Capitol Hill, Washington DC – by Flickr user KP Tripathi, Creative Commons license

Several policy shifts are underway in Washington that may have significant effects on arts nonprofits and funders. First, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the America Gives More Act, which would 1) make permanent three expired tax deductions – including the important IRA Charitable Rollover provision that allows seniors to donate up to $100k of their retirement disbursements without paying taxes on it – while 2) allowing individuals to credit deductions made before April 15 of one year to the previous tax year, avoiding the Christmas scramble for donations before patrons know their tax situation, and 3) simplifying the excise tax rate paid by foundations to 1% (it can currently rise to 2% in some circumstances). The future of the bill is uncertain: Obama Administration and many Congressional Democrats oppose it because it does not contain any revenue provisions to offset the reductions in tax income. The Senate is not expected to consider the bill before the fall.

Second, the IRS has released form 1023-EZ, a dramatically streamlined application for 501(c)(3) status that will allow applicants to become tax exempt simply by filling out a 3-page form (vs 26), paying $400 (vs $850), and swearing under penalty of perjury that they have less than $50k in annual income and less than $250k in assets. Some 70% of applicants are expected to be eligible for the EZ path, and the IRS won’t even review these applications as a matter of course. Some fear this may open the door to abuse, but aspiring nonprofits eying the 60,000-organization line to be reviewed may feel differently.

Finally, in pre-legislative news, the House Appropriations Committee approved level budgets of $146m for the NEA and NEH, restoring $8m cuts made to each in subcommittee, while the artist resale royalty rights bill is gaining momentum, attracting new Congressional co-sponsors in advance of a potential vote this year or next.

More money, more problems at the DIA: As the City of Detroit’s much-anticipated bankruptcy trial looms – it begins on August 16 – two contending valuations of DIA’s art have emerged. Artvest Partners, hired by the city, placed the total value of the 60k-piece collection at $2.8-4.6B; a creditor’s expert, Victor Weiner Associates, at $8.5B. But that’s in theory: Artvest estimated that the works would fetch only $850m to $1.8B in the current market, accounting for a potential glut of masterpieces if the museum were to deaccession en masse. (Victor Weiner acknowledged the actual haul would be lower but did not venture to say by how much.) Meanwhile, donations continue to flow toward the “Grand Bargain” that could spin DIA off as a separate non-profit, if the courts allow it, with a group of business leaders, companies, and corporate foundations pledging $26.8m toward the $100m DIA must raise. Oh, and there is art happening, too: DIA began installing reproductions of its masterpieces in Michigan communities for the fifth year of its Inside/Out project.

The fate of the Corcoran’s collection hangs in the balance: Back in February, the long-troubled Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art and Design announced they would be taken over by the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. The Corcoran’s 17,000-piece collection would be split up, with the bulk going to the National Gallery and the remainder distributed to museums around the country. Now, a group of advocates — including museum donors and alumni of the college — has filed suit to stop the deal, arguing longtime board mismanagement is to blame for the current state of affairs. At issue is whether the Corcoran’s lawyers can show that the proposed arrangement is the “next best” option to maintain the original intent of the institution. While alternative solutions are bandied about and exhaustive arguments laid out on both sides, the Corcoran’s fate should be decided by the end of August.

Another shakeup at the William Penn Foundation: Philadelphia’s only remaining major arts funder is showing alarming signs of instability. Managing Director Peter Degnan, the foundation’s second leader in less than two years, has resigned after less than six months on the job, citing “personal reasons.” He succeeded Jeremy Nowak, whose tenure ended in 2012. Chief Philanthropy Officer Laura Sparks will take over as leader of the foundation with the new title of executive director. While she will likely have broader authority and responsibility than her predecessor, she is not expected to make major changes in the grantmaker’s strategic areas of focus.

Looking for affordable artist housing? Take a number: In a jarring indication of how bad New York’s affordable housing crisis is, a recent lottery for housing slots in one renovated Harlem building generated a whopping 53,000 applications from artists. The building, El Barrio’s Artspace PS 109, is a former public school that was sold to Artplace two years ago. Foundations, politicians, and local departments of housing and cultural affairs contributed $52.2 million in renovations to create 89 housing units — begging the question of how big an investment would be needed to make a dent in artists’ demand for affordable living spaces.

MUSICAL CHAIRS/COOL JOBS

• Andy Horwitz is leaving New York City to launch a new consultancy called Applied Creativity; though he will continue writing in other venues, Culturebot will go on sabbatical indefinitely from September transition to new leadership.
• Reuben Roqueñi will join Hewlett as a program officer in Performing Arts; he is currently program director at the Native Arts and Culture Foundation in Washington State.
• Laura Packer has become ED of the Howard Gilman Foundation in NYC. She had been Arts Program Director at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation in New Jersey.
• The Nathan Cummings Foundation has tapped former Trustee Ernest Tollerson as interim CEO while a search gets underway.
• Longtime National Arts Strategies VP Gail Crider will take over as President and CEO from Russell Taylor at the start of the year.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• The California Film Commission reports that film and TV projects worth $2 billion relocated their production away from California over the last four years, often when other states offered better tax breaks.
• Another bleak snapshot of the writer’s life: median author income in the UK fell by almost a third over the last decade, to $18.5k per year.
• Meanwhile, on stage: Last year, London’s 241 theatres served 22m patrons, earned $1B, and employed 3,000 performers at a time. This was the first quantitative report of this kind, so the historical trend is unclear.
• More than a third of 18-34-year-old tourists to the UK identified culture as a major draw in a new survey; historical buildings and arts institutions got special mention.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• This is pretty much the most creative cultural tourism gambit ever.
• The Michigan House approved a plan to contribute $195 million in state money to the “grand bargain” to save the Detroit Institute of Arts from the city’s creditors; this money would join the $366 million pledged by foundations, $100 million pledged by the museum itself, and possible funding from union groups. Some creditors still reject the deal, although the judge overseeing the proceedings has refused their request to remove and appraise every painting in the collection.
• “National and local governments don’t take decisions about arts funding based on evidence, however convincing it is.” The Guardian argues that our only hope for better public funding is to create “the kind of solid public support that makes cuts politically dangerous or, even better, unthinkable” through closer ties to local communities.
• Score one victory for the arts lobby: after a vigorous campaign by organizations such as the League of American Orchestras, the Obama administration has carved out an exception for musical instruments in its new ivory regulations.
• Meanwhile, the FCC is accepting public comments on its latest proposed net neutrality rules, which would seem to allow internet providers to strike deals with content sites for faster service – deals akin to those that already exist with tech companies like Netflix, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Given the Commission’s recent flip-flopping, there’s no telling where this will lead, and we may not know until after the next election. One thing we do know: the idea of America itself is at stake.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Peter Handler will be the new executive director of the Reva and David Logan Foundation, sponsor of the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. Handler is currently the program director at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.
• Moy Eng, former director of both the Hewlett Foundation Performing Arts Program and Palo Alto’s Community School of Music and Arts, has been announced as the first executive director of the Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST), a real estate services provider for artists and arts organizations.
• John Horn, of the Los Angeles Times, will be the new host for an arts an entertainment program on KPCC, Southern California Public Radio.

IN THE FIELD

• Just a year after losing its highly respected director Deborah Cullinan to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts has just announced a major restructuring that will result in the closure of several programs and the layoffs of key staff. And NPR is cancelling “Tell Me More,” a little-heard daily talk show aimed at minority audiences, and eliminating 28 jobs. The National Association of Black Journalists blames lackluster promotion efforts.
• The San Diego Opera lives! But along with a full 2015 season, the company has announced layoffs including 13 full-time staff. And now the auditor is calling.
• New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is planning to gut-renovate its modern and contemporary wing to make room for a major gift of Cubist paintings and potentially create a new entrance from Central Park. Is this another case of museum hubris?
• The plan to dissolve the Corcoran Gallery of Art has been finalized, with the collection going to the National Gallery of Art and other museums it chooses and the building and design school going to George Washington University.
• When you think of St. Louis, do you think of jazz? A $10 million expansion to Jazz St. Louis—to be called the Harold and Dorothy Steward Center for Jazz—hopes to make the two synonymous, establishing St. Louis as one of the top hubs for jazz in the world.
• Lower Manhattan is home to a new performing arts school. Thanks to three years of significant growth, Pace University’s performing arts program will become a school within Pace’s liberal arts college.
• Thanks to the lobbying efforts of Jonathan Safran Foer on behalf of all of those without enough to read, Chipotle cups will now be adorned with short texts by literary luminaries. Not everyone is enthusiastic.
• Those Colorado Symphony mile-high marijuana concerts are now invitation-only, due to an overlooked regulation banning toking up in public. The Denver Post’s music critic went and got blasted – I mean, had a blast.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• AT&T announced that it intends to buy DirecTV. The “media chessboard is moving more than it has in the past decade,” with Comcast’s February purchase of Time Warner cable and Sprint’s overtures to T-Mobile…
• … and reports that Apple is planning a major new foray into streaming music with an acquisition of Beats Audio and of co-founders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, though something is holding up the deal.
• Nearly four years after announcing a name change, a new mission, and a new grantmaking strategy focused on impact, Cincinnati’s ArtsWave (formerly the Fine Arts Fund) seems to be seeing results. The united arts fund raised a record $12 million for its annual campaign this year, helped catalyze last year’s creation of a new multidisciplinary arts festival drawing national attention, and is starting to form strategic partnerships with non-arts funders. Retiring CEO Mary McCullough-Hudson deserves a lot of credit for seeing this transformation through.
• The Hewlett Foundation’s Fay Twersky defends the decision to end the Nonprofit Marketplace Initiative as data-driven in the face of William Schambra’s accusation that a leadership change was the primary driver. Let’s hope this public debate doesn’t dissuade grantmakers from following Hewlett’s lead on transparency.
• The Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund has announced a new capitalization program, including its largest-ever grant of $200,000 to the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center. The Fund created the program in response to research showing that even many of the city’s strongest arts groups were constrained by having only three months of financial cushion.

BIG IDEAS

• Is it time for foundations to embrace partisan politics instead of trying to remain above the fray? Writers for the Stanford Social Innovation Review think so. “Partisan conflict is not an external factor that advocates can work around,” they write. “It is the defining axis of American politics today, and funders must be unafraid to reckon with it.”
• The expansion of the Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge – a promise to give away at least half of one’s fortune – to include billionaires from around the world raises questions about different cultural attitudes toward philanthropy (in China, public or transparent giving is eschewed) and about the relative merits of the Big Philanthropy model vs the more distributed community foundation model of giving.
• Arts entrepreneurship aficionados, look out: Barry’s Blog has a stellar lineup, uh, lined up for a weeklong blogathon on the topic starting…today!

RESEARCH CORNER

• The National Academy of Sciences has hard numbers that show students learn better through hands-on activities than through lectures – at least when it comes to the sciences.
• Philanthropy Northwest reports on a year-long peer-learning project on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts involving 10 foundation CEOs in the region.
• Corporate giving is up again, according to the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy’s annual tally.
• South Arts has released two research reports on arts education in the South. The first, a survey of nearly a third of all principals in the region, found among other things that Southern students have less access to visual arts and music than other American students but greater access to dance – with significant variation among Southern states. The second, case studies of nine strong arts education programs, found that the successful schools cultivated a shared vision of the arts, incorporated the arts into the core curriculum driven by state and national standards, and exposed students to working artists.
• Bringing the ability to make snazzy charts and tables to the masses, evaluators Stephanie Evergreen and Ann K. Emery have developed a data visualization checklist for the graphically challenged among us.
• In case you ever wondered about the correlation between per capita consumption of cheese and the number of people who die by becoming tangled in their bedsheets, Tyler Vigen has you covered.

• And, we try again: as expected, the FCC is proposing new net neutrality rules. They are similar to the previous rules, which were recently invalidated by a federal court, but depend on a different legal rationale. Those who are concerned the rules (old and new) do not go far enough to protect content creators they have their chance to persuade the Commission – the public comment period has just opened.
• Even as the Detroit Institute of Arts contemplates privatization, the private Corcoran Gallery of Art in DC is planning to cede most of its collection of 17,000 artworks to the National Gallery of Art and other museums across the country. The move, following years of financial crisis, would also see the Corcoran’s building and College of Art and Design taken over by George Washington University.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The Marin Community Foundation has named Larry Best to the business-card-bending position of Program Director for Arts & Culture, and Social Justice & Interfaith Understanding. His predecessor, Shirin Vakharia, has become Program Director for Community Health and Aging.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The Boston-based Barr Foundation has joined the ArtPlace America coalition, bringing 2014 commitments to $28 million – just in time for Artplace’s announcement of this round’s finalists.
• Continuing the trend toward transparency in artist earnings, cellist Zoë Keating has shared a breakdown of all her income from music sales and streams in 2013. Of the $75,341 she made, 92% was from sales; a single track bought on iTunes was worth 160 Spotify streams, which was in turn worth seven YouTube streams.

IN THE FIELD

• Heads up to the country folk: a new rural arts blog salon and webinar series put on by Americans for the Arts shines light on how rural communities can and have used the arts for economic growth.
• The art world was abuzz recently with the news of an artist/vandal who destroyed a work by Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei in the middle of a museum – mimicking Ai’s own actions in photographs posted in the gallery. Are Maximo Carminero’s actions a harbinger of participatory disaster? Nina Simon weighs in on how to bring clarity to the messy transition towards museums as “living” institutions.
• For those prone to screw up targeted marketing, NewMusicBox breaks down how not to become the Abercrombie and Fitch of music.

BIG IDEAS

• The Dallas Museum of Art’s unusual membership program, instituted in January 2013, provides free membership to individuals willing to let the museum track their activities as they enter and explore the galleries, offering points and rewards along the way. In addition to reducing barriers to joining, it has given museum leadership valuable insight into visitor behavior. The information is then used to attract new donors. So far, it seems to have worked out well for everyone involved; is this the future of memberships?
• In an interview, Deeksha Gaur, Director of PR and Marketing at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in DC, talks about the digital audience engagement innovations that have been called “a glimpse at the theater of the future.”
• Grant panels meet American Idol? Back in 2013, the Arizona Commission on the Arts shook up its grantmaking by identifying and supporting arts-based entrepreneurial ventures via an “Art Tank” competition in which applicants had six-minutes to “pitch” their proposals to experts and a live audience. Executive Director Bob Booker offers interesting reflections on the process. Meanwhile, Barry Hessenius considers what might happen if arts funders acted more like venture capitalists: more active involvement with grantees beyond funding, and greater weight on leadership in evaluating proposals.
• Writing the next great American novel? Consider finishing it on a train. Amtrak, in a move that’s left authors everywhere drooling, quietly launched a residency program that allows writers to travel its long-distance rail routes for free while working. While undoubtedly cool, the initiative has caused some to wonder whether the resident writers have an obligation, explicit or implied, to make sure Amtrak benefits from the arrangement.

CONFERENCES AND TALKS

• Registration for “Creativity and Innovation in Public Education,” this year’s Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) Cultural Symposium, is full – but the event will be livestreamed on March 4. E-participation is free.
• Anupama Sekhar offers a personal account of her experience at January’s 6th World Summit on Arts & Culture in Santiago, Chile.

RESEARCH CORNER

• In the latest study about the streaming music service Spotify, Music Machine looks at musical preferences by state.

ETC.

• Seeking an opportunity to relax, kick back, “hear and think about what is heard”? Join the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (yes, it exists) at a three-day symposium in Portugal. If you’re already of the acoustically ecological persuasion, consider submitting a presentation or artwork on anything from noise control policies to “the study of soundscapes as social and political intervention.” Proposals are due March 15.

The biggest news on federal support for the arts is a lack of news. Following the 16-day shutdown in early October, the federal government was reauthorized at last year’s budget levels (post-sequester) until January 15. Which means we get to do this all over again in just a month and a half! Woohoo!

Congress has had its share of squabbles over NEA funding in recent years, but it remains remarkably steadfast in its support for the National Gallery of Art. It increased the Gallery’s federal appropriation by a whopping 70 percent between 2001 and 2011– not exactly a kind decade for arts funding. The secret to the National Gallery’s success? The original act of Congress that required the federal government to “provide such funds as may be necessary for [its] upkeep . . . administrative expenses and costs of operation.”

Meanwhile, in a decision some are hailing as a “huge victory for online innovation,” a federal judge ruled that Google’s scanning of more than 20 million books counts as “fair use” under copyright law – meaning, among other things, that the company need not compensate writers or publishers for making very short excerpts available on the Web. The Authors Guild plans to appeal.

Finally, the U.S. has lost its voting rights at UNESCO, two years after ceasing payment of dues, then 22% of the organization’s budget. National Security Adviser Susan Rice called the outcome shameful, urging Congress to amend the law that bans support of organizations that recognize Palestine as a nation-state. The withdrawal of voting rights is also automatic under UNESCO rules, but it may still endanger the U.S.’s applications for World Heritage status for sites like Poverty Point in Louisiana and Spanish missions in San Antonio.

STATE AND LOCAL

According to Jay Dick of Americans for the Arts, the results of the off-year election contests in Virginia, Boston, St. Paul, and Dayton, OH, among other places bode well for the arts, with several new pro-arts officials taking power. In New York City, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio acknowledged the importance of the arts to the city by including several arts leaders in his newly-appointed transition committee. In other Big Apple news, the City Council held a public hearing on a proposed bill that would require the Department of Cultural Affairs to develop a cultural plan by 2015. Advocates believe this could coordinate cultural resources across agencies, increase available resources, and help keep artists in the increasingly-expensive city.

In other local election news, after fifteen years of attempting to find private funding for a performing arts center, the Myrtle Beach arts community won a victory at the polls this month when 54% of residents supported higher property taxes to raise the necessary $10 million. The City Council must still decide to undertake the project, but now “the rubber has met the road.”

The Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, despite having its budget slashed to the bone in the most recent budget session, has been approved for $560,800 in federal matching funds from the NEA after losing out on that match for two years. The restored federal match unlocked further funding from Kansas’s regional arts agency, the Mid-America Arts Alliance. It’s unclear how the most recent budget shenanigans will affect the situation with the NEA. To raise additional funds, the Commission is trying an arts license plate scheme to replicate the success of a similar initiative pioneered in California. Speaking of California, that state’s Arts Council managed to get a donation check box back on income tax forms for 2013, although the name has been changed from the “Arts Council Fund” to “Keep Arts in Schools Fund.”

INTERNATIONAL

Our friendly neighbor to the north has made it a lot harder for American musicians to perform in small venues. The Canadian government recently established a new fee and permit system for musicians and performing artists visiting from outside of country. Interestingly the fees apply only to artists seeking to perform in bars or restaurants – and both the artists and the hosting establishment have to pony up the funds.

Across the Atlantic, Scotland deserves major props for a) unveiling its first national Youth Arts Strategy (with £5m of funding to boot);  b) releasing aforementioned strategy as a graphic novel; and c) offering open feedback sessions to arts professionals and interested public as a precursor to the April 2014 release of Creative Scotland’s 10-year strategic plan and funding program. The new initiatives coincide with a significant staff restructuring at the agency. Meanwhile, the UK as a whole has just relieved producers of the burden of health-care contributions for entertainers they employ, though it is not yet clear whether this will lead to higher salaries for artists, larger production budgets, or simply smaller losses for backers. Shocker alert: producers and Equity feel differently on the matter.

Speaking of British arts agency planning documents, Chris Unitt went through the just-released second edition of Arts Council England’s strategic framework to see where digital technology fits in. There’s a heavy emphasis on using digital tools to reach new (i.e. international) audiences; less about using them to create new work or collaborate with other artists.

Australians have elected a new government to be led by Coalition, the country’s mainstream conservative party. George Brandis, arts spokesman for Coalition, has announced the party’s arts platform, which condemns an alleged tendency to reward “inwardness, mediocrity and political correctness” and emphasizes excellence, integrity, and artistic freedom. (Under the recent Labor government, arts industries in Australia had been receiving bipartisan support with a broad, positive impact on cultural production.) Brandis claims that the country should return to funding excellence in the arts, criticizing the Labor party for using arts to advance a social agenda.

Not to end on a down note, but freedom of expression difficulties continue in the Middle East. Qatari poet Mohammed Al-Ajami’s 15-year prison sentence for reciting on YouTube a poem celebrating the Arab Spring was upheld by the country’s Supreme Court, although his family can make a final appeal to Qatar’s Emir. Despite pressure from the international community, Al-Ajami is being held in solitary confinement as a potential insurgent. And in Egypt, comedian and talk show host Bassem Youssef, considered the country’s closest analogue to Jon Stewart, had his show suspended after just one episode amid alleged pressure from the country’s new military government.