FEDERAL Jane Chu is inching towards nomination as the next NEA Chair, as the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted to approve her candidacy with “no controversy.” Over the past few years, Republicans appear to be content to let the NEA languish in level-funding purgatory rather than continue to whip up theRead More
Early spring public arts funding update
FEDERAL 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 appointRead More
Around the Horn: Sochi edition
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT Joan Mondale, wife of former Vice President Walter Mondale and known to many as “Joan of Art” for her arts advocacy efforts, passed away February 3. After April 6, cracking jokes in the UK will become a little easier. A new UK regulation allows for the use of parts of original copyrightedRead More
For Public Artists, A Very Public Removal
For two decades the warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, known as 5Pointz stood as an unofficial museum of graffiti art. Jerry Wolkoff, the building’s owner, was considered an ally of graffiti artists for offering it up as a free canvas in the ‘90s – but that ended in 2010, when an artist was injuredRead More
Smart Public Art: Interactive Technology and Public Art Evaluation
Tapping the knowledge-gathering potential of interactive technologies online and in the field.
April public arts funding update
FEDERAL After a long lull, we’re starting to see some action on the arts and related topics at the federal level. First, the House and Senate have passed a continuing resolution enshrining the “sequester” cuts in the rest of Fiscal Year 2013, meaning that the National Endowment for the Arts and other federal agencies are sustaining aRead More
Uncomfortable Thoughts: Is Public Art Worthy of Hate?
That’s the question asked by John Metcalfe in this silly-but-kind-of-not photojournal in The Atlantic Cities, The Atlantic magazine’s online urban planning spinoff. Metcalfe spends most of the piece rehashing a 13-year-old broadside by a group of Philadelphia artists against that city’s Mural Arts Program for the “amateurish” quality of its paintings. As it turns out, though,Read More
Public Art and the Challenge of Evaluation
The impact of public art seems harder to measure than almost anything else imaginable. Some have tried anyway. Here’s what they came up with.
Around the horn: grantmakers edition
Back recently from the Grantmakers in the Arts Conference in San Francisco. More on that soon! In the meantime: ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – FEDERAL Republican House members are back on the warpath to eliminating public broadcasting money (along with other government programs). The first 1:36 of this interview with Grammy-winning jazz musician Esperanza Spalding has the makings ofRead More
Around the horn: turning the corner edition
Here’s a question for my long(er)time readers: should I continue with the weekly “around the horn” posts, or would you prefer if I selected only the articles that I have something to say about and gave them their own entries? I would then put articles that I merely find notable on my Twitter feed. DoRead More