• Joan Mondale, wife of former Vice President Walter Mondale and known to many as “Joan of Art” for her arts advocacy efforts, passed away February 3.
• After April 6, cracking jokes in the UK will become a little easier. A new UK regulation allows for the use of parts of original copyrighted material if used for parody, caricature, or pastiche.
• Over at ARTSblog, Ciara McKeown argues municipalities are commissioning too many permanent public art pieces, and suggests public art programs “generate goals that are not defined as permanent or temporary, but that are about people and experiences.”
• Well, this is one way to make it as a DIY band: Canadian electro-industrial rockers Skinny Puppy have invoiced the Pentagon for $666,000 for the unauthorized use of their music during interrogations at Guantanamo.
• Confused about the ins and outs of all those visual art lawsuits of the past few years? Daniel Grant has a detailed overview over at Hyperallergic.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Geoffrey Canada, the charismatic face of one of the most ambitious and widely watched education and anti-poverty initiatives in the country, is leaving the Harlem Children’s Zone after two decades at its helm. He will be succeeded by Anne Williams-Isom, the organization’s current Chief Operating Officer.
• The William Penn Foundation has found its new leader: Peter J. Degnan, Vice Dean of Finance and Administration at the Wharton School. The foundation’s new structure (his title is “managing director”) will allow him to “focus on aligning interconnected organizational functions, including strategic grantmaking, knowledge-building, and community engagement.”
• Ron Ragin will jump coasts from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to become the first arts program officer for the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
• The National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University recently appointed Kate D. Levin, former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, as its first fellow. As part of role, Levin will be responsible for raising the center’s visibility and providing input on its research. Levin will continue in her new position with Bloomberg Associates, a consulting firm founded by the former Mayor that advises local governments around the world.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The Artist Pension Trust controls some 40,000 works of contemporary art as part of a risk-pooling retirement plan for the artists themselves. As it begins to sell some of them off in its tenth year, dealers express concern about the effect on the market – and others question whether the plan can possibly make money.
• Arts funders, take note: the New York-based F.B. Heron Foundation has ceased requiring its grantees to submit reports, moving instead to a “outside, cooperative data warehouse” to provide real-time information. It’s also transformed its structure and operations to maximally integrate investing with grantmaking. President Clara Miller’s annual letter describes the nuts and bolts of the foundation’s ambition to maximize the social return from every dollar in its corpus.
• Foundation transparency is all the rage this month. It emerged as a major theme in a recent arts funders’ convening on failure hosted by NYC’s The Field. GrantCraft published a new guide with tips for funders interested increasing the transparency of their day to day work. And the new site Inside Philanthropy targets potential grantees with eye-catching headlines (“Find Out How You Can Get $10,000 From the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation”), and offers subscribers insight into individual program officers’ giving preferences. It also exposes staff email directories and allows anonymous Yelp-style reviews.

IN THE FIELD

• The National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) has been hard at work drafting new national arts standards for K-12 classrooms. These standards are rad for a number of reasons, most importantly 1) because they are aligned to the Common Core, and 2) they bring us into the 21st century by including media arts as a distinct discipline. A final draft of the standards is up for final public review through February 28; get on over and check them out.
• The New England Foundation for the Arts has launched a new directory mapping artists, “creative businesses” and cultural nonprofits across six states.
• Following an encouraging trend started last year, issues of race and diversity continue to spur conversation, with HowlRound devoting a week of blog posts to asking whether or not “a white person can write, adapt, direct, or perform stories from a different culture or race.” Meanwhile, new studies on how perceptions of an individual’s race change over time underscore race as a social construct.
• Even better than talk, though, is action, and there’s good news on that front: Detroit’s Sphinx Organization and management agency IMG Artists have a budding partnership aimed at creating greater diversity among classical musicians while broadening audiences for classical music. Stay tuned for the first trial run at this summer’s Napa Valley Festival del Sole where the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra will perform.

BIG IDEAS

• We’ve mulled whether computers can generate art, but a related question is whether computer programmers are artists when they dabble in code. A novelist makes an eloquent case that they are.
• Been a while since your last nerdgasm? Read up on social physics, which explores how ideas flow, evolve, and (we hope!) improve within communities — and asks whether “our hyperconnected world may be moving toward a state in which there is too much idea flow.”

RESEARCH CORNER

• Following up on the first-ever official count of the arts’ contribution to the GDP, the NEA has released more detailed estimates for individual industries, including a breakout of performing arts groups by tax-exempt status. (Most of the $526 million added by dance comes from non-profits; most of $407 million from circuses is pure capitalism.)
• Southern Methodist University’s National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) released a study claiming that, contrary to the insinuations of Republican lawmakers, NEA doesn’t simply represent a “wealth transfer” from poorer to wealthier citizens. Michael Rushton, however, argues that the study doesn’t succeed in the argument because it looks at wealth at the level of the community, preventing firm conclusions about the wealth of individual attendees of NEA-sponsored arts. The comments on Rushton’s article contain a lively methodological debate if you like that sort of thing. In other news, NCAR officially launched its inaugural report (originally reported by Createquity back in December) on the health of U.S. arts and cultural organizations; the event was webcast by HowlRound TV.
• A new study from the College Art Association shows that visual arts professionals – scholars, curators, publishers – don’t understand fair use, and they avoid or abandon projects because of it. The CAA is working toward a Code of Best Practices for Fair Use to assuage the anxiety; such a code proved helpful to documentary filmmakers.
• Anyone who works with schools should carve out a few hours to play with this: DonorsChoose.org, which in 13 years has allowed teachers to raise more than $220 million in funding for their classrooms, is making its 20+ million project records on proposed and successful projects available via a free, interactive data analysis tool.
• Are too many of our research and evaluation efforts in the arts theoretical rather than directly applicable to practice? Nina Simon thinks so, and the comments from Peter Linett, Jay Greene, Carlos Manjarrez and others are worth checking out as well.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• The value of the creative sector to the U.S. economy? Half a trillion dollars. The value of the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s official inclusion of our sector in its GDP analysis? Priceless. Responses from the field have been mixed. Some are celebrating how full the glass is: the creative sector, led by Hollywood, advertising, and television, accounted for 3.2% of the economy – more than tourism (2.8%) – and employed 2 million workers. Others have focused on the top half of the glass: the recession hit our sector especially hard and to lasting effect, and the bulk of the economic value is from advertising, with relatively little from “independent artists and performing arts.” Still others question the value of glasses entirely: embracing economic measurements of the arts could undermine aesthetic arguments for their necessity – though Createquity’s Jena Lee recently suggested otherwise.
• In the latest installment of the Detroit Institute of Arts saga, museum leaders have joined closed-door negotiations with several of the nation’s largest private foundations, both local and national, to protect the beleaguered institution by raising a whopping $500 million for the city’s underwater municipal pensions. Sources say they could be close to a deal. Meanwhile, efforts to raise private funds to spin the museum off from the city got a boost from biotech millionaire Paul Schaap, who has pledged $5m.
• The Marion Ewing Kauffman Foundation has released a policy paper detailing several strategies for mayors and local government to support cultural entrepreneurship.
• A new report published by old friend Shannon Litzenberger intends to “ignite a conversation about addressing the existing logjam in arts funding in [Canada].”
• Arts Council England wants the the field to “transform itself into a low-carbon, sustainable and resilient sector” — so much so that it requires environmental reporting of its grantees, and is out with a summary of the first year of that effort.
• The Seattle Department of Cultural Affairs is offering $10,000 for an action plan on a Cultural Development Certification — intended to be the arts’ parallel to the LEED designation. Proposals are due January 22.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Deborah Rutter, President of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, will succeed Michael Kaiser as President of the Kennedy Center in DC, with potential implications for classical music programming.  This leaves a number of important vacancies at the capital’s cultural institutions, including the Smithsonian, the Hirshhorn, the Corcoran, the board of the Kennedy Center itself – oh, right, and both the NEH and NEA.
• Detroit’s Michigan Opera Theatre has found its first President and CEO: Wayne S. Brown, current director of music and opera at the National Endowment for the Arts. David DiChiera, the Theatre’s founder and general manager, will transition to serving as artistic director beginning January 1. Brown’s departure continues a recent exodus of top NEA officials, including the directors of Theatre & Musical Theatre, Literature, and Public Affairs/Chief of Staff.
• John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design and prominent advocate of “STEAM” education, is leaving his post at the end of the semester to join a venture capitol firm and consult for eBay – right as eBay announces plans to follow Amazon’s footsteps and launch an online art marketplace.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Debate over effective altruism is raging on, and not just in the arts. Charity Navigator President and CEO Ken Berger slams it as “defective altruism” in a blog post for Stanford Social Innovation Review, and 80,000 Hours co-founder William MacAskill counters. Lest the bickering ruin your holiday spirit, GiveWell released its top charities of 2013 (no, the arts are not included) along with a thoughtful set of notes from staff members on where (and why) they each plan on giving this year.
• The Hewlett Foundation has announced a new grantmaking priority to promote an American governing process that is more productive, more civil, and less polarized.
• A new Center for Effective Philanthropy survey suggests that most foundation CEOs are skeptical that real progress has been made against the major problems they are tackling, but that their own organizations have made substantial contributions. Lucy Bernholz points out that they also lack confidence in their own measures of success and wonders whether boards can effectively hold them accountable.
• Speaking of Bernholz, her annual list of philanthropy’s top buzzwords is out for 2013 and might just be the perfect gift for the “makers” and “solutionists” on your list this holiday season.

IN THE FIELD

• Louisiana ArtWorks, a lavish $25 million art studio construction-project-turned-fiasco that has stood nearly empty since its completion, is up for auction. On top of the $600,000 yearly mortgage left to New Orleans taxpayers, more than $15 million state and federal funds had been sunk into the project.
• A new 300-student charter school for the arts is set to open on the site of a former department store in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
• In the rare positive story from Motown, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is back in the black after a lengthy and debilitating musicians’ strike three years ago. Meanwhile, musicians from the Minnesota Orchestra, having spent the last year locked out in a labor dispute, are going rogue by applying for a 501(c)(3) and organizing their own concert series.
• Philadelphia has been adjusting to the shifting priorities of three major local arts funders, and Peter Dobrin details the ramifications and changes in a three-part series.
• The History Colorado Center takes “visitor tracking” to a new level with a “business intelligence” system that integrates and mines data from all areas of the museum, including “who is visiting, whether they’re members or donors, whether they’re coming as families or in adult pairs or alone, and from where… Whether those visitors eat in the café or shop in the store, what they ate and what they bought.” Not creepy at all…

BIG IDEAS

• With the National Endowment for the Arts gearing up to announce new collective impact funding for arts education next month, now’s a great time to brush up on what collective impact is – and while you’re at it, dig into this new series on measuring backbone organizations’ success.
• Beth Kanter unpacks the developmental evaluation strand of last month’s Next Generation Evaluation conference and offers some insight on its relationship to social change initiative and nonprofit practice.
• The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is partnering with Google, Accenture and other for-profit companies to launch an art and technology lab that will “will award grants and make museum facilities available to help artists explore new boundaries in art and science.” Elsewhere in LA, though, the public school system’s efforts to equip classrooms with iPads seem to be suffering from One-Laptop-Per-Child-like problems, which one pundit blames on “innovation fatigue.”
• Real-estate developers are increasingly cultivating artists and designers as tenants in low-rent neighborhoods who will help transform the area, raise the rents, and eventually move out. One developer calls the process “gentlefication.”
• Now this is a different kind of conference report: Arts & Ideas has created a gorgeous interactive document of The Art of Placemaking conference hosted last month in Providence, RI by the folks at WaterFire.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Dallas’s National Center for Arts Research has released its inaugural report on the health of America’s arts and cultural organizations. The report includes the average performance of organizations in eight indices and an examination of what drives organizations, and introduces the concept of high performance and intangible performance indicators (KIPIs). NCAR is working with IBM to create a online dashboard for organizations to access their own KIPIs.
• Roland Kushner, co-author of Americans for the Arts’ National Arts Index, looks at the relationship between private sector giving and arts index scores between 2000 and 2011. He finds a correlation beyond charitable contributions to the arts increasing the vitality of the sector, arguing that “charitable giving and engagement in the arts may emanate from the same instincts, values, and attitudes.”
• Americans love libraries! Nearly half of adults have visited a library in the past year, and fully 90% believe their community would be adversely affected if the local branch closed, according to a Pew study.
• A new study from Germany suggests that the relationship between studying music and improved academic performance may be causal: when researchers controlled for differences such as parental background, student musicians still out-performed their peers on cognitive tests – especially verbal ones.
• Some interesting findings have been reported by psychologists studying the effects of first-person shooter games. They surmise that players who enjoy these immersive and violent games are satisfying an innate desire for control and split-second decision making that is rarely achievable in today’s society. Video games also got some support from a new study out of Israel’s Center for Educational Technology.
• Korea-Finland Connection, a collaboration between Korean Arts Management and Dance Info Finland, has published an evaluation of its three-year program intended to create long-term  relationships between Finnish and Korean artists and organizations in the performing arts.
• Half of Equity members in Britain earned less than $8,200 in the last year, according to the union’s latest survey.  Additionally, “95.8% said they had never been pressurised to appear nude at a casting.”

Vault photo by Ostrograd

(Please enjoy this guest post from Yvonne Lee, a recent UCLA MLIS graduate and information professional specializing in cultural data research. -IDM)

In late July, the National Endowment for the Arts quietly issued a request for proposals for a national arts data repository to serve as a clearing house for “high-quality datasets with arts variables.” Given my experience as a data geek, this news seemed like Christmas in July. I started daydreaming about accessing flawlessly documented datasets (perfect codebooks! detailed workflows and logbooks!) and having a dedicated repository where I could store and share all of the data from my own projects. Most of all, I thought about how this archive might transform our sector.

Many hopes sprang to mind. A one-stop shop for longitudinal and reliable datasets could change how arts researchers document, publish, share, verify, and re-use data, and have implications for policymakers, practitioners, and administrators. For one, we could deepen the current dialogue(s) on arts research and cultural vibrancy indicators to examine their utility and comprehensiveness. This in turn could help the sector develop better frameworks to define arts and culture and more transparent benchmarks for measuring the health and vitality of the arts sector. While several arts and cultural indicator projects like the Urban Institute’s Arts and Culture Indicators Project or ArtPlace’s Vibrancy Indicators utilize widely available datasets, crucial segments of the data and documentation—like the actual methodology used to derive cell phone activity for ArtPlace’s Vibrancy Indicators—are not available for wide consumption. A popular adage in the sciences is to “trust, but verify” research results. Should the arts be any different? If a critical mass of datasets and supporting documentation is included in the NEA’s repository and accessed for re-use, researchers might communicate more openly and make strides toward building a shared framework for how we understand the arts.

Still, as excited as I was, my experience with arts-related datasets has taught me that working with data archives is never rarely as simple as we’d like it to be. In my past role as a data curation consultant, I researched and advised how best to document, select, publish, and deposit research data for potential re-use on behalf of various stakeholders in the arts and humanities. As part of a digital humanities project called Visualizing Statues, I investigated research methods to develop a digital management plan (DMP), a process that is now required for all NEA and NEH research grants. The questions that came up were manifold and pretty universal to the arts and humanities sector—how to properly cite datasets, for example, or how to migrate proprietary file formats so that others could access datasets without using soon-obsolete software. One of the biggest of these questions was what constituted arts research data. The Visualizing Statues project used the National Science Board (NSB)’s Long-Lived Digital Data Collections definition of data as “any information…including text, numbers, images, video or movies.” This definition is a standard among data curators. Its chief advantage is that it provides a springboard for researchers to consider data as something with a wide and changing scope rather than something static. On the other hand, the definition is so broad that it makes articulating the exact provenance of datasets difficult as they change hands from “raw” to normalized and cleaned. In Visualizing Statues, “the data” included everything from photographs to geocoordinates to ArcGIS code to epigraphic documents in TEI XML. Citing the different types and versions of data became a major issue when it came time to select a data archive, as some have policies that are unfriendly to such a heterogeneous mix of formats.

Despite concerns over version control and the wide scope of data in Visualizing Statues, the good news was that the project reflected a trend toward data sharing and access in the arts and humanities. Our researchers uniformly expressed willingness to share and deposit their data in an archive. We were also able to access others’ research data in conjunction with this project, though all of it came directly from the principal investigators’ colleagues. This is pretty typical; in general, access to arts-related datasets varies greatly. Anyone can search for and download files from wide-access or public datasets like the NEA’s Survey of Public Participation in the Arts and the Urban Institute’s National Center for Charitable Statistics, but to access datasets from smaller projects, which typically are not publicly funded and rely on third-party consultants, interpersonal connections are often required. Even having friends in high places won’t work for everyone, as some datasets are kept for internal or highly restricted use. Given these roadblocks, arts researchers are often forced to or unknowingly duplicate efforts using precious project resources. The ability to inventory and access current and past datasets will let us better understand the scope of research in the sector while encouraging collaboration between researchers, and keeping past research data relevant.

Certain data archives and collection initiatives in the sector are already trying to address issues of access. Princeton’s Cultural Policy and the Arts National Data Archive (CPANDA), which has been around since 2001, seems an obvious choice for depositing and retrieving arts-related datasets. CPANDA describes itself as the “world’s first interactive digital archive of policy-relevant data on the arts and cultural policy in the United States.” However, its site is like a digital ghost town, with its most recent dataset dated 2011. One reason for CPANDA’s disuse may be the rigidly hierarchical format of its finding aids and directories. Researchers can conduct a simple search of terms used in survey questions or browse by the title or subject of a study, making searches difficult unless the researcher knows exactly what he or she is looking for. Say, for example, that you are a researcher looking for past surveys on how Americans have spent their leisure time since 2008. You could type “American Time Use” in the search bar and retrieve a list of survey questions with the terms American, time, and use in them. Or, you could browse by title, assuming you have a specific study in mind. Otherwise, you’re out of luck.

The Cultural Data Project (CDP), another seemingly obvious choice, is not an archive per se as much as a longitudinal collection of participating members’ financial data. The CDP was first launched in 2004 and states that it is “the emerging national standard for data collection in the arts and cultural sector.” However, the CDP requires data deposits use the CDP’s data collection instrument (the Data Profile) which collects narrowly but deeply on financial and programming data. Unfortunately, access to CDP’s rich datasets is neither public nor wide, and researchers not otherwise affiliated with CDP or its participating members may find their request for CDP data denied.

More recently, Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts and Cox School of Business announced a collaboration with CDP and others on a National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) that “will analyze the largest database of arts research ever assembled.” This “hub for critical [arts research] data” may be more in line with the NEA’s RFP than CPANDA or CDP’s efforts, though whether it will provide wide or public access to its data is unclear. The Center’s focus will be “analysis, insights, and enablement” while data gathering will be on an ad-hoc basis. While NCAR released an introduction to its inaugural report in early December, it’s too soon to tell whether it will yield viable datasets for arts researchers. In the meantime, we have a clear and timely need for an arts data archive that utilizes relevant analysis tools, regularly maintains its datasets, is simple to navigate, and allows users to easily deposit and download data.

Fortunately, the NEA solicitation addresses some of these needs. It specifies that the NEA is seeking “a contractor who has an established data archiving infrastructure and the capacity to create, maintain, update, and expand an archive of datasets, metadata, and links to related literature.” This means that not only the reports, tables, figures, codebooks, and appendices affiliated with the data will be available to the public, but (huzzah!) the actual data as well. Very importantly, the NEA’s proposal states that researchers using the repository should have access to enough resources within it to be able to verify or replicate the data. The standard of replicability is virtually unheard of in arts research, in large part because of our reliance on qualitative research methods. Requiring it for datasets deposited in this archive would go far toward ameliorating some of the trust issues with arts research that then NEA Chief of Staff Jamie Bennett referred to in an interview with Barry Hessenius earlier this year:

I think we generally have a research and data problem in the arts. Our data sets are often not as robust, and our research is not always seen as being as rigorous as other sectors.

In addition, the NEA proposal asks the consultant do the following to ensure a successful deployment and implementation of the data archive:

• Design and develop a website to serve as a discipline-specific archive that stores arts-related datasets, metadata, and references to literature (or citations) that use the datasets
• Acquire and process art-related datasets, metadata, and links to literature currently housed at CPANDA
• Update, maintain, and add to this new archive of arts-related data for a base period of one year
• Communicate the mission of the archive to the public

It seems straightforward enough: if you create a data archive with accurate research documentation, citation tracking, and simple methods for inputting and retrieving data, provide technical assistance on how to use the repository, and alert stakeholders, it should be in high demand. However, the repository will still have challenges ahead, in no small part because of the sector it intends to serve. While I don’t believe that the arts sector is inherently antagonistic to data, I do think there will be some steep learning curves for the community at large (exemplified by the Archive and Data Management Training Center’s hilarious “The five stages to data sharing” based on the Kübler-Ross model of grieving). Despite early calls for an arts database by Alvin Toffler and others, the level of data literacy in the arts sector is low. Even if researchers share their datasets more consistently, there’s still the issue of whether others will feel compelled to (re)use them. While Createquity along with WESTAF’s Barry’s Blog, LinkedIn’s Digital Curation Group, and various ArtsJournal blogs address issues of research and data literacy, the discussion still needs to reach a wider audience in the arts.

As of publication, the NEA has not yet announced the awardee of the data archiving contract, though a source there indicated the agency would “have something to say soon.” Although I am more skeptical now than I was in late July, I am cautiously optimistic that the creation of the arts data archive along with the NEA and NEH’s Digital Management Plan requirements will further data sharing and access in the sector. Although the growing pains are still evident, these measures should stimulate the arts community’s interest in data and collaborative research, and will hopefully thereby cultivate a better understanding of the nature of human creative endeavor. As stated by the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences:

We have remarkable opportunities to bring new analytic and interpretive power to bear on the materials and the methods of the humanities and the social sciences; by so doing, we can advance our understanding of human cultures past, present, and future. In the process, however, [stakeholders] will also have to re-examine their own . . . culture, rethinking its outward forms, its established practices, and its apparent assumptions.

For the arts, this emerging path may be tumultuous, but indicates great promise.

(Acknowledgments to Christine L. Borgman and Laura A. Wynholds’ s bibliography on “Data, Data Practices, and Data Curation.”)

• A consortium of City of Detroit creditors have made the first legal move towards pressuring the Detroit Institute of Arts to sell city-owned artworks to help pay for debts owed. Executive Vice President Annemarie Erickson defends the museum against Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s demand that the museum find one way or another to contribute $500 million in assistance to the bankrupt city.
• The California Arts Council will apply a $2-million funding windfall it received from Assembly member John Perez to several new initiatives in arts education and community improvement, including Creative California Communities, The Arts in Turnaround Schools, and Jump stARTS. In the face of a 7.6% budget cut handed down last year, the state arts council is taking a gamble on the success of these programs winning fresh credibility with policymakers and an increase in annual funding.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Jamie Bennett, chief of staff and director of public affairs at the NEA, will take over as executive director of the creative placemaking funder collaboration ArtPlace America starting in January. He succeeds ArtPlace’s founding director Carol Coletta, who joined the Knight Foundation back in March, and interim head Jeremy Nowak.
• After a decade serving Californians as president of the James Irvine Foundation, James E. Canales will step down in the spring to become the first president of another arts funder, Boston’s Barr Foundation.

• There has been some shuffling in the world of state and local arts councils. Ohio Arts Council ED Julie Henahan has retired after thirty years; Milton Rhodes, President of the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County in North Carolina, has retired and been succeeded by Jim Sparrow; and Glenda Toups was dismissed from her position as ED of the Houma Regional Arts Council in Louisiana in the wake of the discovery by the board that the Council was not in compliance with state reporting law.

• We’ve known for a while that Michael Kaiser is leaving his post as President of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; now it turns out he’s taking the DeVos Institute of Arts Management with him. Both are moving to the University of Maryland, where Kaiser will be a professor of practice beginning in the fall, and hopes to expand the Institute to include a master’s program.
• Financial news giant Bloomberg has decided to discontinue its cultural journalism brand, Muse, in favor of focusing more on leisure and luxury. Along with the reassignment of Muse editor Manuela Hoelterhoff and a cadre of employees and contracted writers, the news outlet laid off theater critic Jeremy Gerard.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The Hewlett Foundation has announced a rigorous new “Openness and Transparency” policy, which assumes from the outset that information the foundation creates should be made public to improve outcomes, spark debate, and foster collaboration. Hewlett’s President Larry Kramer offers context in a post on the foundation’s new blog; transparency watchdogs celebrate the policy.
• The D5 Coalition has released a scan of best practices and a guide to online resources for foundations wishing to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion at every stage of their work.

IN THE FIELD

• Eric Booth and Tricia Tunstall share profiles of El Sistema “encounters” in five of approximately 55 countries – Sweden, Austria, Korea, Japan, and Canada – that have borrowed from Venezuela’s seminal movement to realize youth development goals through “intensive investment in ensemble music.” The global umbrella for El Sistema has also released the first literature review of “research, evaluation, and critical debates” related to Sistema-inspired programs around the world.
• The Arts Council of Lawrence, New Jersey has shut down after 42 years, having, in the words of one member, “outlived [its] usefulness.” Originally formed by a group of female volunteers, the Council struggled to recruit younger members throughout the recession.
• The August Wilson Center for African American Culture in Pittsburgh is struggling mightily. After a struggle to find an audience and keep backers the organization has been forced to move further and further from its original intention to create a cultural home for the people portrayed in Wilson’s plays, working class African Americans. A conservator has been appointed to try to avoid liquidation.
• The Warehouse, an all-ages music venue in La Crosse, Wisconsin, has filed to become a nonprofit after 22 years as a for-profit, prompting some musicians to wax lyrical about their time there. Financial pressures were the primary impetus, but owner Steve Harm has indicated he will open the space to the local community in new ways to provide a public good.
• Fractured Atlas has added another tool to their encouraging-and-rewarding-arts-entrepreneurship tool belt. The Arts Entrepreneurs Awards will recognize artists and arts organizations who have “innovated new business practices or paradigms” or  “developed novel solutions to old problems.” Nominations will be accepted until December 22nd at 5:59pm.

BIG IDEAS

• A report from the Next Generation Evaluation Conference forecasts “game-changing” trends in impact evaluation, including shorter evaluation cycles and simpler measurement systems.
• “Is social practice gentrifying community arts out?” Arlene Goldbard parses the difference between the art world’s latest obsession and community cultural engagement.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Southern Methodist University’s National Center for Arts Research is about to release its inaugural report, drawing on what it calls the “most comprehensive set of data ever compiled” on arts organizations.  In addition to a statistical overview of the field – did you know that performance of an arts organization is lower in communities with a higher concentration of graduate degrees? – the report attempts to answer the question, “What makes one arts organization more successful than another?” The key turns out to be leadership.
• Speaking of data aggregation, Markets for Good has a progress report on the BRIDGE (Basic Registry of Identified Global Entities) project, an ambitious collaborative effort to identify and map philanthropic entities across the world.
• A new report by the Consumer Federation of America bashes “abuse of market power by a highly concentrated music sector,” argues against the need “to expand copyright holders’ rights,” and suggests that digital file-sharing (aka “piracy”) may, in some cases, actually be good for both artists and consumers. One well-circulated chart suggests that it is the proceeds of live performance, not recordings, that drives artists’ income.
• Gold standard at Crystal Bridges? In a rare, randomized, controlled (albeit “natural”) experiment on the effects of art on students, a single school-group visit to the major new museum appears to have raised students’ scores on vague but desirable traits such as critical thinking, social tolerance, historical empathy, and likelihood of future museum visits. It’s too soon to parse out the effect of contemporary art in particular.
• A study of STEM graduates from the Michigan State University’s Honors College found that graduates who went on to earn patents or start companies had more arts and crafts experiences than the average Americans – and believed their ability to innovate was influenced by that experience. (The paper itself is behind a paywall.)
• How “rampant” is gentrification? New research suggests that most urban areas experienced only “moderate” gentrification in the past decade, with significant variations across cities. Unsurprisingly, gentrification was most prevalent in large and dense metro regions with solid public transit infrastructure.