ART AND THE GOVERNMENT The IRS has proposed a new Form 1023-EZ, which would allow some smaller organizations to apply for tax-exempt status with much less hassle. The National Association of State Charity Officials has objected out of a belief that completing the longer form is an important educational experience and a fear that applicationsRead More
To save Detroit Institute of Arts, no cost too great?
Since last May, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) has been at the center of bankruptcy negotiations between the beleaguered City of Detroit and a myriad of creditors and pensioners to whom a staggering $18 billion is owed. When Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s state-appointed emergency manager, included the museum’s art collection among city assets available forRead More
The Virtues and Pitfalls of Open Contests
An interesting back and forth on “contest philanthropy” took place recently in the pixel-pages of Stanford Social Innovation Review between Mayur Patel, the wunderkind VP of Strategy and Assessment for the Knight Foundation, and Kevin Starr, managing director of the Mulago Foundation. Patel started things off in July with a blog post on six reasonsRead More
Around the horn: Angela Merkel edition
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT With a rare, wide-open mayoral race underway, Boston’s arts community has come together to assert some political sway of its own. The new advocacy coalition MassCreative organized a nine-candidate forum that actually pushed back a televised debate. The primary is today. North Carolina’s Randolph County just banned Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man from school libraries followingRead More
Around the horn: stop and frisk edition
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT The Future of Music Coalition has a great roundup of takeaways from a recent congressional hearing on copyright law and the technology sector. Big ones include the very different challenges posed by copyrights versus patents, and that for the most part, technology companies don’t see copyright restrictions as stifling their ability to innovate.Read More
Around the horn: Pesach edition
AR T AND THE GOVERNMENT One artist’s activism on immigration and visa reform (he’s banned from entering the USA for 10 years because of a paperwork snafu). The Obama administration has announced three new members of the National Council on the Arts, the body that oversees the NEA. Here are interviews with Maria Rosario Jackson, Emil Kang and Paul Hodes.Read More
Around the horn: Four more years edition
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT As you know, there was an election last week, and Barack Obama won it. Thankfully this means that Barry Hessenius’s worst fears about the NEA likely won’t be realized, but Barry does have some useful advocacy advice that is worth a read regardless of the outcome. Ted Johnson has a helpful pre-electionRead More
On Michael Kaiser and Citizen Critics
Michael Kaiser is so hit or miss. Last week he published this truly unfortunate commentary on the slow death of professional arts criticism, and the rise of citizen critics as a result: [T]he growing influence of blogs, chat rooms and message boards devoted to the arts has given the local professional critic a slew of competitors….Many artsRead More
Around the horn: Donald Trump edition
I’m happy to announce that I will be speaking in Chicago this Saturday, May 7 at David Zoltan’s TEDxMichiganAve event (you can buy tickets here). The talk is tentatively titled “Never Heard of ‘Em: Citizen Curators and Who Gets to Be an Artist,” and I will be synthesizing themes from my post on artistic marketplaces,Read More
Listening vs. doing
[originally published at Orchestra R/Evolution] As I mentioned the other day, I think it’s critical that artists put forth their art into the world in a way that reflects their authentic selves. So what does that mean for orchestras? I mean, let’s be honest for a second: aren’t there some, even plenty of orchestras whoRead More