Stars at the NYC Time Warner Building (source: PENTAX Image, Creative Commons)

AT&T is the latest telecommunications giant to try for a merger with the media and entertainment industry as the ink dries on an $85 billion deal with Time Warner Inc. In merging with Time Warner, AT&T would create the largest entertainment company in the nation, surpassing the Walt Disney Co., which acquired ABC in 1995, and Comcast Corporation, who already owns NBCUniversal and Telemundo, and recently picked up DreamWorks Animation for $3.8 billion. Consolidation has been a popular strategy to compete with the growing number of competitors who provide streaming content like Apple and Netflix, but the merger will no doubt draw its fair share of critics. Of particular note is the 2014 deal between Time Warner Cable (a separate company from Time Warner Inc.) and Comcast that cost the two companies $5.5 million before Comcast pulled it off the table in the face of likely opposition from the Department of Justice. The failure of Time Warner’s merger with AOL in 2000 and a slew of other examples further demonstrate how combining telecom and media can be problematic. Given the resistance that the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal inspired from federal regulators for limiting consumer choice, it’s hard to see an easy road ahead for the current merger, and the move is unlikely to cheer advocates for net neutrality given AT&T’s record on the issue.

Video Game Actors Seek Equal Pay. On October 16, representatives from SAG-AFTRA voted unanimously to strike after months of stalemate with key stakeholders in the rapidly growing video game industry. The labor union, which represents an increasing number of voiceover and motion-capture actors providing voices, vocal effects (like grunts and moans), and realistic body images for games, is calling for pay on par with that of motion picture and television actors. Unable to reach an agreement before SAG-AFTRA’s ultimatum, work stopped October 21 on projects put into production within the past eight months. The primary sticking point is residual pay; currently, video game actors received a flat fee while movie actors, for example, get bonus payments based on streaming, downloads and DVD sales. New union boss Gabrielle Carteris, best known for her role as West Beverly High’s academic all-star Andrea Zuckerman on Beverly Hills 90210, has been a surprisingly vocal leader and staunch supporter of the strike, joining the picket lines with SAG-AFTRA’s 160,000 video game actors. Effects of the strike remain to be seen, as gaming companies estimate that only 25% of the total actors working in the industry belong to the union.

The Battle of Bollywood. The seven-decade-long conflict between India and Pakistan has now extended to the small screen. Pakistan removed Indian shows from television and radio in response to a decision from the Indian Motion Picture Producers Association (IMPPA) to cease screening films with Pakistani casts; in addition, the popular Indian film director Karan Johar said he would no longer use Pakistani actors in his films. The moves come at a time of spiking tension between the two countries after a brutal attack on an Indian Army base in Kashmir that killed nearly 20 soldiers (for which Pakistan is blamed). Despite Bollywood’s immense popularity in Pakistan, a 1965 government restriction against Indian films was lifted less than 10 years ago in an effort to increase interest in Pakistani films across the border. While the IMPPA states that its ban is temporary, the organization’s leader has called for a permanent ban and the deportation of Pakistani actors and technicians working the the film industry in India.

Affordable Studio Space for London Artists. With real estate pressures putting a squeeze on artists in hub cities all over the world, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has made good on his promise to do something about it in the UK’s capital. Khan announced the formation of the Creative Land Trust, a pool of public and private funds providing loans to London artmakers who rent studio space and are looking to buy their buildings, among other activities. The move comes two years after the Artists’ Workspace Study, which predicted the loss of artist spaces and, consequently, an exodus of artists out of the country. With the Mayor’s support, the study prompted the formation of Studiomakers, a group of influential entrepreneurs that works with developers and landowners to preserve and create spaces for Londoners to conduct creative practices.

Chaos in the U.S. Copyright Office? Just a few weeks into her new post as Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden removed Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante from the U.S. Copyright Office, assigning her to a new position as special advisor to the Library of Congress on digital strategy. Pallante declined the job and instead filed her letter of resignation. The shift is bringing a wave of concern to creatives, particularly in the music and film industries, who perceived Pallante as a champion for independent artists. Suspicions abound about the circumstances leading to Hayden’s decision to demote Pallante, including evidence that the Motion Picture Association of America aggressively lobbied the Copyright Office to protect its interests.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Billionaire financier David Rubenstein steps into the chairman position at the Smithsonian, adding to his roster of influential positions in Washington arts and culture.
• Croatia’s new Minister of Culture Nina Obuljen Koržinek is pressed to create a cultural sector highlighting inclusivity and diversity with the “Kulturnjaci 2016″ initiative.
• WolfBrown is looking for a full-time Audience Research Program Manager for its San Francisco office.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• The Humanities and Liberal Arts Assessment (HULA) project has developed a new methodology for researching the humanities.
• University of Texas at Dallas’ Professor Stan Liebowitz disputes the findings of a much-cited 2007 article in the Journal of Political Economy that claimed piracy doesn’t impact music sales, bringing specific attention to methodological and data analysis problems.
• New research out of Germany suggests that music training can reduce aggressive behavior in youth. Despite this positive news, a recent Norwegian study claims that musicians are twice as likely to use psychotropic medications, and three times more likely to experience negative mental health symptoms and seek psychotherapy compared to the general population. The effects of music training on the brain are thought to be different than that of dancing, according to a review in NeuroImage.
• Research inspired by Immanuel Kant suggests that while art imitates life, it is perceived differently from representations of reality in the brain.
• A study commissioned by Art Gallery of New South Wales supports the body of evidence recently detailed by Createquity that suggests art alleviates symptoms of dementia by reducing anxiety and increasing “in the moment pleasure.” Good news in light of news that individuals are never too old to experience the benefits of dance.
• Discounted music and theater tickets for disadvantaged children may aid academic performance and self-confidence according to a study by Emer Smyth, research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). Smyth bases this claim on work by ESRI and The Arts Council of Ireland linking artistic engagement with academic self-image.
• Scotland’s a good place for art according to the Scotland Household Survey, which reported an all-time high of 92% of adults engaging with cultural activities in 2015. However, figures are significantly lower in low-income areas of the country.
• A recent study revealed that despite the diversity of the country, arts audiences in United Arab Emirates (UAE) are self-segregating. UAE is not the only country facing challenges expanding audience diversity. In the UK, a survey conducted by ArtsProfessional indicated that perceptions organizations make about their audiences can influence the diversity of the art they produce, further limiting the possibility of attracting diverse audiences.
• An extensive review of the literature on the creative process identified 14 components of creativity. Happiness wasn’t one of them, perhaps indicating that efforts to lead a happier life will not necessarily bolster creative output.
• The English Touring Opera recently conducted research investigating the the role of video content in marketing art. Results indicate that audiences use video content to support their ticket purchases after the fact, rather than motivating them to buy.
• A new report from the UK suggests that cinema broadcasts of plays and musicals could have a positive effect on live performances.

Cables in the Sky – photo by flickr user Crodriguesc

Fourteen months after Comcast announced it would take over Time Warner Cable in February 2014, the $45 billion deal — which would have resulted in a mega-company controlling almost 60% of the broadband market and just under 30% of pay television — is dead. The takeover faced strong opposition from the outset: Netflix, Democratic senators including All Franken and Elizabeth Warren, and 56% of the general American public, among many others, expressed concerns that a bigger Comcast would have too much control over what Americans can do online or watch on TV. Even so, the merger had seemed inevitable until quite recently. First, the FCC issued a “hearing designation order” on April 22, a move that put the merger’s outcome in the hands of an administrative law judge and was seen by all as strong indication that the FCC did not see the deal as being in the public’s interest. After antitrust attorneys for the DOJ — in a conceptual shift — indicated they were prepared to block the deal, Comcast folded. The end came at a price: Comcast reportedly spent $336 million on “transaction-related costs,” and Time Warner another $219 million. Time Warner, for its part, seems to have wasted no time in jumping into bed with a new partner, rekindling merger talks with Charter Communications Inc.

New York City Catches Up With the Times, Orders a Cultural Plan: New York City’s dubious designation of being the only one of the country’s top ten municipalities without a cultural plan is slated to end. The majority-Democrat city council unanimously passed legislation to develop a comprehensive cultural plan this month. The law, introduced in August 2013, tasks the Department of Cultural Affairs with surveying the city’s five boroughs, and establishing a strategy to both meet the specified cultural needs of each community, increase cultural activity and economic impact citywide – all by July 1, 2017. To start, the DCA will establish a Citizens’ Advisory Committee, made up of at least 12 members from diverse cultural and geographic backgrounds, to assist it in soliciting  feedback from citizens and implementing the plan. Meanwhile, in neighboring Boston, recently-elected Mayor Marty Walsh announced the details of his own $1.4 million cultural planning initiative. To start: an eighteen-month survey, nicknamed #BostonCreates, that will look at how different neighborhoods and their citizens define arts and culture.

Small Steps Forward for Arts Education at the Federal Level: This month the Senate’s new draft of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (popularly known as the No Child Left Behind Act) added writing and music to the list of disciplines it defines as “core academic subjects”. (The previous list had included the more general “arts” along with both “English” and “reading or language arts,” but did not explicitly break out writing and music as separate subjects.) In addition, although the bill does not scale back testing requirements, it includes several progressive components, including the clarification that Title I funds can be used for arts education and more holistic language throughout that implies a reduced emphasis on math, science, and language arts. The bill, introduced by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., and dubbed the “Every Child Achieves Act of 2015,” was approved 22-0 by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee in mid-April. Though this is the third time the Senate has tried to reauthorize ESEA in the last several years, it is a positive step towards reauthorizing a bill first introduced in 1965.

LA’s 99-Seat Theaters Ordered to Pay Up: The people spoke, but the Actors Equity Association did not listen. Earlier this month, the AEA ordered small theaters in LA County (that’s theaters with fewer than 100 seats) to pay its actors a $9 hourly minimum wage. The decision came even after the Los Angeles AEA membership — some 3,000 people strong — voted 65.5% to 34.4% against adopting the new wages. In 1987, the AEA formally adopted the so-called “99 Seat Plan,” which allowed union actors to rehearse for up to eight weeks and to perform in up to eight shows in small LA County theaters,  waiving their usual union salaries in return for small stipends. Although at first it seems strange—why would an actor willingly forgo her union benefits?—proponents of the plan argue that the system has been good for actors, and good for theater, allowing difficult plays—those with large casts, or new, and thus risky, works—to be staged for the love of it all, without the pressure of the bottom line. The debate heated up this month, with the #ILove99 camp literally taking to the streets, and prominent names weighing in (largely against the AEA.) In the end, the Actors Equity Association (mostly) stuck to its original plan, and it remains to be seen what effect, if any, the decision will have on LA. In the meantime, it’s worth considering the bigger picture: wealth inequality in the nonprofit theater world (heck, the nonprofit arts world).

FM Radio’s Days Are Numbered: FM Radio was patented in 1933, and although it took the medium four decades to become the international standard, no one would have disputed its dominance. Today, four more decades later, it looks like its days might finally be numbered. On January 11, 2017, Norway will flip the switch on frequency modified broadcasts, transitioning its entire country to digital radio. The move should come as no surprise in a country which boasts of 22 Digital Audio Broadcast stations (and only five FM ones) and where more than half the population listens to digital radio daily. Denmark, Sweden and the UK have made noise about a similar switch. The digital takeover is likely to be slow and meandering in the United States, however, where 92% of folks over 12 listen to terrestrial radio at least once a week. The main reason? The transition to digital would require an act of Congress, and with the majority of US FM stations privately held, we can imagine what might be involved.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Dr. Kathryn (Kit) Matthew, currently Chief Science Educator at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, was nominated by President Obama to lead the Institute of Museum and Library Services in March.
• The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies has appointed Pam Breaux its new CEO, effective July 15.
• Bahia Ramos, currently program director for community foundations at Miami’s John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, will move into the role of arts program director at the foundation.
• June O’Neill has stepped down as executive director of the Philadelphia Cultural Fund after twelve years at its helm. Lois Welk, who led Dance USA/Philadelphia until its recent demise, has been named interim executive director, and a search is underway for O’Neill’s successor.
• Ken Berger, CEO of Charity Navigator, stepped down abruptly last month after its Board decided it needed leadership with more tech expertise.
• The Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation is hiring a Program Assistant. Posted March 30; no closing date.
• The Bohemian Foundation in Fort Collins, CO is hiring a Music Programs Manager. Posted April 2; no closing date.
• The Boston Foundation seeks a Director of Arts and Culture. Posted April 3; no closing date.
• Bolder Giving, based in New York City, seeks an Executive Director. Posted April 14; no closing date.
• The Oregon Community Foundation is accepting applications for an Opportunity Fellow, an 18-month position offered in partnership with the Momentum Fellowship Program at Philanthropy Northwest. Posted April 17; deadline May 15.
• Slover Linett Audience Research is hiring a Chicago-based Associate/Senior Associate. Posted April 17; no closing date.
• CECP, a coalition of CEOs united in the belief that societal improvement is an essential measure of business performance, seeks a Manager, Data Insights. Posted April 24; no closing date.
• Applications for BuzzFeed’s (yes, that BuzzFeed) inaugural Emerging Writers Fellowship program are now open. Deadline is October 1.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• A survey from the Nonprofit Research Collaborative shows that 63% of US nonprofits saw a year-over-year increase in 2014 fundraising revenues, continuing a general upward trend. On the other hand, a new report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy found that across the board, nonprofits are in need of funding to collect and better assess their performance data.
• The Cultural Data Project released a new report, “Bridging the Capacity Gap: Cultural Practitioners’ Perspectives on Data,” looking at the challenges to using data to strengthen nonprofit decision-making. Related, the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits & Philanthropy published a resource guide for implementing a culture of continuous improvement at Head Start and Early Head Start programs, though the insights are applicable broadly.
• DanceUSA reviewed the National Endowment for the Arts’s recent reports on arts engagement, as well as its own audience engagement efforts, in an effort to better understand what works for dance.
• In the world of early education and the arts, three different papers presented at last month’s biennial research conference for the Society for Research in Child Development detail the ways in which the arts have a positive impact on early childhood development.
• Looking at the other end of the life cycle, a new report from the Mayo Clinic shows that making art consistently over the course of one’s life has significant positive cognitive implications in later life.
• The Government Accountability Office released a report indicating that the Library of Congress continues to be behind the digital times, and faults Librarian of Congress James H. Billington for failing to hire a chief information officer, which is required by law.
• According to The Art Newspaper’s annual survey of museum attendance, solo shows at US museums were dominated by artists from five of the world’s biggest galleries, accounting for nearly a third of solo shows between 2007 and 2013.

Brooklyn Museum – by Flickr user Wally Gobetz, Creative Commons license

Following in the footsteps of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Haven, in 2015, New York City will begin issuing municipal identification cards to undocumented immigrants, with an arts-oriented twist. Much like those seen in other cities, New York’s program will allow access to critical services, such as opening a bank account, visiting a medical clinic, and renting an apartment. Based in the idea that the cultural treasures of the Big Apple ought to be available to all, the ID card will also provide free or discounted memberships at 33 of New York’s leading institutions, including the Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA PS1. The cards will be available to any city resident over the age of 14, and thus offer a way for anyone who feels they cannot afford arts and culture — not simply undocumented residents — to participate.

Grantmakers in the Arts Claims a Major Lobbying Success: At the end of August, the Obama Administration announced a $250 million “preschool development” grant competition, part of its efforts to improve preschool access for children below the poverty line. Grantmakers in the Arts’s Arts Education Funders Coalition (AEFC) helped ensure that program participants will receive the same arts exposure as students in the Head Start program. With the arts included as a key “approach to learning,” arts agencies have an opportunity to help design their states’ proposals, work with preschools to select curricula, and augment program offerings at preschools looking to meet the grant’s requirements.

Symphonies and Labor: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Locked Out: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra musicians have been locked out for over a month in a labor dispute, with healthcare benefits and the size of the orchestra itself at stake. An earlier, three-week lockout in 2012, fundraising difficulties, and low government support compared to other cities compound the problems, with the current season canceled through at least November 8. Four weeks into the lockout, CEO and President Stanley Romanstein resigned. Terry Neal, board member and former executive at Coca-Cola, will take the helm until a permanent replacement is found.

Corcoran Gallery of Art Merges with National Gallery and George Washington University: A D.C. judge recently approved the merger of the Corcoran Gallery of Art with the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University (GWU), which will effectively dissolve the Corcoran in a $2 billion deal. Once the oldest privately-supported art museum in the United States, the Corcoran has long struggled against mounting debts, tens of millions in renovations, and a shrinking endowment, and most recently, a lawsuit against the merger. As a result of the merger, approximately 150 staff will likely face layoffs, the National Gallery will absorb most of the Corcoran’s collections, and GWU will take over its College of Arts and Design, offering jobs to all of its full-time faculty.

New Research on Wellbeing & the Arts: The U.K’s All-Party Parlimentary Group for Wellbeing Economics has come out with a major new report on the intersection of arts funding and the wellbeing of the general public. The result of a year-long inquiry and titled “Wellbeing in Four Policy Areas,” the report contains two major findings: first, active participation in the arts has a much greater impact on overall wellbeing than serving as a passive audience member; and second, arts participation has a much larger effect on disadvantaged communities than wealthier, resource-rich areas. The effect on policymaking in the U.K. could be quite notable, as the the report asks arts funders to evaluate the wellbeing impacts of grants to organizations and employ this data to justify government spending.

MUSICAL CHAIRS/COOL JOBS

• The James Irvine Foundation announced Don Howard as the new president and CEO.
• Jim McDonald was named the deputy director and director of programs at Grantmakers in the Arts.
• San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley has announced that he will retire after a 44-year career in opera in 2016.
• Artist Trust has hired Shannon Roach Halberstadt as its new executive director.
• Mayor Martin J. Walsh has named Julie Burros as the new chief of arts and culture for the city of Boston. Burros was formerly head of cultural planning for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.
• The National Endowment for the Arts is looking for a program analyst. Salary: $89-138K, posted September 23, closes October 7.
• The Cleveland Metropolitan School District seeks an arts policy-focused plan manager and partnership manager. Posted August 28, no closing date.
• The Center for Effective Philanthropy is in the market for a research manager in its Cambridge, MA office. Posted August 27, no closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• The NEA has launched its “Exploring Our Town” site, a set of online case studies highlighting its signature creative placemaking program.
• More evidence for the power of young brains on art: a new study in the Journal of Neuroscience provides the first direct evidence that long-term engagement in community music programs enhance the neural processing of speech in at-risk children.
• The Nonprofit Finance Fund released its 2014 State of the Arts & Culture Sector brochure: even as organizations continue to expand and innovate with programs, many remain financially unstable.
• The James Irvine Foundation continues its interest in improving arts participation with a Helicon Collaborative report on the characteristics of organizations that successfully engage diverse audiences.
• Portland’s Regional Arts and Culture Council proves that engaging diverse audiences isn’t just a California thing with its own report.
• In a progress report, Grantmakers in the Arts investigates how funders are using capitalization principles to strengthen cultural organizations’ fiscal health.

• Glenn Beck is at it again: the right-wing broadcaster recently attacked the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture along with the Imagining America initiative on his Internet show, The Blaze. Far from a government agency, the USDAC is a “citizen-powered” art project that hasn’t received any public funding to date. Not one to be deterred by facts, Beck claims the two groups are “America’s newest propaganda machine” attempting to “rewrite our history.”
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art has signed a new lease with the city of New York that clarifies the museum is allowed to charge a suggested admissions fee, and added fees for special exhibitions. A lawsuit filed earlier this year alleged that the Met’s previous lease with the city required the museum to be free to the public five days a week.
• Cultural policy researchers in England are crying foul over Arts Council England’s “long-standing bias” toward organizations based in London, which receive a whopping 82% of funding, and asking it be redistributed proportionally to the population across the country.
• A number of theaters in upstate New York are concerned about the possible opening of several casinos in the area and the potential impact on booking major performers and retaining audiences. The advocacy group Upstate Theaters for a Fair Game is seeking protections from the state to “‘establish a fair and reasonable partnership” between the casinos and the local market.

IN THE FIELD

• The Museum of Modern Art sure is committed to staying on top of digital trends in education: it jumped on the MOOC train early, and now has a new partnership with Khan Academy.
• Two Latino theater companies in New York, Pregones Theater and the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, are getting set to merge with the help of Time Warner and the Ford Foundation. The two performing ensembles will retain their original names under the new organization, but will share resources.
• The Theater for a New Audience has moved into its first permanent home after spending the last 34 years producing shows in a variety of rented spaces around Manhattan. City planners view the completion of the newly constructed theater as “the capstone” to a downtown Brooklyn cultural district long in the making.
• What’s going on with the Brooklyn Philharmonic? The NYC-area orchestra made a splash back in 2011 with a daring programming strategy focused on marrying classical music with other more widely popular genres as well as local composers and artists. But all the positive press and attention the new direction received apparently wasn’t enough to stanch the organization’s financial bleeding.
• While the debate rages on over whether Spotify is good or bad for musicians, YouTube muscles in on its territory by planning a subscription service that would give users on-demand, ad-free access to music videos on their mobile phones.
• Musicians of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra recently voted to break from their local union chapter of the American Federation of Musicians in an unprecedented industry move. The decision was reportedly motivated in part by the “understanding that to be successful as an orchestra in the future, [they] need more flexibility, they need to be nimble, and…unions sometimes get in the way of that.”

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• With 71 percent of projects getting funded (compared to the 43 percent average), the dance community boasts the highest proportion of successful Kickstarter campaigns. Theater clocks in at second place with a 64 percent success rate.  Is this evidence that arts orgs are reaching new supporters – or just swapping money back and forth between their friends?
• Pop quiz: which nonprofit group has successfully  “reduc[ed] its reliance on foundation funding, buil[t] new revenue sources” and is “constantly experimenting and challenging assumptions around who their audience is and what they care about”? Nope, not the arts — nonprofit news outlets.

BIG IDEAS

• Barry Hessenius’s Arts Dinner-vention has wrapped, and the edited video has been posted in seven installments; GIA collects them all on one convenient page. The conversation among some of the leading lights of arts administration explores ideas for the future across three areas: the role of the community, new format and delivery mechanisms, and the artist’s role and artist ecosystems.
• Say you didn’t require a project budget as part of that RFP. What’s the worst that could happen? Michelle Williams calls for grantmakers to trust the artists we work with, and she catalogues some innovative ideas from the GIA 2013 conference.
• Scott Walters has a new blog series examining the history of the regional theater movement by riffing on Todd London’s An Ideal Theater: Founding Visions of a New American Art. London, incidentally, delivered what reads like a doozy of a talk on innovation at the recent National Innovation Summit for Arts + Culture.
• Michael Kaiser’s latest book, The Cycle: A Practical Approach to Managing Arts Organizations takes an optimistic look at the difficult and delicate task of building an arts organization that is effective and strong enough to last.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The National Endowment for the Arts is offering a $30,000 prize for an interactive application that will “make the rich content of the 2012 [Survey of Public Participation in the Arts] more accessible to the public through a series of interactive, visually appealing, and easy-to-use data visualization tools.” Submissions are due February 3.
• A new study by On the Move examines how European cities support “cultural mobility” – the ease with which artists and cultural professionals engage outside their home region.
• In an effort to increase both convenience and access to data on the nonprofit sector, major players Guidestar and the Foundation Center have entered into a strategic partnership meant to “support the field in new and innovative ways.”
• The Whole Schools Initiative in Mississippi reports that 5,000+ students participating in an arts integration program performed significantly better on fourth and fifth grade state assessments than their peers.
• For its Arts, Culture and Audiences week, the American Evaluation Association highlighted assessment practices in arts education with a series of blog posts stressing that assessments can be “hands-on, active learning experiences for students.”
• York University and the National Ballet School in Toronto are partnering to conduct a pilot study with the hopes of providing scientific evidence of the positive mental and physical effects of dance on people with Parkinson’s disease.
• Grantmakers in the Arts’s ongoing research into support for individual artists has generated a crop of admirably detailed case studies of how a nonprofit grantmaker, state agency, private foundation, and family foundation select recipients for their awards to individuals.

• You probably didn’t know it, but your fancy new mobile device is making it more difficult for your favorite local theater company to keep its wireless microphones. The Federal Communications Commission is considering auctioning off two “safe haven” broadcast channels used by wireless mics to commercial wireless providers. Theatre Communications Group led a Capitol Hill briefing in support of keeping the safe haven channels intact and also has a full write up for those looking to get up to speed on the issue.
• Despite being, arguably, the cultural capital of the United States, New York City lacks a formal cultural plan – unlike, for example, Chicago, Austin, and Roanoke, VA. Two NYC Council members have introduced a bill that would change that, forcing the Department of Cultural Affairs to assess the cultural needs of artists and communities on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.
• The Big Apple is also gearing up to choose a new mayor, and candidates on the right and left have expressed a range of support for the arts. Interestingly, all but one (Republican and Democrat) claim to be favor of increasing arts education spending. Any guesses as to which one? (Related: Guy Yedwab and the League of Independent Theatres have a voter guide for artists.)

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The federal copyright office’s Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel stepped down from her position last month. The Future of Music Coalition pays tribute to Espinel’s service.
• The new director of San Diego’s Commission for Arts and Culture, Denise Montgomery, resigned last month after just 44 days in her position stating, “I cannot in good conscience remain part of the Filner administration.” Montgomery was not the first to leave the administration in response to the mayor’s ongoing sexual harassment scandal. By the end of August, Filner himself was forced to resign. His legal troubles continue.
• Farewell to Trevor O’Donnell, who is leaving behind the nonprofit arts – and his lively blog, Marketing the Arts to Death – to focus on his architecture work.

BIG IDEAS

• In advance of the Arts Dinner-vention Project, Devon Smith offers an awesome google-doc-rumination — with a running comment thread — on “a revolution in the arts.” More, please!
• Mark Schubin has created a half-hour video overview of the history of technology solutions in the performing arts, from sound ducts in opera houses to the phonauthograph and beyond.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• “Deaccessioning has always been tricky”: whether it’s public outrage in the UK or legal troubles in Detroit, cashing in on beloved works of art is no easy way out of financial trouble. Meanwhile, the Willem de Kooning Foundation has decided to sell 10 paintings by the late artist to fund a special endowment program. Rather than risk the negative publicity a public sale could garner (see above), the works have been consigned to Gagosian Gallery, who will exhibit the pieces in an upcoming show and whisk them away privately at undisclosed amounts. The Foundation hopes to raise more than $30 million from the sale.
• On the heels of last week’s announcement that Nashville Symphony Orchestra musicians have agreed to a one-year, 15% reduction in salary, Minnesota Orchestra’s union musicians are standing their ground over demands for higher pay. The stalemate could result in the loss of their renowned conductor Osmo Vänskä and cancellations in their concert series this November.

IN THE FIELD

• Barry Hessenius’s annual list of the Fifty Most Powerful and Influential People in Nonprofit Arts is out, with a lot of new names but a conspicuous lack of arts education leaders. Congratulations to all who were mentioned.
• Arts Council Silicon Valley and 1stACT Silicon Valley have merged into a new nonprofit called Silicon Valley Creates. And two of Chicago’s oldest arts education providers, Art Resources in Teaching (A.R.T.) and Urban Gateways, are also merging. A.R.T., which was founded in 1894 — yes, 1894 — was “severely affected by a combination of recession, public policy challenges, and limited philanthropic support,” and its programs will henceforth be considered part of Urban Gateways’s Visual Arts program portfolio.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The NEA and the UMass Arts Extension Service are creating a treasure trove for “research into the history of the field of arts management, with the potential to help influence arts policy on the national level.” The new National Arts Policy Archives and Library (NAPAAL) will be housed at Amherst and made freely available online. Initially, the archive will include key documents from the two partners as well as Americans for the Arts and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, but outreach will continue to make the archives a “comprehensive scholarly resource.”
• Last spring, Americans for the Arts and the Nathan Cummings Foundation held a Funder Exchange on Evaluating Arts & Social Impact. A recently released report summarizes key points of the discussion and a few case studies in innovative evaluation by funders.
• A new study led by Leonid Perlovsky of Harvard University conducted in Quebec documents higher grades among gifted and talented students taking optional music classes; the students increased test performance in all subjects. The research somewhat addresses a common complaint about such studies, which is that the difference in performance might be due to a difference in inherent ability among the students.
• In his “Let’s Turn this Old Barn into a Theater!” series (parts I, II, and III), community development consultant Mike Hickey provides a fascinating and comprehensive summary of the opportunities and challenges for cultural organizations that make the decision to “buy non-cultural facilities and fix them up.” These findings are the result of a case study of so-called “adaptive reuse” for NOCD-NY.
• Researchers in England report that European artists are more satisfied with their jobs than non-artists – despite higher rates of unemployment and lower income levels. Earlier research found a similar effect in the United States. (Interestingly, British artists themselves report about average job satisfaction.)
• Video games for 70-and-80-somethings may become all the rage. Research out of the University of San Francisco indicates that video games can help improve attention and focus in healthy older adults.
• The MacArthur Foundation has released the findings from  its recent review of the MacArthur Fellows Program, claiming the study reaffirms the program’s positive impact on the professional lives of award recipients and the engaged public. The Foundation also announced its decision to increase the fellows’ living stipend, upping it to $625,000 paid out over five years.
• Britain is due for its decennial census next year, but officials are considering two alternatives to the classic Big Data survey: shifting it online or scrapping it entirely and relying on existing data from other sources. The goal is to reduce the $1.10 per person per year cost. Take note: the per-capita cost in the US is almost four times as high.
• The deadline to apply for an NEA Research: ArtWorks grant is coming up November 5, and Program Analyst Melissa Menzer has some helpful tips for potential applicants.

• The Future of Music Coalition’s Casey Rae recaps current policy on orphan works (i.e., creations under copyright but whose owners no longer exist), and outlines a solution that protects the original author/performer in such cases. Casey’s post has instructions if you want to file supporting or additional comments with the Copyright Office.
  
• With all the headline grabs about cuts to public funding, we don’t hear enough about the politicians that really do support the arts, who often do so behind the scenes. Guy Yedwab shares some observations from a speech by outgoing Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who is now running for city Comptroller.
• California is changing some of its rules for fiscal sponsors.
• Kaid Benfield writes on the increasingly unchecked, government-like powers of local homeowners’ associations.
• Rocco Landesman writes a postcard from retirement; Doug Borwick reflects on his tenure at the NEA.
• I realized last week, to my embarrassment, that the NEA’s official Art Works blog had not been showing up in my Google Reader feed since this past August. This happens sometimes when content providers move to a new platform and change their feed URL – there’s no way for subscribers to know unless you put up a notice on the old feed telling them to resubscribe at the new address. We’ve seen this at ArtsJournal as well as the blogs there have slowly migrated from Moveable Type to their new WordPress platform. If you’re subscribed to any of these blogs in Google Reader, check to make sure you’re still getting updates! I keep a list of such feed changes at my blogroll. Anyway, here are some of the fun pieces at Art Works that I missed over the past few months because of this:
  • Steven Shewfelt and Ellen Grantham describe a new pilot initiative to assess the artistic excellence of activities funded by the NEA, after the fact.
  • Elizabeth Miller interviews Rachel Cain and Anthony Radich about WESTAF’s Public Art Archive software.
  • Sunil Iyengar analyzes the new SNAAP report, “Painting with Broader Strokes,” and another report from the National Center for Education Statistics. (Would be nice to have links to those in the post…)
  • An interview with NEA Acting Chair Joan Shigekawa. Here’s a previous interview with Deepa Gupta, who serves on the National Council of the Arts and was formerly an arts program officer with the MacArthur Foundation.
  • Rich Heeman describes the NEA’s recent efforts at improving data collection and transparency practices.
  • Shewfelt reflects on creativity in arts research, the NEA’s arts research grants program, and arts-related changes to the General Social Survey.
  • Julie Heizer shares an update on the federal government’s national tourism and marking strategy, and details how arts organizations can get involved.

IN THE FIELD

• Michael Kaiser announces his planned departure as head of the Kennedy Center. No word on what’s next for him.
• Four dance companies in Chicago are coming together to share marketing and customer service responsibilities. I’m not sure if the model is as unusual as they seem to think it is, but it’s still one to watch for those interested in shared services as a cure for the 501(c)(3) blues.
  

BIG IDEAS

• The perspectives on race and the arts continue to roll in, with responses from Jon Silpayanamant, Linda Essig, Doug Borwick, and this particularly trenchant one from Trevor O’Donnell (I’d love to get him and Borwick in a room together!). Another lens on this whole thing is a geographic one; a lot of the initial discussion came from people on the West Coast, and the rhetoric in the Clayton Lord post that I originally responded to, arguing that institutions had a moral responsibility to have audiences that looked like their local communities, struck me as very California way of looking at the issue. For better or worse, the powers that be in the East have largely not been pressuring arts nonprofits to diversify with the same ferocity, seemingly for worse in this particular case.
• Oh, and in case anyone was under the illusion that this was only an issue in the United States: “Salvador, with a welcoming Atlantic harbor, was the first capital of Brazil. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, until Brazil ended slavery in 1888, it was the largest port in the New World for the slave trade, and 80 percent of the city’s current population is Afro-Brazilian….African-rooted rhythms propel much of Brazilian popular music. Yet the prime-time face of carnaval is almost entirely white.”
• Seth Godin on the NFL vs. the arts (a subject that came up in other forums as well): “The new media giants of our age (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.) don’t point everyone to one bit of content, don’t trade in mass. Instead, they splinter, connecting many to many, not many to one. The cultural touchstones we’re building today are…mostly not for everyone. Instead, the process is Tribes -> Connections/communities -> Diverse impact….[W]e build our lives around cultural pockets, not cultural mass. Our job as marketers and leaders is to create vibrant pockets, not to hunt for mass.”
• Chad Bauman on the formula for subscription success: “great artistic product + best seats + best price + outstanding customer service = more subscribers.”
• “What exactly is the dividing line between respecting your audience’s taste and shameless pandering?” Adam Huttler considers by examining the case of Netflix’s new show House of Cards, which represents a $100 million bet on algorithmically-determined original programming.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Some great resources for measuring the impact of advocacy work.
• Peter Pennekamp (former president of the Humboldt Area Foundation) and Anne Focke consider community democracy as a tool for philanthropy in this occasional paper for the Kettering Foundation.
• Over at the Nonprofit Finance Fund blog, Anjali Deshmukh and Rachel Heitler analyze an evaluation of the Violence Against Women Act. Very interesting reading for those interested in understanding how to bring these concepts to arts policy analysis.
• Southern Methodist University is launching a new Center for Arts Research.
• A new electronic journal from Scotland examines creativity and human development. And speaking of journals, issue #2 of Artivate, the journal for entrepreneurship in the arts, is out.
• An entire webinar on data visualization for philanthropy.
• An interesting take on network effects in the fashion industry.

So hooray for all that! And now to our regularly scheduled programming…

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• Remember the item a while back about patent trolls? Rachael Wilkinson at the Technology in the Arts blog alerts us to a very disturbing case of a troll targeting an arts organization, in this case a theater in Connecticut for using the “Tweet Seats” concept. Looks like it’s time for arts organizations to speak up for patent reform.
• Federal arts education standards do make a difference in practice.
• Danielle Brazell of Arts for LA writes about bringing the arts into the upcoming Los Angeles mayoral election.
• Don’t miss this fantastic interview between Barry Hessenius and NEA Chief of Staff Jamie Bennett, one of my favorite people in the arts (and you’ll soon see why in the interview). Side note: I had no idea that Jamie served on the board of a group called the “No-Pants Theatre Company,” but that is just awesome.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The Cultural Data Project finally has a new CEO to lead its transition to an independent nonprofit: Beth Tuttle, a consultant with METStrategies.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• One of the big trends I’ve been seeing over the last decade, and that I think we’ll see accelerate in the next, is the slow migration of low-profit enterprises with social value – think jazz venues, record labels, newspapers/journalism providers – to a nonprofit context. That trend includes independent bookstores, and this article from the Toronto Globe and Mail explains why.
• More food for thought on the economics of music streaming.
  

IN THE FIELD

• Catherine Michna has only been a blogger for two weeks, but this post on “how NOT to be a gentrifier with your theater” in New Orleans is certainly a way to make an impression.
• This is some truth right here: “[International Art English] often ‘insists on art’s subversive potential.’ Popular terms include: radically, interrogates, subverts, void, tension. Much contemporary art does have a disquieting quality, but there can be something faintly absurd about artists in Mayfair galleries playing up their iconoclasm for super-rich collectors.”
• The Sacramento Philharmonic and Sacramento Opera will merge into the Sacramento Region Performing Arts Alliance, following a model pioneered by the Utah Symphony | Utah Opera and the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance. The article has a helpful rundown of recent mergers in the performing arts and what people are saying about them.
• Dallas Shelby at the National Arts Strategies blog: “As in politics, the key to increasing the power of your mandate is to increase the amount of stakeholders’ engagement more than they increase their expectations.“
• My Fractured Atlas colleague Tim Cynova is up at Hyperallergic discussing 7 ways to build a sustainable art career this year. (I can take credit for the “Well-Informed Arts Professional” bit.)

BIG IDEAS

• A fascinating and lengthy essay by Trevor Butterworth on Big Data and its associated necessity, Big Criticism (or as he terms it, Big Crit). Worth a read in full.
• Last month, Jacquelyn Strycker explored the artistic side of food, including the new creations coming out of the field of molecular gastronomy. Elizabeth Merritt from the Center for the Future of Museums considers another angle: the potential intersection between food and 3D printing.
• Doug Borwick offers a very helpful definitional boundary distinguishing community engagement (by arts institutions) from the more commonly-used term audience engagement.
• Bill Ivey is out with a new book (Handmaking America), and Russell Willis Taylor has the scoop.

RESEARCH CORNER

• In which all of our stereotypes about kids and music preferences are shown to be true.
• New research from the Netherlands suggests a link between practicing a musical instrument and lower blood pressure.
• We talk a lot about arts organizations needing to diversify their audiences, but that conversation is all too often painted in frustratingly broad strokes. Clay Lord is experimenting with some ways to lend a bit more definition.
• Interesting visualization and analysis of age demographics in US cities, courtesy of the Urban Institute and Atlantic Cities.
• How the Hewlett Foundation is thinking about evaluation these days (and, as Lucy Bernholz notes, a victory for transparency).
• Wow! The Foundation Center, GuideStar, and Urban Institute collectively spend close to $2 million annually to extract and upload nonprofit form 990 data into databases. A new report from the Aspen Institute argues that the government should have nonprofits fill out those forms online so that they’ll be in a database already, and then make the contents of that database publicly available.
• A new survey and report basically find that a significant portion of nonprofit development directors hate their jobs.

ETC.

• John E. Craig, Jr. explains the whys, hows, and what nexts of foundation archiving (part 1; part 2).
• What is there to say about this amazing article covering the Portland karaoke scene, other than read the whole thing? So many gems in this one, but just to whet your appetite:
  

  Portland does have dozens of karaoke bars, and over the course of six nights we did our best to visit them all. I sang Lee Ann Womack in a honky-tonk in far southeast Portland, Kanye West in a comedy club and INXS in a Chinese restaurant. I watched Emilie, my seven-months-pregnant sister-in-law, sing Melanie’s “Brand New Key” onstage at Stripparaoke night at the Devils Point, a teensy, low-ceilinged club on a triangular lot well outside Portland’s downtown, while a topless dancer worked the pole next to her. Afterward, the dancer — whose bare stomach featured a tattoo of a vividly horrible shark and the word REDRUM — gave Emilie a sweet hug.

  And…

  Chopsticks III: How Can Be Lounge is located between a heavy-equipment rental shop and a Hanson pipe factory. It’s the kind of awful nightspot where if your watch was broken, you could keep time by the diminishing height of the melting heap of ice dumped in the urinal in the men’s room. When the heap of ice read 10:00, Chopsticks III was jammed with 50 people or more: groups of women out for a night away; a dwarf with an Afro who submitted his power ballads under the stage name Micro; a group of four buddies whose Monday-night karaoke club requires them to sing any song a friend challenges them to, blind. Also, a troupe of puppeteers from a local children’s theater, their snakes, ducks and cowgirls laid carefully across a table in the back of the bar.

  This was puppet karaoke.

  And my favorite…

  Correction: January 23, 2013

  An earlier version of this article  referred incorrectly to a puppet that appeared in a show at a local karaoke club. It is known as Señor Serpiente, not Señora Serpiente.

• Two bills under consideration by Congress would adjust the music licensing rates paid by internet streaming radio services like Rdio, MOG, and Spotify to match what cable and satellite providers pay.

IN THE FIELD

• Artists often neglect to realize that crowdfunding campaign money isn’t free – in addition to the fees you have to pay Kickstarter or one of its competitors like Indiegogo or RocketHub, the perks offered to donors often cost money as well. This handy web toy from Reuben Pressman helps you think through how much money you really need to raise if you’re thinking about starting a Kickstarter campaign (or really any crowdfunding operation).
• Still not seeing a ton of post-recession nonprofit mergers, but here’s one in New York City: the Urban Arts Partnership has acquired the operations of the Manhattan New Music Project, which had recently won several large Department of Education grants for arts residencies for special-needs students.
• Nina Simon takes on public voting for winners in art competitions, noting that only a small percentage of those eligible actually take the time to vote. She sees positive implications for engagement but possibly negative ones for artistic integrity; I see further evidence for the need for a hybrid approach.
• Typical: just as games (including video games) are being touted as the next big new thing in arts circles, in the rest of the world their business model is collapsing.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Barry Hessenius has a short interview with Regina Smith, Senior Program Officer for Arts and Culture at the Kresge Foundation and Board Chair of Grantmakers in the Arts.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Creative placemaking giant ArtPlace has been busy lately. Now accepting applications for its third round of grants (letters of inquiry are due tomorrow, November 1 UPDATE: deadline has been extended to Monday, November 5), the funding collaborative released a short thought piece detailing thirteen “principles for successful creative placemaking” in late summer.  And earlier this month, ArtPlace “soft launched” its vibrancy indicators, a research effort accompanying its two-rounds-and-counting of creative placemaking grants. While the indicators aren’t totally done yet – data points covering value creation and racial/economic diversity have yet to be fully defined or published, and a promised website showing vibrancy in various corners of the country has not yet materialized – these two documents provide the most detail available to date on ArtPlace’s efforts to understand and measure creative placemaking. Andrew Taylor and Linda Essig offer initial reviews, and stay tuned to this space for more in-depth analysis from a special guest.
• The fall issue of the Grantmakers in the Arts Reader has a very interesting feature taking a look back at historical research studies that, in the opinion of guest editor Alexis Frasz, deserve a second look. One of the studies in question is a re-release of 1988’s “Autopsy of an Orchestra: An Analysis of the Factors Contributing to the Bankruptcy of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra Association” by Melanie Beene, Patricia Mitchell, and Fenton Johnson, now available for the first time in digital format. Each study comes with two responses, one from an “established” and one from an “emerging” grantmaker. Other studies (re)considered include Gifts of the Muse (Createquity’s take here), “Art and Culture in Communities: Unpacking Participation,” “Crossover: How Artists Build Careers Across Commercial, Nonprofit and Community Work,” and “Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning.”
• WolfBrown researcher Jennifer Novak-Leonard declares crowdfunding the fourth mode of arts participation (the other three being arts creation/performance, arts engagement through media, and attendance at arts events). Quoth she: “I also suggest that this information [about the relationship between crowdfunding activity and other modes of arts participation] would be valuable to each of the platforms currently helping crowd-funding grow and thrive. This is a shameless pitch to these platforms to engage in dialogue with me about how to get this research effort underway… ideally in a timeframe that would inform and expand the conversations that will begin in 2013 as we begin to see the results from the 2012 [Survey of Public Participation in the Arts].”
• The Foundation Center’s march toward establishing a data standard for grants continues, with 15 foundations now having signed on to share their grants data publicly via the Glasspockets website. Among the arts supporters participating in the initiative are the Annenberg, Getty, Hewlett, MacArthur, and Rockefeller Foundations.
• The UK’s Mark Robinson offers his take on the NEA’s new “system map” and research agenda, “How Art Works.”
• Cool social network visualization here: the Seattle Band Map illustrates connections between musical acts via shared band members or project collaborations.
• Direct mail advertising campaigns are getting a bad rap, and research shows that they’re surprisingly effective at reaching consumers, says TRG’s Will Lester.
• William Baumol has a new book out summarizing his decades of thinking on cost disease. Joe Patti has more.
• “Back in 2001, when it started, economists would not have predicted Wikipedia’s success; nor can they really explain it now.“
• Great Q&A with Nate Silver (one of my blog heroes) about his upcoming book about forecasting. A couple of choice quotes:
  

  Q. When predictions involve human ‘systems’ & behavior (social, economic, political etc) that are by their very nature ‘adaptive’, how do you deal with the tricky “Heisenberg Principle” — like effect where the very act of predicting itself becomes a factor that adds information that alters the system and influences individual and/or collective behavior? –John

  A. This is a gigantic problem. In the book, we discuss how consumers, politicians, and businesses make plans based on economic forecasts that can have a host of problems. We also look at how this manifests in disease modeling. If you accurately forecast a very bad flu, it may cause people to stay home, which is good but cancels your forecast. But, the forecast served its purpose because it made people aware of their circumstances.

  and

  Q. What’s your assessment of economics as a discipline, judged in terms of its ability to make politically useful predictions? For example, can economists predict with any reliability what the economic impact of a tax cut or a government spending program will be? –Dan Schroeder

  A. The view of macroeconomic prediction in the book is pretty harsh. Economists have shown no real ability to predict a recession more than six months out. See the Wall Street Journal panel that predicted there would be no recession in December, 2007. It’s hard to measure the economy. Revisions can be as substantial as 5% in some quarters. Therefore, it is hard to predict and judge what the right policy is and what the implications of any policy are. So, we should be skeptical of anyone who predicts the impact of policy with a high degree of certainty. Humility is key.

• Mike Boehm has more on the important role California’s soon-to-be-defunct community redevelopment agencies have had in shaping Los Angeles’s cultural development.
• Gene Takagi provides this extremely helpful dispatch from a session on new “hybrid” legal forms such as the Benefit Corporation and L3C.
• Culture360 has published a helpful two–part history and analysis of cultural policy in South Korea.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The Hewlett Foundation has a new President – and just like the last one, he’s a former dean of the Stanford Law School.
• Guidestar’s CEO, Bob Ottenhoff, is moving on.
• The Tennessee Arts Commission has announced Anne Pope as its new executive director.
• Welcome Sarah Lovan, new arts program officer for the McKnight Foundation.

BIG THOUGHT

• I’ve been thinking about transparency a lot lately. It’s harder than it looks, but here are two recent examples I find admirable from two organizations that have been committed to transparency from the beginning. First, the open embrace on the part of the Center for Effective Philanthropy of ways it can improve its flagship product, the Grantee Perception Reports. And second, a fairly devastating report from GiveWell on the progress of its #1 charity recommendation from 2010, VillageReach (to which I was one of many donors). The latter seems especially dicey at first, but GiveWell goes out of its way to praise VillageReach’s continued commitment to collecting and reporting data on its activities and adds, “we always prefer discouraging observations to no observations.”
• Lisa Bernholz lauds David Sasaki of the Omidyar Network for committing to blogging about every grant he makes. But Omidyar still lags behind on other transparency standards, as Glasspockets points out.
• You’re going to be reading a lot more about the term “Collective Impact” this year, I predict. Nonprofit consultants FSG, who coined the term last year in an article for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, write about their choice not to trademark the name.
• Michael Eisen, co-founder of the open access publisher PLoS (Public Library of Science), opines on why the academic publishing model hinders scientific progress. (And yes, research on the impact of the arts, lest we forget, counts as science.)
• Check out these fun videos of “culture warriors in their native habitat” discussing Harvard Business School case studies, courtesy of Fractured Atlas Deputy Director Tim Cynova.

BIG MONEY

• The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation looks to become a major new player in visual arts philanthropy.
• NYC arts institutions will receive $100 million from Brooke Astor’s estate.
• It turns out that a portion of ArtPlace’s funding, which comes from a handful of major arts foundations, is restricted geographically to the areas that those foundations serve, leading to a disproportionate focus in some regions vs. others. While this revelation won’t be a shock for those who know the foundations in question – Knight, for example, has a particularly idiosyncratic geographic reach arising from the Knight family’s historical connections to newspapers in specific markets – it’s not going to be much comfort to the applicants who faced higher odds because of it, and reveals the challenges of relying on a patchwork of arts funders to create a truly national agenda.

IN THE FIELD

• Cute advertising conceit for a symphony concert plays on desperate fundraising campaigns.
• Is the Colorado Symphony following through on its supposedly transformative business plan? Inquiring minds want to know.
• The SAG-AFTRA merger is finally complete.
• I always appreciate interviews with artists in which they are candid about their economic circumstances and how they make money (or don’t). Jen Dziura has a nice one with musician Kim Boekbinder in the Grindstone.
• Barry Hessenius has a good interview with Doug Borwick, president of the Association of Arts Administration Educators.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The NEA is out with a new study from arts education researcher James Catterall finding that at-risk youth with “arts-rich” educational experiences outperform their peers on various metrics of success. Almost simultaneously, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released updated numbers from its Fast Response Survey System covering K-12 arts education, a congressionally mandated study. Sunil Iyengar offers a first read of the result; Janet Brown expresses some skepticism at the numbers.
• The Pennsylvania-based Education Policy and Research Center has a report out providing arts education policy recommendations for state leaders.
• Survey fatigue is a real and growing problem for researchers who want to get information directly from customers, audience members or stakeholders.

• Americans for the Arts CEO Bob Lynch has been appointed to the US Travel and Tourism Advisory Board. The advisory board “consists of up to 32 members that advise the Secretary of Commerce on government policies and programs that affect the U.S. travel and tourism industry, offers counsel on current and emerging issues, and provides a forum for discussing and proposing solutions to industry-related problems.”
• Sarah Lutman, CEO of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, which has made waves recently with some field-leading audience engagement initiatives, is stepping down at the end of the month.
• Margit Rankin is the new director of Seattle’s Artist Trust.

GETTING HITCHED

• In 2010, the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA) took on back office services for the financially troubled Columbus Symphony Orchestra, building a shared services empire that already included several theaters and has since added Opera Columbus. Now, another Ohio city, Dayton, is taking the concept a step further: the three “SOB” organizations (symphony, opera, ballet) are merging into the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance. The new organization is billing itself as a “first-in-the-nation” entity.
• Two of Hollywood’s largest unions, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, are set to merge.
• The city of Abu Dhabi is combining its culture and tourism entities into one agency.

GETTING ENGAGED

• Check out this dialogue vehicle created by blogger and theater-maker Guy Yedwab. The second video is particularly interesting, as it combines audience responses to the Broadway show Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and an event designed to question the depiction of Andrew Jackson in the musical. So the video basically makes what was a one-way dialogue bidirectional.
• Joe Patti ponders what it might look like to get arts organizations engaged in arts advocacy campaigns in a deeper way.
• Wait – so Nina Simon’s a boxer too? Could this woman possibly get any cooler? (In seriousness, that’s a very wise post on audience engagement linked there.)

IN THE FIELD

• The Wallace Foundation has made a $4 million mega-investment in arts education on behalf of the Boston public school system. The local education nonprofit EdVestors has been leading the fundraising charge for this initiative, a nice example of a non-arts organization recognizing the value of the arts.
• Michael Kaiser sees dollar signs for American arts fundraisers in Europe and Asia.
• Seemed like a nice idea at the time, but a number of artists are finding that the value proposition of streaming services like Spotify just isn’t there for them and are pulling their tracks from the service.

CONFERENCES AND TALKS

• Rosetta Thurman has a great list of 10 national nonprofit conferences with registration fees under $500, and I was glad to see the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention on there. (I wouldn’t be that surprised to learn that these are all conferences she’s speaking at, by the way.)
• Materials from last October’s 5th Annual World Arts Summit in Melbourne, Australia are now available online, including a summary report of the proceedings and full transcripts of the three-plus days of panels and keynotes – Rocco Landesman was one of the presenters. I’m often struck in reading about international arts policy gatherings how different the tone and content are from American conferences; they are generally more serious/academic and concerned with very different issues, particularly cultural preservation and globalization. Worth a skim if you have the time.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Two book reviews: the NEA’s Sunil Iyengar has a nice analysis of Stanford professor Robert Flanagan’s new book on the economics of symphony orchestras, and Elizabeth Quaglieri takes on Nina Simon’s The Participatory Museum.
• What makes a street beautiful? OpenPlans.org is trying to put some data to this question by asking website visitors to engage in a sort of HotOrNot-style comparison of images from Google Street View. Try it: it’s kind of addictive, and will also teach you a lot about your own urban aesthetics.
• Have you ever been in a brainstorming session in which you’re told to “just get as many ideas out as you can,” withholding criticism of any of them? I was just in one of those earlier this month at the Yale School of Management Philanthropy Conference. And yet that same week, Jonah Lehrer had published a fascinating takedown of the brainstorming concept in the pages of the New Yorker. His piece is worth reading in full, but in a nutshell a number of studies of brainstorming effectiveness have concluded that it doesn’t really add value over and above people working alone – and that instead, creativity comes from just the right amount of clash and debate between people with diverse perspectives and backgrounds. The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Phil Buchanan, for one, says he’s seen the light.

BEYOND THE ARTS

• Yikes! The International Humanities Center, a fiscal sponsor representing some 200 projects worldwide, imploded in scandal over the holidays, causing the evaporation of more than $1 million in donations intended mostly for grassroots activist activities. Some great investigative reporting by Nonprofit Quarterly‘s Rick Cohen in that article.
• Ever wondered how many L3Cs there are in the United States? Turns out there are a little over 550; here’s a helpful breakdown and list by state.
• I have to say, I cracked up at these nerdtastic economist Valentines by Elisabeth Fosslein, writing in response to the #FedValentines Twitter meme. Well done!