for Excellence in the Arts, managed by his own ministry. The Australia Council, founded in 1973, is governed by the principle of arm’s length funding, which allows the council to decide how to allocate the funds it receives from the government. Minister Brandis has long appeared hostile to this principle, having attempted in the past to assert personal control over the Council’s funding decisions. Accordingly, many in the arts community worry the new policy will allow the Minister to pursue his own arts agenda without the checks afforded by peer review, with implications for artistic independence in Australia. The National Programme will focus on funding tours, festivals, endowments and on attracting private sector cultural support, potentially at the expense of smaller, more experimental organizations. Artists across the country have rallied against the budget cuts, signing petitions and staging protests.

Christie’s, Picasso and the Billion Dollar Week: The art world oft goes the way of celebrity, though in May it reached new levels of wealth and grandeur. On Monday, May 11th, Christie’s 35-lot “Looking Forward to the Past” auction raised a jaw-dropping $705.9 million. Among the sales were two works estimated at more than $120 million, including Pablo Picasso’s 1955 painting “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)” which sold for $179.4 million including fees–the highest price on record for a work of art sold at auction. Two days later, the auction house raised an additional $658.5 million worth of pieces at a postwar and contemporary auction, giving Christie’s the first-ever billion dollar week. (Not to be outdone, Sotheby’s raised close to $750 million in the first two weeks of May, at auctions of American-oriented contemporary pieces and Impressionist and Modern art.) Forget the 1%: the stratosphere of wealth on display at Christie’s in May was that of the 0.1%. Since 1997–the last time that Picasso was on the market–the pool of mega-wealthy art buyers has quintupled: a glaring  example of the increasing wealth inequality globally.

Broadband for All: Fresh off his success in classifying broadband internet as a public utility this February, Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler circulated a new proposal to revamp Lifeline, a $1.7 billion subsidy program whose goal is to ensure all Americans have affordable access to telecommunications. Lifeline was created in 1985 under the Reagan administration and at present subsidizes landline and mobile telephone service for some 12 million low-income households. Wheeler’s proposal would allow participants to apply their subsidy to broadband internet as well. Although at $9.25/month the subsidy isn’t enough to cover most plans, as educational, health, employment and other social resources move online, broadband access has become increasingly important and advocates for bridging the digital-divide argue that every little bit helps. Critics of Lifeline and the proposed changes argue the subsidy is wasteful, and plagued by fraud and abuses. A vote has been set for June 18.

Revolt at Actors Equity Association: In April, despite strong opposition from its Los Angeles membership, the Actors Equity Association ordered small theaters in LA County (that’s theaters with fewer than 100 seats) to pay its actors a $9 hourly minimum wage in the somewhat infamous 99 Seat Plan battle. This month, that same membership voted to oust incumbent president Nick Wyman–who presided over the 99 Seat controversy–electing Kate Shindle to the presidency. The win is an upset for an organization where union leaders seeking re-election are almost always reelected. The election outcome is almost definitely the result of the ongoing revolt by the LA contingent, and may just be the first of many steps towards a re-imagined AEA.

Retracted Study Shows How Easy It Is to Fake Data and Get Away With It: In December 2014, Michael LaCour, a political science grad student at UCLA, and Donald Green, a professor at Columbia, published a paper in the journal Science showing that one short but focused conversation with a canvasser could change a person’s opinion with lasting, and contagious effects (in this case, softening or changing one’s opinion of same-sex marriage). The paper’s rigor, scale, and results earned it devoted admirers and mainstream coverage in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, This American Life – even a tweet on Createquity – and launched LaCour’s career all the way to a plum tenure-track job at Princeton. The fairy-tale triumph unraveled quickly this month, however, after fellow graduate students David Broockman and Joshua Kalla reported a number of irregularities in the study, prompting co-author Green to request a retraction. These irregularities included fabricated data, fabricated funding, and a fabricated survey contract–fraud on a scale one would never expect to find in a journal such as Science. The story raises important questions about how many other celebrated studies have never-caught “irregularities” lurking within them, particularly since publicly challenging a peer’s academic work, especially as a jobless graduate student, carries far more career risks than it should.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Kristina Newman-Scott has been appointed Connecticut State’s director of culture.
• Jessica Mele will join the Hewlett Foundation as program officer in the Performing Arts Program in August.
• The Henry Luce Foundation appointed Teresa A. Carbone as program director for American Art, succeeding Ellen Holtzman who held the post for twenty-three years.
• After more than a decade as CEO of the LA Stage Alliance, Terence McFarland will move on to become the associate executive director at Valley Performing Arts Center at California State University in Northridge.
• The Whiting Foundation seeks a Program Assistant. Posted May 3; no closing date.
• The Cultural Data Project seeks a Research Associate. Posted May 7; no closing date.
• The Foundation Center seeks a part time, Special Projects Associate for Glasspockets. Posted May 13; no closing date.
• Exponent Partners seeks a Foundation Practice Manager. Posted May 21; no closing date.
• Ford Foundation is hiring a Director, Creativity and Free Expression. Posted May 26; no closing date.
• The Arts, Culture and Social Justice Network is hiring a part-time Facilitator. Deadline: June 11.
• The League of American Orchestras seeks a Research and Data Manager. No closing date.

 NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• National Endowment for the Arts released “Beyond the Building: Performing Arts and Transforming Place,” a report featuring the outcomes of a 2014 convening of the same name which looked at the performing arts and their role in creative placemaking.
• Several reports this month pointed a spotlight on museums. “New Practices in Digital and Technology” from the Association of Art Museum Directors looks at recent innovative projects at more than forty museums nationally; a second report from Contemporanea looks at the Latino experience in museums.
• The Nonprofit Finance Fund released its annual analysis of the State of the Sector, including a special supplement on arts and cultural nonprofits.
• Foundation Center and Grantmakers in the Arts released an update to their 2005 collaboration, Foundation Funding for Arts Education.
• A report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy reveals that the hype outpaces reality when it comes to private foundations’ investment in impact investing.
• A study by TRG Arts and the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance looking at audience engagement with different arts organizations across Philadelphia finds that loyalty sustains arts communities.
• A study from Richard Florida’s Martin Prosperity Institute finds major differences between “creative” neighborhoods and “science” neighborhoods, calling into question the conflation of these two communities.
• A report from the NAMM Foundation finds that a majority of teachers and parents believes music and arts education is important for children.
• A first-person report published in the journal The Arts in Psychotherapy offers insights into using art therapy to work with radical fighters in Saudi Arabia, including jihadists.
• A recent report from Committee to Protect Journalists focuses, for the first time, specifically on the myriad of threats that cartoonists face worldwide.
• A recent YouGov survey of US citizens has some mildly depressing results concerning the American public’s attitudes towards the visual arts, with “expensive” the most common word respondents associated with them. Also of note – the museum field’s official policy towards deaccessioning is vastly out of step with public attitudes.
• And finally, from outside the arts with implication for within, in August Rebecca Ratner will publish a study in Journal of Consumer Research which makes a case for doing (fun) things solo.