Arts Policy Library: How Art Works

Beyond a research agenda for the NEA itself, How Art Works “proposes a way for the nation’s cultural researchers, arts practitioners, policy-makers, and the general public to view, analyze, and discuss the arts as a dynamic, complex system.”

Around the horn: Madiba edition

Don’t forget about the Createquity Fellowship deadline coming up this Friday! 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 areRead More

Share All the Data? Thoughts on a National Arts Data Repository

(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.”Read More

Around the Horn: Rob Ford edition

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT The even playing field that is the Internet might be about to tilt in the favor of the powerful, in this case AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and the like. Net neutrality is in the hands of the DC Circuit Court. The National Initiative on Arts & the Military has released a newRead More

Around the horn: Tokyo 2020 edition

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT 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 GroupRead More

Late summer public arts funding update

FEDERAL More than nine months after former chair Rocco Landesman announced he was stepping down, the search for a new National Endowment for the Arts chairperson has stalled – just in time for the fall budget debates to ramp up in earnest. Sphinx Organization founder and president Aaron Dworkin confirms in the article that he was one of theRead More

Around the horn: Trayvon edition

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT The National Endowment for the Arts has shared a draft of its strategic plan for FY14-18, and in what I believe may be a first, is inviting public comment on it via SurveyMonkey. Ah, these modern times we live in. Now let’s just hope House Republicans don’t succeed in slashing itsRead More

Around the horn: John Oliver edition

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT Two new Presidential cabinet nominees, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, have pro-arts backgrounds according to Americans for the Arts’s Bob Lynch. The Atlanta Regional Commission is one of the only metropolitan planning organizations and one of the largest communities to date to attempt to bring the arts and creativeRead More

Arts Policy Library: Good & Plenty

Tyler Cowen presents a powerful idea in his 2006 book (reprised in 2010) Good & Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding: arts policy is a battle between aesthetic and economic reasoning that can be settled by keeping the American system basically as it is. His sweeping argument draws on a deeply-researched history ofRead More

Public arts funding update: May

FEDERAL The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has decided a potentially landmark copyright case in favor of an artist who had been sued for appropriating images from a book in his art. While this would seem to be a victory for fair use, the court’s opinion doesn’t provide much in theRead More