The Diego Rivera Mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts – photo by Quick fix

Each year, Createquity offers a list of the top ten arts policy stories of the past twelve months. You can read the previous editions here: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009. The list, like Createquity itself, is focused on the United States, but is not oblivious to news from other parts of the world. This year, we distributed creation of this list amongst our editorial team more widely than we ever have before, and this is truly a group effort. Authorship of individual items is noted at the end of each paragraph.

In our annual top 10 list of arts policy stories, we often like to point out the implications that non-arts world events have for the arts. In an unusual twist this year, we had a couple of stories in which the art itself was at the center of significant world events. We always knew that art has the power to inspire wonder, hope, greed, fear and anger; 2014 taught us that we can add bankruptcy negotiations and terrorist threats to the list. –Ian David Moss

10. Trey McIntyre Project disbands

In a move that shocked fans and fellow arts administrators alike, Trey McIntyre announced this January that his celebrated eponymous dance company, known as the Trey McIntyre Project, would disband this season, letting him shift focus to new artistic pursuits involving film production, photography, and less frequently, freelance choreography. Begun as a summer touring company in 2005, TMP launched a full-time dance troupe in 2008-09. TMP had been recognized for its innovative choreography and as a model for audience engagement, but most of all for its unusual relationship to the city of Boise, Idaho, which was selected as the new company’s unlikely home after a nationwide search. This arrangement provided TMP with an affordable and livable community, while Boise in turn embraced the company wholeheartedly, treating the dancers like local celebrities and naming the company as its official ambassador. Drawing national attention and funding from creative placemaking initiatives including the NEA’s Our Town and ArtPlace America, TMP had been hailed by many as a model of engagement for the future. Yet McIntyre has said that ending the company was always part of the plan, which is why he decided to call it a “project.” Speaking to Dance|USA, McIntyre said that “the dance company actually went on longer than I had intended. But things were going on really well and I felt it was important to see it through to its fruition and explore every possibility.” From the outside it might look like plenty of possibility was left on the table, but perhaps even in its demise TMP is still a model for the future – that is to say, a model of an organization that knows how to quit while it’s ahead. –Carlyn Madden

9. Transition and renewal for cultural agencies in New York, LA and Boston

In 2014, three major US cities saw a shift in local government leadership, in each case bringing promise and questions for the arts. New York City’s election of Bill de Blasio as its first Democratic mayor in twenty years coincides with a push by the City Council to undertake the Big Apple’s first ever cultural plan. The proposed law charges the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, led by newly appointed Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl, with developing recommendations for increasing participation in cultural activities throughout the city. NYC is the only one of the country’s top ten municipalities to not have some sort of cultural plan; this bill will hopefully change that when it comes up for a vote in 2015. In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti – the city’s first Jewish mayor, and its youngest in a century – opened the year by reshaping the arts conversation, putting emphasis on the fact that the arts are “a value for the entire city government.” In June, he appointed Danielle Brazell, who had previously headed up the city’s arts advocacy organization Arts for LA, to lead the city’s Cultural Affairs Department. But the greatest excitement belongs to Boston, which elected its first mayor last year following the 21-year reign of Tom Menino. The statewide arts advocacy coalition MassCreative took the transition as an opportunity to put culture at the center of the electoral conversation, and its efforts paid off this year in dramatic fashion. In September, newly elected mayor Marty Walsh appointed Julie Burros as Boston’s first Chief of Arts and Culture in more than 20 years, and tasked her with stewarding the creation of the city’s cultural plan. Adding to the sense of momentum, Boston’s Barr Foundation has taken on a newly assertive role in guiding the future of the arts in Beantown, bringing in former Irvine Foundation president James E. Canales and joining the ArtPlace America coalition. –Clara Inés Schuhmacher

8. State arts councils come back with a vengeance

State arts councils had their best year since the turn of the millennium with a nearly 20% increase in funding for FY2015. Total appropriations for arts agencies reached $367.4 million, the highest total (in nominal terms, don’t get too excited) since 2002. The biggest winner was the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, which had suffered a crippling 94% budgetary cut over a three-year period ending in 2009. The Sunshine State’s arts council roared back this year with a 433% increase, unseating the New York State Council on the Arts as the most formidable state arts council in the country – and with a conservative governor at the helm, no less. California and Michigan also received significant increases in funding, and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley apparently got tired of trying unsuccessfully to veto funding for the state’s Arts Commission as she had done in each of her previous years in office.  With the improving economy, unplanned midyear cuts to state arts agency budgets saw a marked decrease, down to eight states in 2014 from 41 in FY2009. –Louise Geraghty

7. The landscape for film tax credits gets reshaped

After years of what resembled a high-stakes poker game in the competitive environment for film and TV tax incentives, 2014 saw several significant shifts that involved some states upping the ante and others folding their hand. California led the way, more than tripling its tax credit program to $330 million annually in a bid to reassert dominance and keep Hollywood productions in Hollywood. New Jersey’s state Senate decided to play along too, passing a bill that would raise the annual cap for film tax credits from $10 million to $50 million. States weren’t the only ones in the mix: Austin’s City Council approved reimbursement of up to 0.75% of production companies’ wages. Not everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid, however; as John Carnwath writes in “The Bottom Line on Film Tax Credits,” the benefits of film & TV tax incentives to the state and its citizens are not always clear. This year saw North Carolina, Michigan and New Mexico scaling down their programs, citing “concerns [that] the cost to taxpayers outweighed the economic benefits.” Meanwhile, skeptical lawmakers tried to derail Maryland’s tax credit program, prompting a high-stakes standoff with Media Rights Capital and its Netflix show House of Cards that brought out a lobbying appearance from Kevin Spacey himself. An eventual agreement kept House of Cards filming in the Old Line State, but only at the expense of $2.5 million that was transferred away from the state arts fund (and thus many deserving nonprofits!) in a troubling precedent. And even after all that, a nonpartisan analysis from the state’s legislative staff concluded that every dollar invested in the tax credits brought back only 10 cents in revenue. –CIS

6. Bring on the era of Jane Chu!

With the NEA chairmanship open since Rocco Landesman’s retirement in November 2012, the confirmation of Jane Chu to the post was welcome news this June. Chu established her arts career in Kansas City, where she led a $414 million campaign for the establishment of the Kauffman Center and was a key player in the city’s transformation into an arts leader. With a midwestern background, a track record with the business community as a board member for the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, and previous fundraising success, Chu seems well-chosen for the task of establishing bipartisan support for the arts and countering the impression that the NEA serves a coastal cultural elite. Nevertheless, some wonder if her limited tenure as result of the administration’s long delay in appointing a new leader will give her much opportunity to drive policy at the agency. Chu has not yet announced any new initiatives in her first six months on the job. Meanwhile, the National Endowment for the Humanities also saw a new chairman confirmed this year. William “Bro” Adams comes from a career in academia, most recently as the president of Colby College in Maine, but he may find himself taking on a similar agenda of garnering broad based support and bolstering funding for the humanities. Adams has already announced a new initiative entitled “The Common Good, Humanities in the Public Square.”  –Katherine Ingersoll

5. The IRS haltingly embraces the 21st century

In July the IRS announced major changes to the process of applying for 501(c)(3) charitable status, including a streamlined three-page 1023EZ form for most organizations with gross receipts under $50,000. This bodes well for the backlog of nearly 60,000 organizations waiting for their applications to be processed who will see a dramatic decrease in wait time. The move is in line with a larger trend towards more streamlined processes for the exempt organizations division at the IRS – and, quite possibly, more relaxed enforcement of the rules. The changes come at a time when budget cuts, staff reductions, and political scandals, have stoked concerns about the agency’s regulatory oversight. Government transparency advocates have noted that the dilemma of providing effective regulation with fewer resources could be solved by offering 990 data in an open, searchable format online, distributing some of the IRS’s watchdog responsibilities to donor advocates and the public. (Currently the forms are only available on CDs; GuideStar offers the documents on its website with a 1-2 year delay.) Will the IRS be able to modernize its operations while protecting the public interest? Will your tax forms become shorter, and will there be any staff left to process them? Only time will tell. –KI

4. Russia and Turkey crack down on free expression

Although Russia’s aggression toward the Ukraine has occupied many a news cycle this year, the oppressive measures that Vladimir Putin’s government has taken to reaffirm authority at home, many of which affect artists, have not been as widely reported. Among the more troubling developments is what appears to be a return to the witch-hunt tactics of the Soviet era, publicly naming (and ostensibly shaming) “subversive” artists in print and on television. In July, Putin signed a law prohibiting swearing in public performances (these are the four main offenders), leaving presenters struggling with how best to present planned repertoire. International tensions have affected programming in the US as well – most notably, in April, Washington DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre canceled a months-in-the-making festival of Russian theatre, citing loss of previously committed tour funding from the Moscow Cultural Ministry for the 90 artists slated to appear. Putin is not the only national leader to attempt to bend public expression to his will, of course, and he seemingly is inspiring some copycat behavior by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Coinciding with a sweeping consolidation of power this year, Erdogan’s government proposed a bill in April that would establish an arts council to centralize the disbursement of state funds for artistic activities, effectively giving the government absolute artistic control. The proposed bill has drawn outrage from both the arts community and Turkish citizens, and though still in draft form, the effects of its line of thinking are already being felt, with world-renowned pianists blocked from national performances, and mysteriously cancelled productions at the State Theater. –CIS

3. Net neutrality hangs in the balance

It’s been yet another rough year for net neutrality. In January, Verizon challenged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s 2011 “Open Internet Order” and its authority to promulgate such rules. Verizon won, effectively overturning regulations that require internet service providers to treat all content equally, and setting off a maelstrom of concern around innovation, democracy, and the idea of America itself. Under fire, the FCC proposed new net neutrality rules in March, then again in April (these critics claimed were unworthy of the name), with yet a third draft presented on May 15th. The May proposal, which garnered a whopping 3.7 million public comments over a five month period (680k of which the FCC recently “lost,”) would allow broadband companies to provide a “fast lane” for content providers willing to pay a “commercially reasonable” fee, similar to those that already exist with tech companies like Netflix, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. In December, President Obama and The White House released a plan recommending that the FCC reclassify Internet broadband as a public utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which proponents argue would give the FCC the increased regulatory power necessary to protect net neutrality. Looming large over the debate is the proposed merger of Time Warner Cable and Comcast – the country’s two largest cable companies – and the access implications if approved (the merger would give the new company a stake in 60% of US broadband households.) For now, it’s wait-and-see. The FCC has said it will implement net neutrality rules as early as February 2015, though that likely won’t bring an end to the debate. Whatever happens, someone is likely to sue. –CIS

2. “The Interview” provokes an international incident

Few arts stories in recent memory have involved as much bizarre spectacle as the recent Sony Pictures hack and subsequent fallout. Hollywood is no stranger to poking fun at North Korea (whose leaders are known film buffs); when Team America: World Police lampooned Kim Jong-il in 2004, life went on without much incident. Ten years later, it’s a different story with Seth Rogen and James Franco’s The Interview, which depicts the assassination of Kim’s son Jong-un. After hackers who may or may not have been aligned with North Korea exposed embarrassing emails and data from Sony Pictures, the producer of the movie, the studio and major movie theaters distanced themselves from the film. When the group claiming responsibility for the cyberattack threatened violence, Sony went further, deciding to delay The Interview’s theatrical release and provoking stern words from President Obama himself in response. Subsequently, Sony reversed its decision and released the film online and in select theaters on schedule. Buoyed by the controversy, it is now the most downloaded Sony Pictures film of all time and earned $15 million in its first three days of digital release (along with $3 million through its limited theatrical run) – and no one has yet been injured in a terrorist attack. Now, some people are even speculating that Sony and other major studios might forego a traditional theatrical release in the future in favor of going directly to online outlets. One thing we’re pretty sure about: never before has a story engaged computer geeks, homeland security experts, celebrity gossip hounds, and arts marketers with such equal intensity. –LG

1. Detroit’s art leads the Motor City out of bankruptcy

News about the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) made our “Top Ten” list in 2012 and in 2013. Let’s hope 2014 – as it reaches the dubious honor of No. 1 – marks its last appearance for a while. After two years, Detroit’s long and painful bankruptcy battle finally came to a close in November with a federal ruling in favor of the city’s bankruptcy plan. For this Detroit has, in many ways, the DIA to thank. Under the so-called “Grand Bargain,” an $816 million deal developed by the Ford, Kresge and Knight Foundations, among others, the foundations will provide funding for Detroit’s public pensions – a key component of the negotiations. The only catch? Control of the DIA must be transferred from the City of Detroit (which has owned the museum since 1919) to an independent charitable trust, thus protecting the art from being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Previously, Detroit’s state-appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr had included the museum’s art collection among city assets available for liquidation, and contracted Christie’s to appraise portions of the 60k+ piece collection. Detroit city creditor Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. even went as far as to solicit bids for the DIA’s entire collection, receiving four separate offers to buy the art outright for as much as $2 billion. That a museum and its art could become the linchpin of a federal bankruptcy negotiation, soliciting intense interest from creditors and rallying outside philanthropic interests to its rescue, is truly remarkable. Would a “Grand Bargain” — and a Detroit with its dignity left intact — have even been possible without the DIA? Luckily, we won’t have to find out. –CIS

Honorable mentions:

• Drama at the Metropolitan Opera, Atlanta Symphony, and San Diego Opera
• The Cultural Data Project’s strategic reboot
• August Wilson Center sold to Pittsburgh foundations
• US Department of Arts and Culture gets up and running

Happy 2015 to all!

Brooklyn Museum – by Flickr user Wally Gobetz, Creative Commons license

Following in the footsteps of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Haven, in 2015, New York City will begin issuing municipal identification cards to undocumented immigrants, with an arts-oriented twist. Much like those seen in other cities, New York’s program will allow access to critical services, such as opening a bank account, visiting a medical clinic, and renting an apartment. Based in the idea that the cultural treasures of the Big Apple ought to be available to all, the ID card will also provide free or discounted memberships at 33 of New York’s leading institutions, including the Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA PS1. The cards will be available to any city resident over the age of 14, and thus offer a way for anyone who feels they cannot afford arts and culture — not simply undocumented residents — to participate.

Grantmakers in the Arts Claims a Major Lobbying Success: At the end of August, the Obama Administration announced a $250 million “preschool development” grant competition, part of its efforts to improve preschool access for children below the poverty line. Grantmakers in the Arts’s Arts Education Funders Coalition (AEFC) helped ensure that program participants will receive the same arts exposure as students in the Head Start program. With the arts included as a key “approach to learning,” arts agencies have an opportunity to help design their states’ proposals, work with preschools to select curricula, and augment program offerings at preschools looking to meet the grant’s requirements.

Symphonies and Labor: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Locked Out: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra musicians have been locked out for over a month in a labor dispute, with healthcare benefits and the size of the orchestra itself at stake. An earlier, three-week lockout in 2012, fundraising difficulties, and low government support compared to other cities compound the problems, with the current season canceled through at least November 8. Four weeks into the lockout, CEO and President Stanley Romanstein resigned. Terry Neal, board member and former executive at Coca-Cola, will take the helm until a permanent replacement is found.

Corcoran Gallery of Art Merges with National Gallery and George Washington University: A D.C. judge recently approved the merger of the Corcoran Gallery of Art with the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University (GWU), which will effectively dissolve the Corcoran in a $2 billion deal. Once the oldest privately-supported art museum in the United States, the Corcoran has long struggled against mounting debts, tens of millions in renovations, and a shrinking endowment, and most recently, a lawsuit against the merger. As a result of the merger, approximately 150 staff will likely face layoffs, the National Gallery will absorb most of the Corcoran’s collections, and GWU will take over its College of Arts and Design, offering jobs to all of its full-time faculty.

New Research on Wellbeing & the Arts: The U.K’s All-Party Parlimentary Group for Wellbeing Economics has come out with a major new report on the intersection of arts funding and the wellbeing of the general public. The result of a year-long inquiry and titled “Wellbeing in Four Policy Areas,” the report contains two major findings: first, active participation in the arts has a much greater impact on overall wellbeing than serving as a passive audience member; and second, arts participation has a much larger effect on disadvantaged communities than wealthier, resource-rich areas. The effect on policymaking in the U.K. could be quite notable, as the the report asks arts funders to evaluate the wellbeing impacts of grants to organizations and employ this data to justify government spending.

MUSICAL CHAIRS/COOL JOBS

• The James Irvine Foundation announced Don Howard as the new president and CEO.
• Jim McDonald was named the deputy director and director of programs at Grantmakers in the Arts.
• San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley has announced that he will retire after a 44-year career in opera in 2016.
• Artist Trust has hired Shannon Roach Halberstadt as its new executive director.
• Mayor Martin J. Walsh has named Julie Burros as the new chief of arts and culture for the city of Boston. Burros was formerly head of cultural planning for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.
• The National Endowment for the Arts is looking for a program analyst. Salary: $89-138K, posted September 23, closes October 7.
• The Cleveland Metropolitan School District seeks an arts policy-focused plan manager and partnership manager. Posted August 28, no closing date.
• The Center for Effective Philanthropy is in the market for a research manager in its Cambridge, MA office. Posted August 27, no closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• The NEA has launched its “Exploring Our Town” site, a set of online case studies highlighting its signature creative placemaking program.
• More evidence for the power of young brains on art: a new study in the Journal of Neuroscience provides the first direct evidence that long-term engagement in community music programs enhance the neural processing of speech in at-risk children.
• The Nonprofit Finance Fund released its 2014 State of the Arts & Culture Sector brochure: even as organizations continue to expand and innovate with programs, many remain financially unstable.
• The James Irvine Foundation continues its interest in improving arts participation with a Helicon Collaborative report on the characteristics of organizations that successfully engage diverse audiences.
• Portland’s Regional Arts and Culture Council proves that engaging diverse audiences isn’t just a California thing with its own report.
• In a progress report, Grantmakers in the Arts investigates how funders are using capitalization principles to strengthen cultural organizations’ fiscal health.

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.

• In a major victory for New York’s arts education advocates, Mayor Bloomberg signed a bill requiring the city’s department of education to report on the availability and accessibility of arts education in each of its schools. This annual report will make public the degree to which schools meet current instructional requirements in music, dance, theater, and visual art. This wasn’t an aberration for Bloomberg, whose legacy after three terms as mayor includes an impressive record of support for the arts.
• Meanwhile, arts groups prepare to woo his successor, Bill de Blasio, who has followed national precedent and failed so far to appoint a new Commissioner of Cultural Affairs. Some speculate – or simply hope – that he will apply his populist spirit to the culture sector.
• Reversing an earlier position, the United States Copyright Office now recommends that visual artists receive a portion of profits when their work is resold. Congress hasn’t taken up resale royalties for visual artists since 2011, when a bill sponsored by Representative Jerrold Nadler failed to gain traction.
• ‘Tis the season of Top Ten Lists, and The Future of Music Coalition has a comprehensive roundup of 2013’s music and technology policy developments, including Congress’s ongoing review of the Copyright Act, a changing of the guard at the FCC, and the looming court decision in the momentous net neutrality case between the FCC and Verizon.
• Construction for major government-supported art facilities in Abu Dhabi — including sparkly new Guggenheim and Louvre campuses — is booming on the backs of migrant workers from Pakistan and Bangladesh, many of whom had to pay a recruitment fee to work on the projects and now toil under atrocious conditions. The International Trade Union Confederation is urging western museums to step in, and a coalition of artists and activists has formed to support the workers.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Steven Tepper, research director of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) and associate director of Vanderbilt’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, is the new dean of Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• George Zimmerman is once again in the media spotlight for selling a painting he made on eBay. The patriotically themed piece sold for $100,099.99, prompting outrage from some and a web-sale response by artist Michael D’Auntuono. In a move the artist calls “hypocritical,” D’Auntuono’s attempt to sell his response piece, and donate part of the proceeds to a charity advocating for crime victims, was censored by the auction website for violation of eBay guidelines.
• Acknowledging that less than 5 percent of its grants for repertory development have gone to women over the last quarter century, Opera America is launching a grant program targeting female composers.

IN THE FIELD

• Is Facebook’s new donate button “good, bad, or ugly” for nonprofits? Beth Kanter argues it does more harm than good, and rallies for a Facebook Ad Grants program similar to Google’s.
• In its quest to make culture “the spirit and soul of the nation,” China opened more than 450 museums in the last year alone, bringing the total number in the country to nearly 4,000.
• Did you finish 1984? New all-you-can-read book services are compiling data on not just what we read but also how quickly we do it, how long we linger over which passages, and whether we finish specific books. (Turns out people are more eager to learn how biographies end than business books.)
• Mara Walker, chief operating officer for Americans for the Arts, reports on her experience as the only American participant at this year’s International Arts Leadership Roundtable, organized by the Hong Kong Art Development Council.

BIG IDEAS

• You’ve Cott Mail readers offered bold predictions for the arts in 2014: ballet will relocate to London, we’ll all stop saying “outreach” (but do it more in our communities), and new artist-led theater collectives will rise up to seize the means of cultural production, among other prophecies.
• The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout, meanwhile, predicts audiences’ growing “on-demand” mentality will continue to spell trouble for nonprofit theater companies, and urges them to embrace and market the “intimacy [of the] small scale, handmade art form.”
• In an interview with Barry Hessenius, WESTAF Executive Director Anthony Radich unpacks his longstanding call to “reimagine” state arts agencies (i.e., embrace more flexible staff structures and find ways to get “free from the negative undertow of state restrictions while retaining that still-important connection to the state government”) and offers insight on the future of state support for the arts.
• Providence, RI has acknowledged how much the city’s future depends on its four main nonprofit higher-ed institutions: Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, Johnson & Wales, and Providence College. Financially reliant on an industry that isn’t requited to pay local taxes, the city of Providence has negotiated an attempted economic revitalization plan that has the schools make sizable contributions to the city in exchange for sweetened deals on land usage and campus expansion.
• Createquity’s own Talia Gibas lays out three different conceptions educators, artists, and advocates draw on when they talk about “STEAM” as the intersection of the arts with science, technology, engineering, and math. She argues that art may primarily represent aesthetics and design, curiosity, or creativity, and that there are important differences among the three.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Foundation Center’s annual “Key Facts on U.S. Foundations” report is out in time for the New Year. Giving is on the rise: the approximately 82,000 foundations in the U.S. gave $45.9 billion in 2010, $49.0 billion in 2011, and an estimated $50.9 billion in 2012. The report also breaks down the largest grants by the largest foundations for 2011 by issue, geography, and a host of other dimensions, revealing among other things that the top 1% of recipients captured half of these grant dollars.
• The McKnight Foundation has released its findings in a study it conducted, with help from the Center for the Study of Art & Community, on artists supported by its fellowship program since its establishment in 1982. The study asked artists six questions that gave them an opportunity to “reflect on the environment, conditions, and motivations that affect their work.”

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.

• The Future of Music Coalition has a great roundup of takeaways from a recent congressional hearing on copyright law and the technology sector. Big ones include the very different challenges posed by copyrights versus patents, and that for the most part, technology companies don’t see copyright restrictions as stifling their ability to innovate.
• A new arts center in New York City (and the whopping $50 million in city capital funding that’s making it possible) has Mayor Bloomberg’s fingerprints all over it.
• Reason #22 to think twice before moving into a glass house: the New York State Supreme Court has ruled that a artist was well within his First Amendment rights when he took and then exhibited photographs of his neighbors — including two small children — inside their glass-walled home from across the street. Upon recognizing their images in an advertisement for the upcoming exhibit, the neighbors had attempted to sue the artist for invasion of privacy and emotional distress.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Katy Locker will join the Knight Foundation as its Detroit-based program director; she is currently VP of Programs at the Detroit-based Hudson-Webber Foundation. In an interview with former ArtPlace CEO Carol Colletta, she lists the arts as one among several “levers to continuing Detroit’s turn around.”
• Lisa Hall will become VP for Programs at Houston Endowment. She comes from YES Prep Public Schools, where she was VP for Talent Support and General Counsel.
• KPAC, a classical radio station in San Antonio, has cut its five local hosts to reduce costs and will use a syndicated service from Minnesota. The station has offered the hosts part-time work; so far, only one, Dierdre Saravia, has accepted.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Newly-appointed Ford Foundation President Darren Walker offers three lessons on philanthropy: collaborate broadly, as the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation did in the Harlem Chlidren’s Zone; invest in due diligence into grantees to ensure leaders are both passionate and adequately supported by their organizations; and recognize that the kinds of metrics used to measure success in business won’t apply in many philanthropic contexts.
• Grantmakers in the Arts continues to take a more activist stance regarding cultural equity. Earlier this summer, the entire GIA board of directors underwent two days of anti-racism training led by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. A similar two-day workshop (though led by a different group) will be offered to grantmakers attending this year’s GIA conference in October.

BIG IDEAS

• Organized labor is declining, the nonprofit sector is expanding, and two may well meet in the middle. Employees at a homeless service nonprofit in San Francisco successfully unionized in June, signaling what might be the beginning of a broader trend.  And while unions have been getting a bad rap recently this article points out that “the mission-driven nature of nonprofits can prove to be an asset in providing an alternative model to the us-versus-them framework adopted in most private sector organizing.”
• Angie Kim shares two great examples (both arts-related) of nonprofit membership associations, typically ill-equipped to drive sector-wide change, assuming a leadership role at the risk of alienating members or compromising revenue streams.
• Half of Barry Hessenius’s “Dinner-vention Party” guests offer their thoughts on how the arts can address declining audience numbers and shifting participation in truly new ways. This first batch includes “briefing papers” by Laura Zabel, Kimberly Howard, Clayton Lord, Margy Waller, Tamara Alvarado, and Nina Simon.
• What happens when video-game designers become auteurs? In the case of Thatgamecompany’s Jenova Chen, the artists reworks his art many times before releasing it to get the “emotional impact right,” his company goes bankrupt as the project runs over schedule and over budget – and the final product becomes a critical darling, breaks sales record, and wins its creator a $5.5m venture-capital investment.

IN THE FIELD

• A new movement in the architecture and design field builds on LEED certification’s environmental standards, and calls for a triple-bottom-line approach that takes social factors into account as well.
• Amazon has launched Amazon Art, a partnership with more than 150 galleries that allows you to browse, purchase and review (or faux-review) fine art much as you would a kitchen appliance. At least one blogger isn’t impressed, noting, “Much as I admire [Amazon’s] shipping practices… why compete in a market where an awesomely speedy physical delivery network means next to nothing?” Speed might not matter here, but access to artwork—especially for people who don’t live in major urban centers – might.
• The community-supported agriculture model is being transferred to the arts in cities including Pittsburgh, St. Paul and Flint. Most of them are visual art-specific, with at least one performing arts version as well. And they never have to worry about getting too much Swiss chard…

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) has updated its annual survey of arts alumni. SnaapShot 2012 presents the results in attractive infographics, and SNAAP’s 2013 annual report interprets the data. The theme of the report is inequalities among graduates of diverse backgrounds. Findings include a lack of access to networks among black and Hispanic arts alumni, which disproportionately discourages these alumni from becoming artists; and persistent pay gaps between male and female graduates.
• The Australia Council for the Arts has released a new study of the Australian arts sector in 2012. The report is bullish: attendance at arts events is up by about 3.5%; box office across genres was up 16% (only theater box office declined); and private sector contributions held steady.
• GlobalGiving, GuideStar, the Foundation Center, and TechSoup are collaborating to create an international registry of philanthropic entities. The project, funded by the Hewlett and Gates Foundations, will develop a system of unique identifiers and establish a database for information like the nature and location of philanthropic work.
• A new paper from Yuan Ji, an attorney for Wilson Sonsini and recent Yale Law School graduate, examines the conversion of Burning Man from for-profit to nonprofit status.
• Do copyright laws “make books disappear”? A researcher examines the numbers of books available in print over the last two hundred years, and finds they tend to vanish quickly, only to reappear later when they fall into public domain.
• A new study found that undergraduates tended to like the paintings of the critically-respected 19th-century artist John Everett Millais more with repeated exposure – but they liked the work of the popular but less canonical Thomas Kinkade less the more they saw of it. This is in tension with previous research into the “mere exposure effect” that found that  familiarity just about always breeds affection, even for lesser Impressionists.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• The US Bureau of Economic Analysis, following new international standards, has adjusted the official method for calculating GDP to “include the amount of money business invest in … intellectual property.” This involves some tough calls: development costs for hit TV shows with potential for syndication and even greeting cards count, but journalism and blogs are deemed perishable. Some commentators interpret this as refreshing and official recognition of the economic value of creative productions.
• Back in April, Createquity explored what might happen if the federal tax deduction for charitable contributions went the way of the dodo. At the federal level, the debate rages on, but various states – including Hawaii, Minnesota and Kansas – have recently decided against capping charitable deductions within their states, citing negative impact on the nonprofit sector.
• Across the pond, it looks like economic arguments for the arts are becoming increasingly influential. Britain’s Culture Secretary preserved most of the UK’s £450m-plus culture budget in part by highlighting the arts’ role in driving economic growth. Not everyone is on board though: the Scottish Secretary of Culture responded by reminding Scots of this fall’s referendum on independence and declaring that Scotland “doesn’t measure the worth of culture and heritage solely in pounds and pence.” (Bonus: this recent post recaps the rise of “Art Works” justifications for subsidy in the US.)
• Why it’s important to pay attention to policy: an arts educator is California is “shocked” to learn his state requires the arts to be taught in schools. (Psst: so do forty-four others.)

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Darren Walker, currently a vice president of the Ford Foundation, has been named the foundation’s next president. His portfolio as VP covered arts & culture, and he was instrumental in the formation of the ArtPlace creative placemaking funder collaboration.
• Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight.Com and intellectual crush of data geeks everywhere, is leaving the New York Times for ESPN. Good news for baseball fans, bad news for political wonks, though Silver will continue to cover elections via ABC News.
• Don Rosenberg, longtime music critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, has been laid off along with 49 other employees of the paper.

BIG IDEAS

• Americans for the Arts has launched a new project to study America’s 600+ “Cultural Districts,” updating their 1998 Cultural Districts Handbook. As part of the kickoff, they hosted a blog salon last week.
• Are organizations that eschew dynamic pricing “punishing [their] staff[s] in the service of an ideal the community may not be aware of“?
• FSG is launching a Next Generation Evaluation project. An initial post summarizes three long-held assumptions about evaluation and three “game-changing approaches” that could challenge them: Developmental Evaluation, Shared Measurement, and Big Data.
• With the backing of the Haas, Hewlett, and Packard Foundations, Shiree Teng has launched ImpactRising.org, a website designed “to help bring a level of standards to the consulting industry, to raise the quality of social sector consulting, and to to have some measure of accountability.” It includes tools and resources for organizations working with consultants and for consultants themselves.
• A scientist-turned-artist reflects on the differences between the two cultures.
  

  From funding levels (‘I write grant applications for research and it’s like taking an arts grant and adding a couple of zeros’) and the culture of peer review (‘It’s all about surviving the gauntlet of people trying to tear your ideas apart – that doesn’t happen with an arts audience’), to scrutinising outcomes (‘In science, they really care about the outcome of their funding – I don’t get the same impression in the arts’), institutionally, science and the arts are still very far apart.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• We know the Common Core State Standards aren’t cheap; states across the country are scrambling to figure out how much the newer, “smarter” tests will cost them. But beyond that, the Common Core is also prompting some borderline-creepy partnerships between for-profit and nonprofit educational entities. Beginning in 2014, the American Council of Education, which administers the GED, is joining forces with textbook giant Pearson. The upside? The GED is getting re-written to align with Common Core. The bad news? The cost of taking the GED will almost double. Way to reduce barriers to a high school diploma, guys.
• Hyperallergic has a helpful summary of five approaches artists have taken in attempts to guarantee fair wages and benefits. And while he doesn’t explicitly mention artists, Adam Davidson uses the example of a wannabe-hair-metal-rock-star-turned-accounting-“cliff jumper” to illustrate how hard it is to determine the financial value of ideas.
• Bloomberg Philanthropies announced in June a $15m, 3-year grant to 5 major cultural institutions to support the development of mobile apps. The Guggenheim recently released its free, Bloomberg-funded app; others will follow through the end of 2014.

IN THE FIELD

• Is this the future of professional conferences? The ever-intrepid Nina Simon recently hosted seventy-five designers, museum professionals and artists in the Santa Cruz Museum of Art for a 2.5 day “camp” for participants to “take a risk” in creating exhibits. Beyond sounding super fun, the experiment generated reflection about what “taking a risk” even means in a museum environment.
• Abe Flores (recent winner of Americans for the Arts’s Emerging Leader Award) shares his thoughts on the distressing lack of racial diversity among respondents to AFTA’s recent report on salaries in local arts agencies.
• While the fate of Detroit’s art collection is still up in the air, the Wall Street Journal offers two arguments for keeping the works where they are, and the director of the Detroit Institute of Arts insists it’s too soon to panic.
• Jon Silpayamanant writes about what declining attendance at sporting events – and the measures teams have taken to preserve revenues – can tell us about the similar problems faces by live performances in the arts.
• Meanwhile, demand for classical music on Pandora (and iTunes) has been growing – and outperforming the company’s expectations based on market share. But lest we get too excited about our digital saviors, Spotify – the streaming service that musicians love to hate – is hardly rolling in cash; those pitiful payments to artists offset nearly all of its equally-pitiful revenues.
• Allan Kozinn chronicles the “sea change” in music conservatories as courses are added in the business of music, covering the use of digital technologies, the art of networking, and how to build a personal brand as part of a career.

RESEARCH CORNER

• This puts a twist on arguments touting the economic impact of the arts: new research from the Corporation for National and Community Service indicates people who volunteer their time with organizations have a 27 percent greater chance of finding employment, with the link strongest for those who traditionally have the hardest time finding work. Per the NEA’s Director of Research and Analysis, “If volunteerism is indeed a pathway to employment, then arts organizations, venues, and activities could be hotbeds for this crucial transition.”
• The chance that a child will earn her way into a higher class than her parents’ varies considerably across major American cities – her odds are better in New York or several California cities than in, say, Ohio. The driving forces seem to be not higher tax credits for the poor or taxes on the rich, but greater geographic integration of the poor and middle class, more stable families, stronger K-12 education, and higher civic engagement.
• Researchers in Ireland have found that listening to music from different cultures may prompt you to “denigrate outsiders” if the music sounds particularly unconventional to you, and conclude that “attempts to celebrate and share diversity may have the reverse effect.” Isn’t that also an argument for exposing children to lots of different kinds of music, all the time?
• Market research by IMPACTS into visitor-serving organizations like zoos, symphonies, and museums suggests that overall satisfaction is driven much more by the “entertainment experience” than the “educational experience” – entertainment is four times as important to visitors. (The linked piece does not define “entertainment,” so it is possible that really fun education may fare better.)
• Any idea how much you’d have to pay the Rolling Stones to cover “Brown Sugar” on your debut album? According to preliminary results from a new set of music-and-copyright quizzes hosted online by the Future of Music Coalition, fewer than a quarter of respondents can tell you – though we don’t know how many of them are aspiring musicians. Or Mick Jagger.

Photo from Images_of_Money on Flickr

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported on the controversy over the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) Theatre’s policy of not paying its performers. UCB is almost universally considered the leading improv theater in New York, and attracts much of the top talent. It’s not a small side project, or an isolated community; it shapes the social norms of the New York improv comedy scene. As such, the question of its role in defining the future of New York improv is real and the conversation deserves to be amplified by places like the Times. This controversy followed a similar uproar over former Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer’s decision to not pay her crowd-sourced band members.

When people discuss the issue of when performing for free is appropriate and when it is not, three logics emerge: utility, community, and justice.

The utilitarian logic suggests that if the artist is getting more out of the experience than the host, the artist should not be paid. Adam Thurman explains that for these professional performers, “the real enemy is being invisible.” If the exposure a professional gets from performing at a certain venue is good enough to get her jobs down the line that she couldn’t get otherwise, she should be willing to work for free because the future returns are high enough. If the exposure doesn’t help the performer get work or some other financial compensation down the line, he suggests that performer not take the gig for free. Amanda Palmer’s plan to not pay her band members makes sense under this logic—they’re all unknown musicians and they’re getting the opportunity to tour with a well-known pop artist. This opportunity is probably a pretty good resume booster for someone looking for a career as a back-up guitarist or a pop drummer. Popular improv comedian Chris Gethard agrees, saying “I owe everything to UCB.”

Following this logic to its conclusion leads to the idea that if performers are really getting a lot out of the experience, maybe they should be paying venues for the opportunity. This is happening in music and theater scenes all over the country.  Though much of this work preys on wide-eyed performers looking for a break, some folks are actually selling a great experience that performers wouldn’t be able to have otherwise.

One of UCB’s founders characterizes the question of whether to pay differently in one of the most important paragraphs on the Times’s report:

There’s a creative vibe at U.C.B., and to maintain it, we can’t pay people,” Mr. [Matt] Besser said in an interview. “If you pay, then you have to assign worth to shows, and then people will resent that.

This argument follows from the community logic. Here, performers are part of a community that a venue keeps alive. Paying performers would destroy the egalitarian we’re-all-in-this-together spirit. A similar ethic is commonly discussed in politics. Paying voters for showing up at the polls, though it may increase turnout, hasn’t yet caught on because it clashes with the idea that voting is something we do because we love our country, not for a few bucks.

But a day’s work deserves a day’s pay, right? The bank won’t hold exposure as equity (most of the time, anyway). Science fiction author Harlan Ellison lays out this problem bluntly, emphatically pronouncing:

By what right would you call me and ask me to work for nothing? Do you get a paycheck? Does your boss get a paycheck? … Do you pay the cameramen? Do you pay the cutters? Would you go to a gas station and ask for free gas? Would you go to the doctor and have him take out your spleen for nothing? How dare you call me and want me to work for nothing!

Amanda Palmer critic Steve Albini makes a related argument that if the person who would normally be paying is making money (i.e., Amanda Palmer or a venue that programs successful improv comedy), the performer should be getting paid.

With these three different logics leading to different answers on whether to pay performers, it makes sense that controversies would arise. We need to be asking what we want: low cost performances as a locus for social connection and creative expression, market-based exchange, or a day’s pay for a day’s work?

Awaiting Gentrification in Crown Heights – photo by Jeff Chou

It seems that you can’t read an article about New York City in any news source, whether it’s Gawker or the New York Times, without hearing the buzzword “gentrification.” But what do people mean when they toss this word around and how does it look to the people living in affected areas? Why do people draw a connection between artistic hubs and gentrification? Though gentrification is a catch-all term used to describe a range of interrelated outcomes, it is generally connected to changes in an area’s culture and character, demographics, the real estate market, and land use.  Due to a long history of rampant racial inequity in U.S. housing and public policy, the term is also closely associated with a larger idea of “a miscarriage of social justice, in which wealthy, usually white, newcomers are congratulated for ‘improving’ a neighborhood whose poor, minority residents are displaced by skyrocketing rents and economic change.”In recent years, two neighborhoods in New York City, Crown Heights and Harlem, have undergone dramatic physical, cultural and demographic changes. Both neighborhoods are attracting new residents along with businesses that cater to their tastes. You only have to walk down the streets of either these two neighborhoods to see that the process of gentrification is well underway, if not almost complete. In recent months, New York Magazine and the New York Times have published articles about the city’s reinvigorated real estate market, especially in areas like Harlem that even ten years ago were still seen as areas that needed civic investment and redevelopment if they were to appeal to mainstream middle- or upper-class tastes.

The massive transitions taking place in Harlem and Crown Heights are just as closely tied to economic status as they are to race. Sociologist Sharon Zukin defines gentrification as a process of spatial and social differentiation that results from the influx of educated, middle-class people into low-income areas. The form of urban gentrification seen over the last half century differs from previous incarnations because of the type of cultural capital these new urban dwellers bring with them. The new agents of gentrification seek out the same characteristics that made previous generations flee urban areas, namely distinctly urban attributes like diversity, walkability and historic significance. While these new urbanites may not always be economically well-off, they are drawn to the aesthetics of what they see as the “authentic” city, but inevitably their surroundings are eventually molded by their own presence.

Watching the process of gentrification unfold in New York City may be an opportunity to learn from arts-based community revitalization efforts in places like Watts, CA; Houston, TX; and Chicago, IL, and give policymakers, practitioners and residents an opportunity to envision an inclusive future for their community. Although both Crown Heights and Harlem have experienced an exodus of many of their black residents, blacks still maintain a tenuous plurality in most parts of these neighborhoods, indicating that while there is a threat of increased displacement, there may also be opportunities for those remaining to take an active part in the reshaping of their communities.  Will Crown Heights and Harlem fall prey to the oft-discussed negative consequences of gentrification? Or is there still opportunity for these neighborhoods to retain a connection to their original inhabitants?

Why Crown Heights and Harlem?

Both Harlem and Crown Heights (and more broadly, Brooklyn) have their own cultural currency tied to a heritage that has dominated much of U.S. popular culture over the past twenty years. These neighborhoods are synonymous with defining artistic movements in black culture like jazz and hip hop, art forms that have had a global impact. The connection these two neighborhoods have to cultural milestones such as the Harlem Renaissance and the early work of Spike Lee attracts new residents eager to build upon the past and contribute to a new phase of development in their own way.

Brooklyn racial demographics, 2000, courtesy of the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center 

Brooklyn racial demographics, 2010, courtesy of the Center for Urban Research at CUNY Graduate Center

In spite of the fact that more and more young white New Yorkers are moving to the neighborhood of Crown Heights, a majority of residents are distinctly not part of the wealthiest tier of society.  Crown Heights is not the kind of place like Williamsburg or DUMBO that gets highlighted in discussions about the new wave of New York’s vibrant arts scene. There is plenty of existing grassroots arts activity from practicing individual artists, community based organizations, and community-based arts projects, it is still difficult for local cultural organizations based in Crown Heights to garner enough funding and support to work with under-resourced communities, with dueling priorities like crime and education. That said, the changing demographics of the area, as well as its proximity to attractions like the Brooklyn Museum and the Barclays Center and the resulting increase in real estate value, has attracted the attention of traditional and untraditional creative placemakers.

Upper Manhattan racial demographics, 2000, courtesy of the Center for Urban Research at CUNY Graduate Center

 Upper Manhattan racial demographics, 2010, courtesy of the Center for Urban Research at CUNY Graduate Center 

Although Harlem has a more well-established cultural brand and presence than Crown Heights, it too is becoming a hub for creative industry and the creative class, albeit in a different form. Tour buses constantly drive through Harlem, giving visitors a chance to view iconic landmarks like the Apollo Theater or visit the Studio Museum in Harlem. Over the past three years, Harlem has gained two independent multi-use creative arts spaces, MIST and ImageNation, started by long-time Harlem residents or advocates. These organizations are helping to shift the perception that change in previously distressed communities has to come from the top down. Instead, they demonstrate that culturally-based organizations can uplift and strengthen the creativity that already exists in a mutually beneficial way.

For all of the discussion of gentrification and displacement, it seems that many authors and researchers approach the issue from the frame of high-income whites displacing low-income people of color. What happens when high-income people of color become part of the process of redevelopment and reinvestment? The presence of MIST and Imagenation in Harlem highlight the nuanced dimensions of gentrification and confront misconceptions about what the process entails, who the drivers are, and how established residents play a part in the redevelopment of their neighborhood.

What Role Does The City Play?

Entire books have been written about New York City’s public policy, city planning, and their relationships with the arts and gentrification. Today’s New York has a unique relationship with gentrification because the constant hunt for refuge from the city’s high cost of living, paired with the city’s concentration of wealth, makes for some combustive elements.

In September 2008 the New York Times ran a brief update on a redevelopment project, titled Mart 125, which would include 67,000-square-foot space for a cultural and commercial complex across the street from the Apollo Theater.  Mart 125, an urban revitalization plan originally conceived nearly 20 years earlier in 1986, encountered delay after setback after delay until the Bloomberg administration issued an RFP to reinvigorate the project in 2008. As the Times article notes, arts organizations that met a threshold of financial stability and community involvement would get preference in the process of becoming a selected tenant. One of the selected occupants of this space was ImageNation, a small nonprofit arts organization whose mission is to “establis[h] a chain of art-house cinemas, dedicated to progressive media by and about people of color.” As part of executing that mission, the organization sought to create a gathering space for the community that could also serve as an affordable visual and performance arts venue.

Headed by Moikgantsi Kgama, a long-time Harlem resident with roots in the independent filmmaking community, ImageNation had been searching for a permanent home for its frequent events almost since its inception in 1997. The organization and its staff needed the room to expand and live up to its goal of becoming a go-to place for art-house cinema. In a recent interview Kgama noted that Mart 125 seemed to be the perfect opportunity for ImageNation to capitalize on the growing community reinvestment in Harlem. By the turn of the 21^st century the more commercial aims of Mart 125 were coming to fruition, with new outposts of Starbucks, H&M and American Apparel opening up on the strip of 125^th Street between Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X Boulevards.  The city and its various development agencies seemed poised to make good on their commitment to provide space for local cultural organizations. ImageNation and other organizations were strengthened by the rigorous RFP process and collaborative relationships with various city agencies, which asked them to meet tough benchmarks related to fiscal and organizational management to equip them for long-term success. Then the 2008 financial crisis descended upon the nation, the city’s priorities shifted and the community-based arts organization focus of Mart 125 stalled. Kgama and the staff of ImageNation remained determined to develop space in Harlem, along with other organizations like My Image Studio Theater Harlem (MIST). Both organizations opened space in Harlem in 2012, years after Mart 125 had come to a virtual standstill.

Today, MIST and ImageNation join a cohort of creative organizations run by people of color that are contributing to Harlem’s legacy as a creative hub for the city. These organizations are intentional about how they fit into the community and what role they should play in Harlem’s artistic ecosystem. Not surprisingly, they appear to be embraced wholeheartedly by the community’s new and old residents. ImageNation not only screens films and provides gallery space for up and coming artists, they also host engaging community events such as an attempt to create the world’s longest Soul Train Line, in honor of Don Cornelius, and to draw attention to Mental Health Awareness month.

In May of 2012 the New York City Economic Development Corporation issued a request for construction bids to resume redevelopment and attempt to continue on with the Mart 125 project. In spite of the delays with the city-sponsored community redevelopment, it seems that these community based organizations have been able integrate themselves into the neighborhood in ways that respect the integrity of Harlem’s long cultural history while contributing to the neighborhood’s evolution.  Would these organizations have been established in their current forms without the push for gentrification and development from the city? It is hard to tell. What is clear is that ImageNation and other local arts organizations have been able to capitalize on the interest in the “new” Harlem in order to gain access to the space they need to serve their community.

What Role Does the Private Sector Play?

In Crown Heights, the connection between gentrification and creative placemaking has been driven more by private sector dollars than by civic investment. Crown Heights is not connected to a specific cultural moment like the Harlem Renaissance, but it is increasingly being cited in articles about gentrification in New York City. Though there are established organizations in the community that use the arts as part of their programming, Crown Heights has attracted two large-scale creative placemaking projects that have met very different fates. While one has received a large amount of private financing derived from sources outside of the community, another, a brainchild of Crown Heights residents, has floundered.

Brooklyn’s recent resurgence as a cultural destination has been buoyed in part by the various enterprises of Jonathan Butler, creator of the website Brownstoner and co-creator of the very popular Brooklyn Flea. In 2012 it became public that Butler and his business partners were planning a large-scale development project in the heart of Crown Heights. The project being proposed is a mixed-use development that will provide space for artists and food vendors from the Brooklyn Flea to create and sell their wares. Unlike his contemporaries in Harlem, Butler epitomizes what many envision when they think of gentrification: white, wealthy, and attracted to the “potential” of under-resourced neighborhoods. Through his personal connections to Wall Street, Butler was able to raise seed capital from Goldman Sachs to fund his newest venture. This has given Butler and his partners the freedom to “seek input and support” from city agencies and politicians, without being completely dependent upon bureaucratic maneuvering to complete the project.  Instead of the drawn-out process that stalled Mart 125, Butler has been able to close on this $30 million project and is already in talks with potential tenants. Contrast this with the experience of the small arts organizations in Harlem, or the more recent attempts of a group of artists in Crown Heights who have been unsuccessful thus far in their attempts to purchase a building in the area for a similar purpose as Butler and his partners.

Although Butler has been able to breeze past the bureaucratic red tape and ecure space for his tenants, long-term residents of Crown Heights are wary of the project, seeing it as a harbinger of higher rents and changing demographics. Indeed, Crown Heights has had a high influx of white, upper income residents according to the 2010 census. There are also few signs that Butler or his private sector partners are looking at this as an opportunity to engage the diverse communities currently living within Crown Heights. On the day Butler announced the building purchase, Brownstoner posted a publicly available survey of potential tenants asking where interested businesses and business owners were currently located. However, questions about race or income levels, which would directly speak to the economic and social tensions that this project uncovers, remain unasked. In more recent reports it appears that tenants will be handpicked by Butler and his investors, maintaining continuity with the brand his previous ventures have established, regardless of how that affects the current community.

According to Ms. Kgama of ImageNation, it is difficult for small arts organizations that are led by or serve people of color to succeed because they often don’t have the fiscal backing or stability to compete for larger funding opportunities. At the same time, as Kgama points out, in rapidly gentrifying areas “it helps” for the organization to be led and staffed by people of color, so long as it is reflective of the surrounding area. Although there are a diverse range of experiences within every ethnic group, more often than not organizations led by people of color are more responsive to the wants and needs of minority groups, thereby making their host communities more receptive to their presence.

This also suggests that instead of a top-down approach, the needs of the community will be reflected in the programming showcased by the “gentrifying” organization. So far MIST and ImageNation seem to be embraced because their leaders made a conscious decision, reflected in their mission, to be reflective of and responsive to the cultural legacy of their host communities. It remains to be seen if Butler will take an inclusive approach to his new project, or if he is even concerned with avoiding perception as a malignant gentrifier. If he is, there are a few organizations in Harlem that he can ask for tips.

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 the way of hard and fast guidance for future cases. Donn Zaretsky has been providing extensive coverage over at The Art Law Blog. Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition Policy, and the Internet has been holding hearings on potential adjustments to current copyright law.

With Rocco Landesman and Julius Genachowski out of government, the Future of Music Coalition shares what they would like to see in an NEA Chair and an FCC Chair.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has proposed legislation that would bring tax incentives for Broadway productions in line with what film and television producers currently enjoy. The current tax code provides for essentially a tax shelter on the first $15 million of expenses provided that 75% of that goes to pay for services performed in the USA. Schumer’s bill, the STAGE Act of 2013, would extend that protection to live commercial theater productions. Of course, this is Congress we’re talking about here, so don’t hold your breath.

STATE AND LOCAL

Actually, all local news this month. The City of Chicago is investing $1 million to bolster arts education in its public schools, part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s commitment to implement the Chicago Cultural Plan completed in 2012. The money will go toward dedicated weekly instruction time, increasing professional development and training for teachers, increased community partnerships, and more funding assistance and supplies. Sadly, the Philadelphia public school system has a $304 million budget shortfall and is looking at potential cuts to music and art programs if the city and state don’t pony up some more cash.

The intrepid Guy Yedwab has been getting more involved with the League of Independent Theater in New York, which has been doing some admirable community organizing to put the arts on the platforms of local candidates. Guy has posted video from an event he helped organize with that specific purpose in mind, and notes from a mayoral forum that wasn’t arts-specific but had ramifications for the arts nevertheless.

INTERNATIONAL

A new law in the United Kingdom attempts to make it easier to license orphan works, but may open the door to online photo image plagiarism in the process. Meanwhile, in an ironic twist, the UK’s inaugural City of Culture festival, held in Northern Ireland’s second-largest city, is in financial trouble a third of the way through the yearlong program because “income from sponsorship and ticket sales is much less than…expected.”

Small steps toward a better world: Israel and Palestine have agreed to let UNESCO implement a 2010 plan to safeguard Jerusalem’s Old City and its holy sites, part of a larger process that is hoped will have the effect of depoliticizing the international cultural agency. Cultural diplomacy fans, this is where it’s at right here.

Remember when we had those stories last year of ancient culture being destroyed by Islamic militants in Timbuktu? Well, if this story from a Tibetan exile publication is to be believed, a similar, if less violent, destruction may be taking place in Tibet at the hands of the Chinese government in order to create a “tourist city” replete with shopping malls. Elsewhere in the Pacific, the Australia Council for the Arts has a new director in Tony Grybowski, an insider who had been heading up the council’s Major Performing Arts Board. Grybowski will be charged with implementing Australia’s new national cultural policy, which despite being championed by ousted arts minister Simon Crean seems to be moving through the legislative process without difficulty so far.