• 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.

Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) was stolen along with his Madonna (1894) from Oslo’s Munch Museum in 2004. After the theft, the combined value of the artworks was assigned retroactively at $121 million.

Christie’s auction house is wrapping up four months of appraising artworks at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), which has become an unfortunate hostage in negotiations between the bankrupt City of Detroit and its creditors. When the city’s Emergency Manager, Kevyn Orr, brought in Christie’s in August, there was an outcry of disapproval from the public and museums across the country. Marion Maneker of Art Market Monitor described the general sentiment this way:

If you allow Detroit to appraise its art… you’re simultaneously devaluing the importance of art and culture and opening the door to further kleptocratic appropriations from the “public trust.”

Orr has said that he expects the DIA to find a way to raise money from its collection, which may mean a sale of some works at auction. However, the objections are not just to potential deaccessioning (the controversial practice of selling of a work in a museum’s collection), but even to the very notion of assigning an estimate of market value to works of visual art. Maxwell Anderson, Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, compared Christie’s process to “the weighing of souls” and expressed concern that it would “alter…the public’s perception of artworks from being ciphers of public heritage of transcendent value, to objects for sale to pay other people’s debts.”

Protests against the valuation of art in public institutions are not new. Once an artwork has made it behind the pearly gates of a major museum, it is generally considered to be off limits to market forces forever, preserved and protected for the benefit of all. The arguments for this view usually echo the opinion that art’s intrinsic and cultural importance render it priceless, so assigning a price would profane this sacred value.

But are these fears of assigning dollar amounts to artworks warranted? As an associate in the field of fine art appraisal, I take issue with the notion that art could be kept separate from economic value and market forces, even if we would like it to be – and I question the underlying belief that assigning price and respecting “transcendent” cultural value are mutually exclusive. As one municipal bankruptcy expert asserted, “You can’t pretend the art doesn’t have monetary value.” I would go further and say that we should be glad it does.

How Much Is It Worth?

The systematic valuation of artworks in a major museum’s collection is unusual. Even in the DIA’s case, Christie’s is only appraising a select group – less than 5% of the collection – comprised of works purchased directly by the City of Detroit. However, art museums, their collections, and exhibitions have always been intertwined with the art economy. Deaccessioning is one obvious point of intersection, but even setting the sale of art to the side, museums actually assign market value to works all the time, particularly when they acquire or loan them out.

A museum typically acquires work either through a direct purchase made with a combination of its own money and donor funds or via a donation from a private owner. In both instances, the artwork enters the collection with a price attached. In the case of a purchase, curators will examine the historical and aesthetic importance of the artist and her past market activity to justify to their director and board the need to spend a certain amount on a new acquisition. In fact, rising market prices for a less established artist’s work can actually be a signal that she is worth considering for acquisition in the first place. Pop over to the website for Boston’s Museum of Fine Art for an interesting peek at one museum’s acquisition policy (and visit it again for more insights on provenance, which we’ll get to in a bit).

In the case of a charitable donation to a nonprofit institution, the Internal Revenue Service requires that the artwork be professionally appraised upon acceptance to determine its fair market value, defined as:

The price that property would sell for on the open market. It is the price that would be agreed on between a willing buyer and a willing seller, with neither being required to act, and both having reasonable knowledge of the relevant facts.

This valuation provides the basis for the tax break the donor will receive. To ensure he doesn’t scam the system with an inflated value, this type of appraisal uses a market data approach that includes prices of “comparable examples” or sales of the artist’s work in recent years. The appraisal also incorporates any pertinent information on the state of the art market at the time of the gift with regard to the artist, as well as a biography and testament to her relevance in relation to a particular art movement or period. In other words, the appraiser must prove the fair market economic value of the work as it relates to its cultural value in order for the IRS to accept the designated price.

These values are not static; they change with inflation, the ebb and flow of the market, and trends in the art world, which is why private collections are reassessed on a regular basis for insurance purposes – another moment at which monetary value is assigned to art. Perhaps surprisingly, most art museums do not insure their full collections, which would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, individual artworks are insured only when they leave their permanent homes, usually as part of an exhibition or occasionally for conservation. At that time, the works are re-appraised, their value once again determined to guarantee full coverage in the case of damage or loss, such as theft. If either occurs at home where the work is uninsured, the piece will be appraised retroactively for what it would have been worth at the time of the incident.

In 2004, Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) and Madonna (1894) were stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo. After the heist, their combined value was set at $121 million. The works were later recovered, but without an art appraisal, insurers would have been unable to determine how much to compensate the museum. By establishing the market value of an artwork, an organization can give itself options should the unforeseen occur. The money recovered from insurers will generally be put towards repairing any damages incurred, or if that’s not possible, acquiring another art piece. Both measures clearly benefit the collection and the public trust.

Exhibition History and Provenance

Museums don’t just establish the price of the art in their collections, they also help determine the value of works they never even consider buying. An artwork’s economic value is affected by its exhibition history and provenance—where it was shown, where it was written about, and by whom it was owned—so it’s in a collector’s best interest that it be seen in the right company.

When it comes to exhibitions, it is standard practice for museum curators to approach collectors about lending artworks for inclusion in upcoming shows featuring the artist’s work or area of influence. The wall text adjacent to an art piece in an exhibition can be a useful tool for illuminating the subtle presence of the art market in the room. Next time you attend a museum show, pay close attention to the last line of this catalogue description. If the provenance states, “From the collection of…” you can smile and nod with the knowledge that the lender has just added a feather to the artwork’s proverbial cap, an advantageous qualifier should he ever wish to sell it.

The cultural seal of approval that an art institution can issue extends beyond the objects within its own collection and those lent for exhibitions. It can affect an artist’s entire oeuvre, increasing the value of un-exhibited privately owned works as well as new ones offered for sale. One gallerist promoted the work of Israeli artist Leora Laor to a client by informing him in a letter that the The Jewish Museum was considering the purchase of Laor’s photograph Borderland #1006. In this case, the gallerist felt that even interest on the part of a museum would be a factor in the collector’s decision. Similarly, a well-received exhibition about a particular period or style can cause a flurry of buyer activity in the retail sector, as happened with a 2006 traveling showcase of 19^th-century Biedermeier fine art and furniture that was hailed in the New York Times as a “a harbinger of many things modern.”

An installation view of “Biedermeier: The Invention of Simplicity” at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2006. Photo credit: Chris and/or Kevin

On occasion a museum may mount a show comprised solely of works owned or donated by one collector – a practice sometimes referred to as a “vanity exhibition.” If the collector is still living, the museum may enter into the preliminary stages of acquiring his collection or first right of refusal, wherein they show the work in exchange for donations of art or a cash gift. The collector/donor benefits by adding exhibition history and provenance to his artworks and glory to his legacy, while the museum in theory benefits by expanding its collection – although the artwork may or may not eventually end up there. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art came under fire for agreeing to a 2001 exhibition of works from trustee Eli Broad’s collection without procuring a contract ensuring that some pieces would be donated to the institution. LACMA never received any of the work—Broad decided to open his own museum—but prior to that he made a $60 million contribution for a contemporary art wing bearing his name.

The incident with Broad points to the complex relationship nearly all art museums have with deep-pocketed benefactors positioned behind the scenes as trustees, committee members, and influential donors. It’s difficult for their personal and financial interests not to get entangled with the institution and their collections, which is why museums must walk an ethical tightrope when it comes to public-private partnerships. While their presence ensures that the museum will always be indirectly tied to the marketplace, it also allows institutions a certain amount of autonomy from the limitations of government funding and it can even offer protection for works of art under threat. In the case of the DIA, for example, Emergency Manager Orr and the city’s creditors have largely shied away from the majority of the collection that was donated or acquired with private funds, lest donors and their heirs unleash a slew of lawsuits similar to the one recently filed (and later retracted) by two founders of the Dia Art Foundation in New York.

The Art in Art Appraisal

We’ve examined some of the ways market value and museums intersect, but who exactly is appraising all of this artwork? Is it a group of sticker-happy thieves who will sell world-class art like your Nana’s cheap china at a yard sale? Absolutely not. Art appraisers are also art appreciators. They have a discerning eye for the energy of the brush stroke, effect of light, complexity of composition, and artist’s intent. Most hold degrees in areas of art, history, and cultural studies, as well as economics and administration. The principal appraiser at the firm I work for is a contributing member of several Los Angeles-area art museums, an owner of a diverse collection of paintings and “tramp art,” and has consulted on several art books and catalogues. If you’ve ever watched Antiques Roadshow or History Detectives, you get a pretty good idea of the level of an art appraiser’s interest and knowledge in the work he or she evaluates. Even auction catalogues feature special spreads that include artist’s biographies and attest to the cultural relevance of particular works for sale.

Contrary to fears that dollar signs will devalue art’s intrinsic qualities, those of us who are in the business of knowing the most about its market value are devoted museum patrons, members, collectors, and even artists ourselves – as in my own case. We are deeply aware of what makes an art piece valuable in a cultural context and worthy of its place in a museum.

But what about the broader public? Could highly publicized, often astronomical market prices for significant artworks lead to a general sense that art is only as valuable as the dollars it can be exchanged for? There is reason to believe that the risk is low. Even as New York Times art critic Roberta Smith bemoaned the “new high-water mark”—$142,000,000.00!—set by the recent sale of Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud, she pointed to a 1980 purchase by the Whitney Museum that made headlines at the time. The prestigious art institution bought an encaustic painting by Jasper Johns called Three Flags for an era-shocking $1 million. But no one talks about that when they see the work hanging in the museum today. It has weathered the once negative press resulting from its hefty purchase price remarkably well, becoming a popular icon of American 20^th Century art.

Jasper Johns’ iconic work Three Flags (1958) was purchased by the Whitney Museum in 1980 for $1 million.

A recent survey of Detroit citizens suggests a similar public resilience to artwork valuation. Despite the high estimates that have been tossed around in the media, reportedly 78% of locals surveyed would prefer not to sell the DIA’s art to satisfy city creditors, despite the city’s dire economic straits. And in another interesting development, Detroit’s creditors have accused Christie’s of undervaluing DIA artworks, the appraised portion of which are preliminarily estimated at $452-866 million. Their disappointment in the early assessment reveals how a prudent appraisal is less about giving the “kleptocrats” what they want than determining a value that accurately reflects the arts’ cultural and historical position within a market.

So if monetary value need not displace aesthetic or cultural value, it seems to me that we want art to be prized in the marketplace – which also means being priced. Though it may seem tasteless to talk cold hard cash when it comes to our cultural heritage, monetary worth is one of the most direct ways in which our culture speaks about things it truly values. Rather than trying to avoid pricing art all together—nearly impossible in a late-capitalist society—it might be more productive to think like an art appraiser and ask why the work is worth what it is at this particular moment in time. Examining the reasons reveals a lot about our cultural interests, state of the economy, and wealth distribution. The ability of an art collection to capture the attention of an American city’s creditors is disconcerting as a sign of culture’s vulnerability when our urban centers are poorly managed, but for a field constantly beset with worries of its declining relevance and difficulty reaching a broader audience, the public’s subsequent resistance in letting that artwork go should be something for arts lovers to celebrate – a sure sign that people really do care after all. In the opinion of this art appraisal associate, a world in which the price of certain artworks is ludicrously high is far less scary than a world in which no one is willing to put a price on art at all.

• The public has spoken: polling released in late September shows 75% of Detroiters oppose cutting pensions and 78% oppose selling artwork from the Detroit Institute of Arts to ease the city’s financial troubles. Meanwhile, the DIA is pitching a long-shot plan to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder that would direct significant state funding to the museum – possibly in exchange for the city’s relinquishing ownership.
• Is Philly’s status as a world-class cultural city at risk? The Philadelphia Inquirer explores the potential impact of sharp cuts in private and public funding in a city where arts tourists outnumber sports tourists 4:3.
• Washington, DC may be paralyzed over ObamaCare, but you don’t have to to be: Fractured Atlas follows up on its infographic guide to ObamaCare for artists with a similar guide for small business owners. And the Future of Music Coalition has announced a new website designed to be a comprehensive resource on the implications of the Affordable Care Act on artists. There’s even an artist-friendly hotline.
• In an interview in The Atlantic Cities, Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell talks about how the city benefits from – and has to adapt to – the huge festivals that undergrid its cultural economy.
• “Be A Creator” enters California elementary schools later this year as a pilot program designed to teach K-6 graders that sharing other people’s ideas and artwork without permission is stealing. The Center for Copyright Infringement (CCI) prepared the curriculum in conjunction with the California School Library Association and the Internet Keep Safe Coalition to address online piracy by educating the young. Detractors claim the curriculum is just “thinly disguised corporate propaganda.”
• Meanwhile, voluntary agreements held by the entertainment, advertising and internet industries to address issues of content piracy are apparently going well, according to testimony from a recent Congressional hearing. That’s good news following the controversy over the SOPA and PIPA bills last year. However, notably missing from the hearing were independent labels and the artists themselves.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The Kansas Arts Foundation, established after Governor Sam Brownback abolished the Kansas Arts Commission in a controversial and unsuccessful attempt to eliminate state art funding, has named Karen Lane Christilles its first Executive Director.
• Lois Lerner, embattled head of the IRS tax-exempt organizations division, has retired after bearing the brunt of the blame for the recent scandal involving targeted investigation of Tea Party-related organizations. A review board that was about to propose she be fired alluded to “neglect of duties” during her 12-year tenure at the agency, which raises an interesting question: is Lerner just a political scapegoat or has the IRS’s nonprofit unit actually been mismanaged for years?

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Copper heiress Huguette Clark’s will established an arts foundation and bequeathed it her $100m California estate to showcase her art, but other aspirants to Clark’s $400m fortune have taken to the courts.

IN THE FIELD

• New York’s 70-year-old City Opera is closing its doors following a decade of deficits, an unsuccessful campaign to avert bankruptcy and, according to Mayor Bloomberg, “a business model [that] doesn’t appear to be working.” Michael Cooper and Robin Pogrebin provide the most in-depth reporting on the institution’s final days and just how precariously it held on to life up to the final act.
• How many stagehands do you need in a new education space? Carnegie Hall’s opening night gala was abruptly canceled in the wake of a union dispute over jurisdiction of Carnegie’s still-under-construction education wing. The feud is raising eyebrows, particularly given that five of Carnegie’s top ten earners are stagehands, each earning more than $300,000 apiece.
• In an interview with Ellen McSweeney, Cynthia Cyrus of the Blair School of Music discusses the role of MOOCs in music education and the challenges posed by murky copyright law.
• Two great examples of museums keeping pace with changes in the education sector: the Museum of Modern Art recently wrapped up its first MOOC on museum teaching strategies, and reflects on how it went. The American Museum of Natural History, meanwhile, graduated its first class of science teachers, thanks to a federal grant that made it the first (and maybe not the last) museum in the nation to offer a full teacher prep program.
• Perhaps not such a great example of a museum keeping up with the times: New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art recently offered a Groupon “deal” for an $18 admission voucher. The only problem? Entry to the museum is supposed to be free five days and two nights a week. This bit of deceptive advertising appears to be just another episode in the institution’s shady history of misleading visitors about its pricing structure.
• The now year-long labor dispute at the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra has prompted both celebrated music director Osmo Vänskä and composer Aaron Jay Kernis to resign, dealing a major blow to the future of the organization. The question that remains is whether the board will try to rebuild the 110-year-old orchestra or the musicians will strike out on their own.
• Meanwhile in Germany, the Berlin Philharmonic has led a massive country-wide strike to protest further decreases in job opportunities for orchestral musicians.
• British museums are adjusting to a world with less public funding. The Museums Association recently released its annual review, finding that nearly a third of survey respondents have had to cut staffing, replacing many of the positions with volunteers and interns. Interestingly, museum attendance is at an all time high.

BIG IDEAS

• David B. Pankratz reports out on a few ideas about research generated at Americans for the Arts’s National Convention back in June: better link research to policy, create pathways for young researchers to study the arts, expand the focus of research beyond nonprofit arts, and more speed dating, among others.
• At WorldFuture 2013 (the best-named conference around), Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop Per Child project and co-founder of MIT Media Lab, described four different ways to see the future. In this post Elizabeth Merritt applies the theories to attempt to forecast the future of museums.
• Clayton Lord celebrates the recent Arts Dinnervention with a week’s worth of posts from himself and three other participants. Linda Essig joins in the conversation.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Where have all the theater nerds gone? The National Endowment for the Arts’s latest survey of public participation in the arts is out, and reports a nine percent drop in musical theater attendance and twelve percent drop in play attendance since 2008 – but greater participation by the young in arts festivals and by non-white and Hispanic Americans in art performances broadly. 
• Chris Unitt examines a a new report from the UK’s Culture 24  documenting the second phase of its action research project on “understanding and measuring digital engagement” in the cultural sector.
• Also out of the UK, Ticketmaster has released the results of a survey of playgoing among the British, who are more likely to have attended the theatre than a concert or sporting event. Audiences skew younger and more experimental than you might expect – which means audience codes of conduct are shifting, too.
• Last month Capacity Interactive released its Performing Arts Digital Marketing Benchmarking Survey Study with some interesting findings to report. Perhaps not surprisingly, “the biggest obstacle for digital marketing success is lack of budget.”
• Theater Communications Group has released its annual Theater Facts 2012 report, authored by the folks from the National Center for Arts Research. It’s possible to spin the news a few different ways, but what’s clear is that in many key areas, things are starting to look like they did before the recession: revenue is up, subscriptions are up, income from single-ticket sales is up. The full report is here.
• New neuroscience research finds adults with musical training perform better on tricky cognitive tests than those with little to no experience playing an instrument. And creativity in music doesn’t just happen randomly; freedom, flexibility, time and “being in the moment” are the key elements needed, according to a new study led by John Rink, professor of musical performance studies at Cambridge University.

Taking a cue from the success of Steam’s bundle sales for independent games, independent game developers David and Jeffrey Rosen of Wolfire Games tried a similar approach, selling games on a pay-what-you-want model…In addition, Wolfire adopted a new and innovative pricing system. Think Radiohead’s In Rainbows, with a dash of gamification and some charitable giving. Basically it works like this: Name your price. If you pay more than the average (which is constantly visible and updating), you receive bonus material, typically another game or two. These schemes seem to mitigate some of the problems artists have faced under a raw pay-what-you-want model, turning a race to the bottom into a race to the top (or at least an average). A portion of each sale goes to one or two charities, and in a move that capitalizes on the gamer demographic, there’s a kind of high score board where those who paid the most are placed on a list of contributors.

This idea takes me back to the Audiences at the Gate guided crowdsourcing concept for grantmaking that Daniel Reid and I co-developed a couple of years ago. That system attempts to use gamification to take the popularity contest element out of crowdfunding and instead turn the focus on to identifying expert curators. Much as the refinement of manufacturing processes played a huge role in the economic advances of the past two centuries, I suspect that many of the innovations of the future will emerge from introducing complexity into, as Cody puts it, the “raw” elements of revolutionary ideas, so as to correct the negative side effects and perverse incentives that may come with them.

• Two new Presidential cabinet nominees, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, have pro-arts backgrounds according to Americans for the Arts’s Bob Lynch.
• The Atlanta Regional Commission is one of the only metropolitan planning organizations and one of the largest communities to date to attempt to bring the arts and creative industries under one roof. Greg Burbidge wonders how best to find common ground among the interests of entities as diverse as video game designers, history museums, and dance collectives.
• Kudos to Hyperallergic’s Mostafa Haddaya for picking up this very odd job announcement from the unlikeliest of places:
  

  The Department of Homeland Security, a federal agency with a projected 2014 budget of just under $60 billion, would like to retain an experienced arts administrator for its “Loaned Executive Program.” The proposed position offers a salary range of “$0.00 to $0.00 / Without Compensation” and is

  [A] special opportunity (unpaid) that provides top executive-level talent from the private sector an opportunity to share their expertise with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to fill special, discrete needs.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The founding CEO of the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust, Harriet Ivey, is retiring after 15 years at the helm. The Trust makes grants to arts organizations in Indianapolis and Phoenix.
• Tom Kaiden is moving on after 12 years at the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance (including three as President) to take a position at the Arlington Alexandria (VA) Convention and Visitors Association.
• The National Endowment for the Arts’s Director of Literature, Ira Silverberg, is leaving the agency to return to New York. Silverberg had been a literary agent before joining the Endowment.
• Keith Sawyer, my favorite creativity and innovation blogger, is moving to Chapel Hill, NC to take a professorship in the University of North Carolina’s School of Education.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Guidestar, Charity Navigator, and BBB Wise Giving Alliance have joined together to combat the Overhead Myth – the idea (promulgated over the years by some of these same organizations, particularly Charity Navigator) that a nonprofit’s impact is somehow tied to the percentage of money it spends on its programs. The wide adoption of this construct has had all sorts of perverse unintended consequences in the sector, from non-transparent accounting to unsustainable management practices. Related commentary from Paul Brest, Kjerstin Erickson and (unintentionally) Janet Brown.

BIG IDEAS

• Wise words from Michael Rushton, in a post ostensibly about VIP tickets at amusement parks:
  

  I don’t feel an intuitive sense of being wronged when someone has the spending power and the desire to buy $50 bottles of olive oil, $5,000 suits, $100,000 cars. None of those purchases affect me. But if someone uses their spending power to gain position at my expense, then I object. This is at the root of complaints about the role of money in campaign financing: funds are spent by individuals and corporations wishing to advance their political agenda at the expense of other political claims. It is why we think there is something wrong with an industry that serves to collect millions of dollars preparing students to do well on their SATs: such efforts are purely designed for parents who want their children to have a better position, necessarily at the expense of others, for a chance at the limited spaces available at elite colleges. Fighting for position in these cases is worse than a zero-sum game, it’s actually a negative-sum game as resources are expended not for any increase in valuable goods, but simply to re-arrange who is at the front of the queue, either in politics or higher education.

• Sad I missed this new talk from the reliably brilliant Nina Simon, delivered at this year’s Theatre Communications Group conference in Dallas. Lots to chew on here, but what strikes me most is the combination of aggressive risk-taking and hyper-focused strategic thinking – an approach with such clear upsides and yet a frightening one for many in our field, I think.

IN THE FIELD

• Matthew Fluharty reports from the Rural Arts and Culture Summit in Minneapolis.
• A short primer on cultural districts from Erinn Roos-Brown.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The NEA has released new data on artist employment, updating its Artists in the Workforce study from 2005. In addition to summary findings, numerous tables are available for exploration.
• So people don’t always read to the end of articles – what else is new? But this is:
  

  Even more dispiriting is the relationship between scrolling and sharing. Schwartz’s data suggest that lots of people are tweeting out links to articles they haven’t fully read. If you see someone recommending a story online, you shouldn’t assume that he has read the thing he’s sharing.

  That is the truth. I have to laugh sometimes at what kinds of things are said about Createquity articles on Twitter, like when Tegan Kehoe’s skeptical review of “The Artistic Dividend” two weeks ago was hailed as (a) an analysis of a brand-new study [it was published a decade ago] and (b) good news for arts advocates.