Fox News’s misleading attacks on the NEA, coming as they did just prior to the confirmation of a new Chairman for the organization, seem to be raising a lot of hackles in the arts world. Is the concern justified? Barry Hessenius thinks so, and warns that things might get a lot worse as conservatives gearRead More
Landesman confirmed as NEA Chair
It’s official: Rocco Landesman will be the next Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. He was confirmed by voice vote by the Senate yesterday along with Jim Leach for the National Endowment for the Humanities and a host of other public officials. Sitting down for an interview with the Times‘s Robin Pogrebin, LandesmanRead More
Fox News gets facts, math wrong in report about NEA grants
Over the past week, Fox News has pushed a storyline on the recent National Endowment for the Arts “stimulus” grants that has an eerily familiar tone: The National Endowment for the Arts may be spending some of the money it received from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night “pervert”Read More
AFTA Convention Wrap Day 4
My final day in Seattle began with a “peer group” session called Meet the NEA that was really another panel. I wasn’t able to catch the entirety of it, but the panelists did say that the agency would take a “hard look” at the policy around individual artists (it should be noted that the EndowmentRead More
Rocco Landesman nominated to lead NEA
All the blogs are buzzing about it, but in case you’ve missed it: Rocco Landesman, the Broadway producer of “Angels in America” and “The Producers” among many others, has been nominated to succeed Dana Gioia as the next chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m not personally familiar with Landesman, but the consensusRead More
Around the horn: turning the corner edition
Here’s a question for my long(er)time readers: should I continue with the weekly “around the horn” posts, or would you prefer if I selected only the articles that I have something to say about and gave them their own entries? I would then put articles that I merely find notable on my Twitter feed. DoRead More
Around the horn: OMG I’m almost done! edition
I realized late last week that I haven’t yet posted about the classes I’m taking in this, my final half-semester at Yale School of Management. Two are carrying over from earlier in the semester: my Recording Arts class in the Sound Design program at the Drama School, and my nonprofit law clinic in which weRead More
Fictional Foundation Fun, part II
So, yesterday we took a look at the $800 million Ortiz Foundation for the Arts (OFA), a hypothetical new organization focusing on promoting cultural vitality in New York City. After some discussion, we settled on a mission statement as follows: The Ortiz Foundation for the Arts (OFA) works to foster the visual, musical, theatrical, andRead More
Around the horn: snowbound edition
Quick update while I distract myself from the mounting tower of schoolwork that threatens to keel over on top of me this week: Newly graduated or newly jobless? Fractured Atlas is hiring. If you’re in the early stages of an arts administration career, this would be a great place to start. Vermont Arts Council directorRead More
The Backlash Begins
Sure enough, the ink hardly dried on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 before the predictable chorus of complaints could be heard regarding the inclusion therein of $50 million worth of support for the National Endowment for the Arts. Following a week of Republican mockery on the subject, one might have expected theRead More