Lincoln Center (photo by flickr user Peter Miller)

Raising money is tough, and raising money for the arts can be particularly so. And yet, at this moment in New York, sixteen arts institutions in Manhattan alone are in the process of raising a whopping $3.47 billion for ambitious capital projects–from a revamped building for the New York Philharmonic (price tag: $500 million) to the long-awaited new home for the Irish Arts Center (price tag: $60 million). While there’s no one way to raise this kind of dollar, the New York Times has a compelling explanation of the various strategies cultural institutions are using to bring home the bacon. Lurking underneath all the glitz and ambition, however, is an unasked question: is this all a good idea? After all, cultural equity and disparities of wealth among cultural institutions is an issue with increasing resonance both in New York City and nationally, and in many ways the current administration’s proposed cultural plan has been seen as a step towards addressing those issues. Will this giant slate of capital projects claim resources that might otherwise have been available to a broader constituency? And given the dim results of past research on the long-term effects of building projects, are these decisions that even the institutions themselves will come to regret?

Violence Threatens Free Expression in the Internet Age. On October 26, SXSW Interactive, the annual media festival held in Austin, Texas every March, canceled two sessions for its 2016 event, citing threats of violence. The panels–”SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community” and “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games“– were seen as #Gamergate panels, though the movement was not specifically invoked by either. The decision drew outrage from various corners of the internet world; media heavy-hitters BuzzFeed and Vox threatened to withdraw altogether from the conference if the panels were not reinstated. In response to the backlash, SXSW was forced to develop a full day’s worth of programming, an online harassment summit, which will include a significantly expanded list of panelists such as Congresswoman Katherine Clark (D-Massachusetts) and former Texas senator Wendy Davis. Threats of violence are terrible enough, but on the Indian subcontinent this month intellectuals are increasingly victims of the real thing. Two Bangledeshi publishers were stabbed to death purportedly for having printed the work of Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-American known for his critical writings on religious extremism. (Roy was himself assassinated in February of this year.) This comes amidst a protest among many of India’s most prominent writers in response to prime minister Narendra Modi’s failure to condemn recent violence by Hindu nationalists in that country.

Colorado’s Small Arts Organizations Lose the Resource Equity Battle. The Denver area’s Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, which oversees the distribution of some $50 million in sales tax subsidies to some 300 arts organizations, is up for a third reauthorization in 2016. In May, the SCFD proposed a plan for the next decade that would keep shares of arts funds close to what they are now. Small arts groups–especially the 270 organizations in “Tier III” who under the proposed plan would split a mere 15.7% of the pie–revolted, arguing the distribution is unfair and biased toward Denver’s big cultural institutions. In response, a group called the Friends of Arts and Cultural Equity presented a plan with a more equitable distribution of resources. This month, the SCFD rejected calls for a redistribution, reaffirming its own funding recommendations to the legislature. The question now becomes: will the legislature send the reauthorization to ballot, or take control of funding measures themselves?

Nonprofits Crowd In On the Crowdfunding Pie. Since it first launched in 2008, Indiegogo–and hundreds of similar crowdfunding platforms–have revolutionized how and for what individuals raise money (Greek bailout, anyone?). This month, Indiegogo launched Generosity, an Indiegogo spinoff where nonprofit organizations can host campaigns–for free. Unlike its competitors, such as Razoo and FirstGiving, the only fees collected on Generosity by Indiegogo will go to the credit card processor. The demand is there: in the last five years, Indiegogo has hosted some 15,000 nonprofit fundraisers. Indiegogo’s main competitor, Kickstarter, doesn’t allow fundraising for charity, but that hasn’t stopped the company from making its own recent moves towards the altruism bandwagon, having announced its reformation as a public benefit corporation and raised money for Syrian refugees at the request of the Obama administration. Crowdfunding won’t replace grants and major individual giving any time soon, but as anyone who’s put in time on the development side of the nonprofit world knows, every little bit counts.

Not All Is Lost: An Alt-Weekly Newspaper Revival. We’ve heard it before: “print is dead” and especially so when it comes to newspaper print. Alt-weeklies, the scrappy punk siblings of the Times and Chronicles of the world, have been hit especially hard, and October witnessed the demise of yet another one: Philadelphia’s much loved City Paper. Yet in an interesting twist, this same month New York City’s storied Village Voice was essentially rescued by Pennsylvania newspaper man, Peter Barbey. Barbey, president of the Reading Eagle Company, a family-owned media company that has published newspapers in Pennsylvania for more than 200 years, bought the paper from Voice Media Group, and has already announced big plans for the sixty-year old circular, including an increase in cultural coverage.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Poet, essayist, playwright, and scholar Elizabeth Alexander was named director of the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression program.
• Terry Carbone has been appointed director of the Henry Luce Foundation’s American Art program. She succeeds Ellen Holtzman, who served in the role for 23 years.
• Veteran art museum curator and director Maxwell Anderson was named Director of Grant Programs for the New Cities Foundation.
• Lynne McCormack, longtime Director of Providence’s Department of Art, Culture + Tourism, is leaving to become the national program director for creative placemaking at LISC.
• Reynold Levy, who was president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts from 2002–2014, has been appointed president of the Robin Hood Foundation in New York.
• After 14 years, Susan Patterson has announced she will retire from her position as director of the Charlotte program at The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation at the end of 2015.
• MK Wegmann has announced she will retire from her position of President and CEO of the New Orleans-based National Performance Network/Visual Artists Network in January 2016. A search for her replacement is underway; deadline December 1, salary $125-130k.
• The Arts Consulting Group, Inc. seeks Vice Presidents for its expanded Canada office. Posted October 5; no closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• A study conducted at the University Hospital Erlangen in Germany and published in journal PLoS One suggests that actively participating in art-making keeps the brain healthy.
• Michigan State University analyzed several data sources, and found that Nobel prize winning scientists are 2.85x more likely than average scientists to have a significant artistic hobby.
• A new report by the University of Maryland’s DeVos Institute of Arts Management, “Diversity in the Arts,” reviews the economic picture of African American and Latino nonprofit museums and performing arts companies and suggests some controversial solutions.
• The Creative Diversity report, published this month by Creative Industries Federation in partnership with Music of Black Origin, suggests that theater is significantly less ethnically diverse than other creative industries.
• Two studies published this month looked into the question of music consumption. The first, by two Irish psychologists, looks at the many reasons why people choose to listen to music. The second, published in the journal Poetics, examines what your musical tastes say about you.
• Columbia Law School program and the Urban Institute released preliminary findings that, despite rapid increase in the number of 501(c)3 organizations–in 2014 the rate of newly formed entities nearly tripled– states are doing little to hire new regulators to police charities.
• A survey conducted in the UK this month reveals that “one in four performing arts careers are halted by parenthood.”

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.

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.

Jane Chu is inching towards nomination as the next NEA Chair, as the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted to approve her candidacy with “no controversy.” Over the past few years, Republicans appear to be content to let the NEA languish in level-funding purgatory rather than continue to whip up the kind of culture-war controversy that proved so successful in handcuffing the agency in the ’90s. Let’s be grateful for small victories.

STATE AND LOCAL

This is the season for state arts council budget drama, and there are certainly a few stories worth reporting. First and foremost is the prospect of an incredible resurgence for the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, which had its budget cut an astonishing 94% over a three-year period and nearly zeroed out in the heady summer of 2009. Since then, arts advocates have slowly moved the needle towards more funding, but nothing compared to the 384% increase the agency would be in line to receive if Governor Rick Scott signs the budget recently passed by the Legislature, restoring funding to pre-recession levels. It’s not a done deal yet, though – Scott has line-item veto power and may be itching to use it.

In somewhat more bittersweet news, after all the brouhaha from last time, Maryland has agreed to increase tax incentives to Media Rights Capital, the producer of Netflix’s House of Cards, settling on $11.5 million to keep the show in the state. The figure does represent a decrease from the average amount the show had received in previous years, but as previously reported the state had to raid a fund intended for local arts organizations to make the deal happen.

On the local front, the Art Newspaper takes stock of NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s arts agenda: whereas Bloomberg invested in large-scale projects designed to drive tourism and economic impact, de Blasio appears to be focused on the outer boroughs, access, and community engagement. Meanwhile, de Blasio’s first budget for New York City is out, and with a 6% overall increase in spending gives educators a lot to be happy about: steps toward universal pre-K, expanded after-school programs and a $20 million allocation for arts education.

Los Angeles may be on the verge of overhauling its public art ordinance, thanks to an audit that recommends the city relax the requirement that developers’ public art fees be spent within one block of the constructions that generated them. Paralyzed by the geographical restriction, the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs had been sitting  on $7.5 million in funds earmarked for public artwork.

Any cities or counties pondering local tax increases for arts and culture, take note: the ultraconservative Americans for Prosperity is wading into local politics with a campaign against a local tax increase in Franklin County, Ohio meant to benefit the Columbus Zoo.

INTERNATIONAL

The authors of last year’s report showing that the UK Arts Council gave London-based organizations five times as much money per capita as those in other parts of the country have released a new study showing that UK lottery arts funding is similarly concentrated in the capital. The Mayor of London and organizations in his city  support raises for others but not cuts for themselves. And Parliament may decriminalize non-payment of Britain’s $250 annual TV-licensing fee, the primary source of income for the BBC. Scofflaws, such as the 107 TV owners jailed in 2 years for failing to pony up, would still be subject to civil penalties. Meanwhile, the BBC is calling for payment even by those who don’t own televisions in an age when physical TVs are an afterthought.

Australia’s conservative government has taken aim at the arts, enacting more than $100 million in cuts to various national funding bodies. Since most of that amount is spread over a four-year period, the impact is not as drastic as it sounds, and the head of the Australia Council doesn’t seem too worried. Still, $100 million is $100 million…well, about $94 million in American dollars. On the other side of the ledger (and the world), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is investing $1.7 billion to build 230 new museums across the country, intended to show off the nation’s rich cultural history. Private-sector firms, including the oil giant Saudi Aramco, are getting in on the museum-building act as well.

Despite all the money that Russia pumps into the arts, there is mounting criticism—especially in the theater world—against its contents, with a new, envelope-pushing generation of artists facing political pressure from the government. Woolly Mammoth Theater’s Festival of New Radical Theater, which was set to include works from Russia, has become the most recent collateral damage in Moscow’s politicization of art. Meanwhile, on July 1, it will become illegal to curse in public performances in Russia – though the ban may cover only four very, very dirty words. Russia, of course, isn’t the only major world power wanting to shape artistic expression: China appears to be stepping up its campaign against Western media, banning four US television shows from streaming websites for violating a regulation aimed at shows that “harm the nation’s reputation, mislead young people to commit crimes, prostitution, gambling or terrorism.”

In the recently released federal budget for fiscal year 2015, President Obama proposes a meager increase in allocations for the arts compared to last year. Federally-backed museums will enjoy the bulk of that increase, while funding for NEA and NEH is essentially unchanged after factoring in inflation. Speaking of those agencies, President Obama also announced his plan to appoint William “Bro” Adams as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Adams is currently President of Colby College; he is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Maine Film Center and the Maine Public Broadcasting Corporation.

Democratic Congressmen have introduced a revised version of a droit de suite bill that would require payment of royalties to the creators of visual art when it is resold at public auction. The bill, American Royalties Too (ART), is less generous than its stalled predecessor – reducing the rate from 7% to 5% and adding an overall cap of $35,000 – but may gain momentum from a December report from the Copyright Office supporting resale royalties. California’s royalties bill, recently declared unconstitutional in federal court, may offer useful lessons for how not to implement the policy.

STATE AND LOCAL

Tom Finkelpearl, head of the Queens Museum and former director of NYC’s Percent for Art program, will be the city’s next cultural-affairs commissioner. Among his innovations at Queens, Finkelpearl hired a community organizer to build ties between the museum and the borough. Mayor de Blasio used the announcement to wax lyrical about the importance of access and the power of the arts to strengthen neighborhoods; we’ll get a sense of how this translates into arts policy when his capital budget is released in a few weeks.

The city of Atlanta has proposed an ordinance that would make it much more difficult to display public art on private property- or “areas of private property which are visible from the public right of way or other public spaces.”

And how’s this for a nonprofit/for-profit smackdown? Maryland’s General Assembly, eager to keep production of Netflix’s political drama House of Cards in the state, tried to swipe $2.5 million from the state’s arts fund to secure additional tax credits for filming. Lawmakers argued the decision came down to simple economics, claiming the show “contributed $250 million to the economy and 6,000 jobs during the past two seasons.” (Too bad the research on the economic impact of tax incentives for film and TV suggests those benefits are less attractive than they seem.) In the end, the legislators held firm – or maybe they just didn’t have their act together – and now, we’re all waiting to see whether a change of venue is in the cards for House of Cards.

(Update: According to an email newsletter from Americans for the Arts, the $2.5 million did end up getting transferred from the arts fund after all. “Governor O’Malley originally allotted $7 million in his budget proposal, which then grew to $11 million.  The amount proved to not be enough….To raise more money, the General Assembly authorized applying the Special Fund for the Preservation of Cultural Arts, a fund of $2.5 million on reserve for supporting local arts organizations, toward film incentives. The Senate pushed for the amount to be raised to $18.5 million and requested $3 million from the general fund, which the House rejected. The final agreement stood at $15 million.”)

INTERNATIONAL

Lots of news from Britain this time around: Maria Miller, the UK Culture Secretary whom some accused of not being especially interested in culture, has resigned amid a scandal over her expenses. She will be replaced by Sajid Javid, the current Treasury Financial Secretary. As the EU eases copyright law to make it easier to transfer purchased music from one of your personal devices to another, most countries are simultaneously levying a tax on device manufacturers; the money would go to a fund to support young musicians. In Britain, the potential tax is being fought strenuously by manufacturers. Meanwhile, the UK has closed a tax loophole on domestic music, book, and app purchases; the move could raise as much as half a billion dollars, which retailers may pass on to consumers. In more local news, the Mayor of London has released a revised cultural strategy, which includes support for smaller arts organizations and your friendly neighborhood busker.

Italy has pledged to spend €135 million to restore 46 heritage sites in the southern portion of the country, following an earlier distribution of €222 million last September. On the other side of the Adriatic in Athens, the Greeks are not so lucky: their cash-poor government is thinking about selling off public landmarks near the Acropolis to private investors. Protestors have been staging angry demonstrations to tell the pols to leave their built heritage alone.

Good news for Dubai’s 137 million metro riders: now they can add a little culture to their wait.  Thanks to a new public art project launched by the Prime Minister of UAE, four metro stations throughout the city will be transformed into museums.

And the government of South Korea is digging a little deeper into cultural exchange through a new project set to introduce Korean culture into emerging markets around the world. The NEXT Project to Dispatch International Cultural Exchange Experts by Region sends staff abroad as both representatives and students of the host cultures and are responsible for managing each regional Culture Centre.

JUST ABOUT EVERYWHERE

Finally, the entire Anglophone world suddenly seems to be slashing taxes on live performance. New York State passed a theater tax credit to induce Broadway producers to prepare for touring shows upstate. (Producers and tour operators had lobbied for the incentives, which are already offered in states like Illinois, Louisiana, and Rhode Island.) Within days, Senator Charles Schumer proposed a more ambitious national tax rebate of up to $15 million per production – benefits already extended to film and TV. Both initiatives appear to be driven by the Broadway League. Meanwhile, the UK opened a consultation period for its own plan to provide generous credits for live performing arts; the exact policy objectives of the subsidy remain unclear. This last plan opens out into the world: as long as at least a quarter of the expenditures are in Europe, costs may be incurred in any country.

• A federal judge recently ruled that Pandora must continue to pay ASCAP, which represents song writers and publishers, a 1.85% composition royalty. It was a (not entirely clean) victory for Pandora, which was arguing against a rise to 3%. The Future of Music Coalition has a good primer on the issue. (Note that the royalty paid to record companies for sound recordings is much higher – above 50%, in some cases – and it is this larger royalty that Pandora cited last week in increasing the cost of their premium service.)
• FMC similarly offers a concise but thorough summary of the Congressional testimony debating the “notice and takedown” copyright enforcement system for hosting sites like YouTube.
• Amtrak’s writers’ residency is getting some amusing pushback from conservatives that points to some deeper issues regarding its role as a national service.
• Advocacy for publicly-funded arts agencies has a new platform: Stand for the Arts, an online initiative funded by Ovation TV, champions the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, and Americans for the Arts’s Arts Action Fund.
• Is that the pitter-patter of li’l artist feet in the distance? A female musician predicts Obamacare will prompt a “creative professionals baby boom,” and offers ideas for how the music community can better support it.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Vice President of Paul G. Allen Family Foundation Susan Coliton resigned last week after 15 years with the foundation.
• Judi Jennings, executive director of Kentucky Foundation for Women, is set to retire June 30, also after 15 years of service. Barry Hessenius has an exit interview with Judy.
• The Bay Area’s Kenneth Rainin Foundation announced the promotions of Shelley Trott and Katie Fahey to Director of Arts Strategy and Ventures and Associate Program Officer for the Arts, respectively.
• The beleaguered Minnesota Orchestra faces continued challenges following the end of a 16-month player lockout: President and CEO Michael Henson announced he is stepping down, prompting the resignation of eight board members and speculation regarding the possible return of the orchestra’s former music director Osmo Vanska.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The Ford Foundation now has an artist on its board of trustees: Lourdes Lopez, artistic director of the Miami City Ballet and strong arts education proponent.
• More family foundations – nearly a quarter – are choosing to spend down their assets during the donor’s lifetime.

IN THE FIELD

• In a decision that has perplexed many, the San Diego Opera announced that this season will be its last after nearly fifty years of performances. Subsequent to the announcement, the organization gave itself a two-week reprieve in a last-ditch attempt to raise money.
• Big Brother is watching the opera: Lincoln Center, Alvin Ailey, the Public Theater, and five other NYC arts stalwarts have joined Audience 360, a new alliance that will share ticketing and customer information across the group. As many as forty institutions are expected to join when Audience 360, one of more than twenty such big-data organizations across the country, is launched in June. The information is expected to be useful for government advocacy in addition to marketing.
• The BBC has hired National Theatre director Nicholas Hytner and Royal Court artistic director Vicky Featherstone as part of a new push to infuse arts programming across the media organization “like never before.” The new initiatives will include filming live arts events and a miniseries following young orchestra musicians, among others.
• Netflix’s CEO has come out in favor of a strong form of net neutrality after a deal with Comcast cleared up customers’ performance issues. Meanwhile, Apple and Comcast are exploring a TV streaming partnership with sterling connectivity, which would fulfill Apple’s hopes of playing in the TV space.
• The full story of how the reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt wound up with a 1,280-piece trove of Nazi-looted art – which he is now returning to the original owners.
• Bookstores in Manhattan may be a dying breed; bookstores in Brooklyn are thriving.
• Have a great idea for a creative placemaking project but no time to get off the ground? Take advantage of National Arts Strategies’ Creative Community Fellows Program, which includes a week-long retreat with fellow cultural “entrepreneurs,” a distance learning track, and an opportunity to pitch to funders and/or create crowdfunding campaigns. Applications are due May 7.

BIG IDEAS

• As Netflix-style aggregation of content spreads from music and movies to books, magazines, and newspapers, “almost all the value in media has come from bundling.” Consumers like it because it offers centralized curation and lower transaction costs than hunting-and-gathering individual items; providers like it because it can give them more data. (Whether it’s good for creators, of course, depends in large part on how the proceeds are split with the provider.) But don’t get too excited – it turns out that existing legal agreements may prevent Netflix itself – or anyone else – from offering anything approaching a comprehensive slate of films before 2020.
• Meanwhile, total revenue for recorded music has fallen each year of the millennium; at $8 billion a year, it is now less than half of its (inflation-adjusted) 1999 peak. Venture capitalist David Pakman argues that the only way to reverse this trend is to lower the price of streaming services to $3-4 per month, bringing the annual cost closer to more consumers’ historical willingness to pay.
• The Wu-Tang Clan’s new double album will be released in an edition of one, which will tour museums before being sold for millions of dollars.

RESEARCH CORNER

• To what degree do family and peer groups influence our perceptions of the label “artist”? Researchers parsing data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project found a sizable chunk of people creating artistic works do not self-identify as professional artists. Those with artists in their families, or those who attended arts-focused schools, were more likely to use the label. Can’t help but wonder about the degree to which socioeconomic status plays a role in this…
• …since a new analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data paints a portrait of the artist as a model of downward mobility. Creative types tend to grow up in relatively affluent households and to make less money than their parents, to a much greater extent than those in other careers. Let’s hope some things are more important than money, since art schools are the most expensive in the country after taking financial aid packages into account.
• The Arts Education Partnership’s database of statewide arts education policies has been updated and renamed as ArtScan. It includes a state-to-state comparison feature as well as information about past efforts to survey the status of arts education in each state.
• The Hewlett and Irvine Foundations have released an external assessment of their Next Generation Arts Leadership program, which they have renewed for another three years, to inspire other regions facing a potential arts leadership deficit. (The full report and executive summary are online.)
• The National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture is out with a nationwide survey of media arts organizations – the “first-ever, comprehensive data set documenting the media arts field.” With nearly a quarter of respondents self-identifying as local cable TV operators, television still reigns as the primary focus of these organizations’ work.
• Two weeks ago we noted the ever-rising cost of sales in the international and antique art markets as a possible sign of an emerging “winner take all” economy. Others think it’s an insidious sign of something more akin to insider trading.
• March Madness = time to reflect on whether economic impact arguments for the arts really make any sense.

• Seems that New York City’s recent bill forcing schools to report out on the availability of arts education in its schools comes not a moment too soon: an audit from the state comptroller found that roughly half of seniors graduated from high school without having met arts education requirements.
• Denver is out with a bold new seven-year cultural plan, “Imagine 2020.” Among other things, it seeks to “increase the visibility of local and creative talent” by inventorying and ranking the availability of the arts in all neighborhoods, and supporting micro-art projects that can create new gathering spaces across the city.
• A federal court has ordered Google to remove the infamous “Innocence of Muslims” film from YouTube after an actress who appears on screen for only five seconds – and was told she was appearing in an adventure movie – asserted that posting the film against her wishes violates her copyright in her performance. The injunction is preliminary; Google is appealing.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The two latest articles to document artists’ struggle to make ends meet, even once they are established: on writers in London and artists in New York City.
• Hooray for practicing what you preach: the Hewlett Foundation takes stock of the two strategies of its Effective Philanthropy program – and announces that it will wind down and replace the one that the evidence suggests wasn’t working.
• Aditi Kapil from Minneapolis’s Mixed Blood Theater Company unpacks lessons from the company’s free ticket initiative, such as the idea that infrastructure costs make “free cheaper than cheap.” And thanks to to a new grant, all visitors to the Wilma Theater can now enjoy $25 tickets during the first four weeks of a show’s run. The newly flattened price structure will be in place for three years.

IN THE FIELD

• The Future of Music Coalition has been quizzing musicians on their knowledge of current copyright law, and the results are mixed, suggesting “there remains widespread confusion about the difference between musical composition and sound recordings” and musicians are generally unaware of “the changes in the digital landscape that have altered the way that money flows back to creators.”
• After managing to squeeze twelve years out of what was intended to be a three-year program, the USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program ended with its final fellows last November.
• Getty Images has released 35 million photos to be used freely for non-commercial purposes, bowing to widespread, often ignorant infringement of its images. There are a few catches: the interface is clunkier than for paying customers, Getty can track usage data, and they reserve the right to put ads in the embedded image viewer. Now that we’ve liberated images and music, are books and movies next?
• Yes, data-driven decisions can come from cocktail napkins: Nina Simon offers a nifty example of how a simple measure of “success” can help draw comparisons across programs.
• The new performing arts center planned for the World Trade Center site, in the works for over a decade, faces an uphill battle to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for construction with former mayor and big-ticket arts champion Michael Bloomberg no longer in office. The project will have to compete with several recently-opened theater spaces of similar size as well as the nearby 9/11 Memorial & Museum.

BIG IDEAS

• An example-driven look at how grantmakers are building innovation into their programs to tackle large social problems in Stanford Social Innovation Review pairs well with this examination by four Boston Consulting Group strategists of what nurtures the “evolvability” of big companies like Google and Netflix. Meanwhile, Andrew Taylor poaches more lessons from the for-profit world by examining what the “Minimum Viable Product” familiar to tech start-ups might mean for the arts.
• March 20 was both the first day of spring and the UN’s International Day of Happiness, co-sponsored this year by Grammy winner Pharrell Williams. The designation of the day was inspired in part by Bhutan’s embrace of Gross National Happiness as a critical indicator of the country’s health. Culture is one of the pillars of GNH, so Createquity readers have special reason to celebrate.
• The Future of Digital Longform Project is out with a whopper of a report on how “long” (i.e. 5,000+-word) pieces of nonfiction are evolving, what “designing a story” can mean, and how and if writers can hope to make money from these efforts.
• Digital platforms continue to creep into the edusphere, with the College Board announcing a plan to (finally) counter the overpriced SAT-prep industry via a partnership with Khan Academy, and EdX, the only major non-profit MOOC provider, expanding its list of course partners to include NGOs and nonprofits ranging from the Smithsonian to the IMF.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Egads! First we learn we can’t always trust research; then we learn we can’t always trust the research that tells us not to trust research.
• The UK’s cultural sector’s hiring practices unfairly stifle diversity, a report from Creative and Cultural Skills finds. CCS calls out a widespread preference for unpaid workers and a tendency to hire people already known to existing employees as particular problems.
• A new report from the National Center for Arts Research has found that well under half of directors of the nation’s largest art museum directors are female, and they earn roughly three-quarters the salaries of their male counterparts.
• Southern California’s “creative industries” are booming with roughly 1 of 7 jobs in the Los Angeles area tied to the creative sector, according to the 2013 Otis Report on the Creative Economy. However, the relationship between the report and the fiscal health of the arts sector — and the economic stability of artists in the region — is murky.
• The international art and antique market, meanwhile, is  almost back to pre-recession levels. The uptick, however, is more due to the rising cost of artwork rather than an increased number of sales, suggesting a continued and worrisome creep toward a “winner take all” economy.
• The Brookings Institute tried out a badass new research methodology — a “survey with placebo” — in a recent attempt to measure the impact of advocacy organizations on the passage of school choice legislation. The method is one of several new and intriguing practices in advocacy evaluation.