• The Detroit Institute of the Arts, having convinced residents in three counties to pass a property tax supporting the institution in exchange for free admission, is facing a lawsuit on the basis that the deal doesn’t include special exhibits.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Richard Dare, the head of the Brooklyn Philharmonic (previously profiled here on Createquity) and controversial blogger, has taken the top post at the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
• Glenn Lowry, the famously well-compensated director of the Museum of Modern Art, has been elected to the board of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

IN THE FIELD

• RIP Orchestra Nova, a 29-year-old chamber orchestra in San Diego.
• Ouch: the locked-out St. Paul Chamber Orchestra recorded a nearly $1 million deficit last season, its first in a decade. Looks like Sarah Lutman got on the lifeboat just in time.
• The Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University is hosting what looks like a bangup creative placemaking symposium on April 12. And Man About Town Michael Hickey reports on a creative placemaking panel he moderated in New York City.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Interesting and entertaining perspective on collective impact and the need to support direct-service and backbone organizations simultaneously, with response by FSG’s Emily Gorin Malenfant.
• More examples of transparency in action: Kevin Bolduc and the Center for Effective Philanthropy are revamping their flagship product, the Grantee Perception Report, in response to feedback from customers – and blogging about the process.
• Peter Singer (author, The Life You Can Save) on donating to the arts:
  

  “Philanthropy for the arts or for cultural activities is, in a world like this one, morally dubious,” he writes in his book.

  He has heard two counterarguments repeatedly since the book came out in 2009. One points to the work that, say, art museums do with disadvantaged children. “I can see how that would be a worthwhile thing to do,” he said. “I’m not sure how well it compares with saving kids from dying from diarrhea or malaria.”

  Then, there are the crumbling buildings again. “I’m certainly not suggesting that when the roof of the Met starts to leak that you don’t repair it,” he said. “But I would not give a penny to the Met to buy another painting.”

BIG IDEAS

• Clayton Lord (can I still call you Clay?) is upping the ante with a couple of recent blog posts about support for the arts at the federal level, including this lovely graph showing the NEA’s appropriations history in real and nominal dollars along with percentage of the budget and party in control of the White House and Congress. It seems that who has the House of Representatives may be a bigger driver of the NEA budget than previously acknowledged. Be sure to check out Clayton’s analysis of framing vis-a-vis the charitable deduction as well.
• Meanwhile, the “new models”/future of the arts discussion is flaring again, with a post by Michael Kaiser spurring another round of response by Diane Ragsdale and Adam Huttler, and lots and lots of discussion in the comments.
• Watch a museum exhibition go up before your eyes (in slow motion) at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. Also: Attendance is not the only measure of demand, museum version.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), an annual survey of arts training program graduates, has published “Painting with Broader Strokes: Reassessing the Value of an Arts Degree,” a supplementary report on the 2010 survey results by Danielle Lindemann and Steven Tepper.
• Maribel Alvarez offers a review of Maria Rosario Jackson’s latest for LINC, “Developing Artist-Driven Spaces in Marginalized Communities.”
• The James Irvine Fund has released a report on the its Arts Innovation Fund grants (undertaken under its previous program strategy last decade), conducted by Slover Linett Strategies. The report is accompanied by a nifty tablet-friendly interactive highlighting key findings.
• The Future of Music Coalition is leveraging its Artist Revenue Streams data to engage in some mythbusting regarding how musicians make (or don’t make) money.
• Arts education data in Los Angeles shows a complex picture of trends over the past 15 years.
• Wow. Did you know that more than half of the US patent lawsuits in 2012 were brought by “non-practicing entities” – also known as patent trolls? These companies obtain patents with no intention of actually using them for inventions, but instead to “threaten young companies with lawsuits as soon as they obtain funding; or hamstring older companies, forcing them to divert cash into costly licenses for absurd patents rather than pay for costly defenses in uncertain, patent-friendly jurisdictions.” Good to know for anyone (such as Richard Florida types) relying on patents issued as a measure of innovation. Yuck.
• As mentioned here previously, the Twin Cities is currently suffering a symphony drought, with both the Minnesota and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras shut down in the midst of labor strife. This probably isn’t the most empathetic response imaginable, but my first thought upon reading the headline “Orchestra fans getting restless” in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune was, wouldn’t this be a great natural experiment for measuring the value of orchestras to a community? I mean, you don’t realize how much you appreciate something until it’s gone, right? The evidence presented in the article suggests that some audience members are finding substitutes (“a few classical groups have noticed a spike in ticket sales”), but a substantial number are staying home. Independently organized concerts by locked-out members of the Minnesota Orchestra are selling out quickly, though obviously in an environment of substantially reduced competition. I could imagine all sorts of possibilities – a rare economic impact study that actually takes into account opportunity costs, for example, or a more scientific survey of orchestra subscribers to find out what they’re doing with themselves at night.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• Bob Lynch reports out on the recent activities of the US Travel & Tourism Advisory Board.
• Americans for the Arts was out in force at the Republican national convention, organizing a panel with a Mesa mayor who skipped his own election to be there (he was running unopposed), former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, and, uh, “jazz musician” Bernie Williams.
• Future of Music Coalition legal intern Joseph Silver looks into how the first sale doctrine, which affords consumers the right to lend or resell copyrighted works they lawfully purchase, is adapting to the digital age.
• Shannon Litzenberger reflects on her two years as the first ever Metcalf Arts Policy Fellow and describes five models for fundraising and “friendraising” for the arts from the US, Canada, and Australia.
• The Economist hosted a weeklong debate on the topic of “Should government fund the arts?” Such debates pop up at least once a year (I participated in one in May), but this one is notable for its distinctively English flavor and also for a guest appearance by Adam Huttler on day 4.
• Jo Mangan has a substantive report from the first-ever International Culture Summit in Edinburgh.
• Did you know that the mayor of Reykjavik, Iceland is a comedian? As in, a real comedian, not a career politician who does some stand-up on the side?

LIFE EVENTS

• RIP Louise Nippert, heiress (by marriage) of Proctor & Gamble fortune who gave many millions of dollars to the arts in the Cincinnati region over her lifetime.
• Congratulations to Jennifer Ford Reedy, the new president of the Minnesota-based Bush Foundation (no relation to the two US Presidents). Reedy had been chief of staff and vice president of strategy for Minnesota Philanthropy Partners.
• …and to Carolyn Ramo, new executive director of Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue.
• Sadly, arts philanthropy has lost a rising young star in Deepa Gupta, who jumps from program officer for the MacArthur Foundation to director of education initiatives and strategy for the Boeing Company in Chicago. Great news for Deepa, though, and perhaps there will be opportunities for her to be a voice for the arts in her new role.

IN THE FIELD

• Boston’s public television station WGBH has acquired Public Radio International, which produces Ira Glass’s “This American Life” among other programs.
• It’s apparently contract renegotiation season, and the orchestra world is absolutely filled with stories of hardball negotiations between musicians and management. Witness: the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, previously lionized in these pixels for its innovative marketing, slapped musicians with a proposal for 57%-67% cuts (subsequently moderated); the Indianapolis Symphony proposes to cut wages by 45%; the Minnesota Orchestra might be headed for a lockout after offering musicians a 34% cut; San Antonio is on the brink; Philadelphia may be out of bankruptcy, but is not out of the woods. Meanwhile, perhaps inspired by their teacher compatriots, the Chicago Symphony musicians went on strike for three days even though they were offered an increase in base pay in their new contract, because it came with a corresponding increase in health care costs. The CSO players are among the best-compensated in the country. And even museum workers are getting into the act, with employees of San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum and Legion of Honor trotting out the ol’ inflatable rat in front of the grounds. Diane Ragsdale wants to know why can’t we all just get along? Well, I like this approach: the Atlanta Symphony musicians said sure, we’ll take a pay cut, as long as you administrators take one too. And here’s a novel idea: the Milwaukee Symphony just hired its principal trumpeter – and union representative – as its new chief executive.
• For-profit NYC rock venue takes to crowdfunding site, builds audience, avoids bankruptcy. Indie bookstore in Palo Alto converts to hybrid corporate form, raises nearly $1 million. (part 1; part 2; part 3) Are artists and nonprofits about to get a whole lot of fundraising competition from well-loved businesses that can no longer pay the bills?

THE DISMAL SCIENCE

• “Art is what is left over after you have automated everything you can.” Adam Huttler reflects.
• There is consensus among economists that the GOP is full of shit. Or is there?

RESEARCH CORNER

• Here’s some more reaction to the new research report on cultural facilities, “Set in Stone,” from Joe Patti (and again) and Janet Brown.
• Keith Sawyer has another (very lucid) take on last week’s NEA “How Art Works” convening and the accompanying system map.

ETC.

• Starting next year in Kansas City, Google will offer super high speed internet for about what you’re paying Time Warner or Comcast – and basic internet for free.
• I’m sometimes characterized as a “numbers guy” in the arts, but the reality is that I rarely find myself performing mathematical operations more complex than arithmetic. That being the case, I can get on board with this:
  

  ”Why do 50 percent (probably closer to 70%) of engineering and science practitioners seldom, if ever, use mathematics above the elementary algebra/trigonometry level in their practice?” If algebra is the limit for most engineering and science professionals, why does a typical citizen need algebra? As Hacker says, much more useful than algebra is quantitative literacy: being able to estimate, judge the reasonableness of numbers, and thereby detect bullshit. Our world offers plenty of practice.

  …and here’s more from Dr. Mahan, on long division:

  I’ll illustrate with an actual example of division. For my environmental-protection lawsuit, now in the Massachusetts Supreme Court, I needed to divide 142,500 by 4655. Here is the long-division calculation, my first use of the method in 30 years: [snip] The calculation took me a few minutes with paper and pencil, some of the time to reconstruct the algorithm details and to get the bookkeeping straight — even though I already knew the answer quite accurately. I knew the answer because I had already applied a more enjoyable method: skillful lying.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Congratulations to Arts Marketing blogger Chad Bauman, who returns to Arena Stage as Associate Executive Director only a few months after leaving for a position at the Smithsonian. Chad had previously been Arena’s Director of Communications.
• …and to San San Wong, who is relocating to Boston to join the Barr Foundation as that institution’s first full-time Senior Program Officer in the Arts, following a turbulent last year as Director of Grants for the San Francisco Arts Commission.
• Congratulations to Doug Borwick as he transitions out of the presidency of the Association of Arts Administration Educators and  retires from his post at Salem College in order to begin a new life as an entrepreneur and consultant.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Congratulations to ArtPlace’s latest round of grantees, all 47 of them. In its second round, ArtPlace distributed $15.4 million to projects in 22 states. The press release emphasizes some of the more rural and/or unexpected recipients of the grants, and there are certainly some of those. Perhaps the most eye-popping choice is a $250,000 award to a museum in down-on-its-luck Eastport, ME – population 1,331 and a six-and-a-half-hour drive from the nearest city of more than 100,000 people.  Nevertheless, the geographic restrictions of certain foundations participating in the coalition are evident in the list of grants, more than three-fifths of which went to recipients in Alaska, California, Miami, New Orleans, the Detroit metro region, Minnesota, New York City, and Philadelphia.
• The latest numbers are in from Giving USA, and charitable donations went up 4% in 2011 (slightly under 1% in real dollars), to just shy of $300 billion – still well off the 2007 peak. Arts and culture organizations received $13.12 billion of this amount, or 4% of the total, and the trendlines were consistent with overall giving.
• We all know about artists using crowdfunding to support their work, but what about fans using it to commission artists? Andy Baio reports from personal experience.
• The New York Times runs down the various forms of emergency relief available to artists, somehow without once mentioning MusiCARES.

IN THE FIELD

• The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, despite its innovative audience development efforts, is facing a deficit this year of up to $1 Smillion.
• Is the “Emerging Leader” moniker a term of empowerment or of exclusion? Barry Hessenius argues for the latter; Stephanie Evans Hanson responds. This is a complicated subject, partly because I suspect that the idea of “emerging leaders” is more helpful to the goals of the movement than is the “emerging leader” designation for individual arts professionals. But more on this later.
• Etsy is now a certified B corporation.

BIG IDEA CORNER

• Don’t miss this six-part blog post by Center for Effective Philanthropy President Phil Buchanan giving a full-throated defense of the nonprofit sector against those who idealize “business thinking.” Phil holds a Harvard MBA, so it’s not like he doesn’t know whereof he speaks.
• The Future of Music Coalition’s Joe Silveri makes the case for a global music registry.
• Lucy Berhnolz and Patrick Hussey wax eloquent on the massive potential for data to change the way we live and work.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Americans for the Arts released its long-awaited follow-up to Arts & Economic Prosperity III, and — wait a sec — the economic impact of the arts went down?! From $166.2 billion to $135.2 billion? Supporting 26% fewer jobs? It’s true. While organization expenditures remained more or less constant in 2010 (when the study was conducted) compared to 2005, audience spending dropped like a stone due to the recession’s influence. Unfortunately, the results underscore the downside of relying on this particular argument to advocate for the arts, as the economic impact narrative to date had been all about more, more, more: the arts are a growth industry, so you should support them! Now it’s, the arts are shrinking, so you should….still support them? My previous review of AEP III is here. Meanwhile, Catherine Brandt has an entertaining account of enforcing the embargo on the AEP IV results.
• In other research from Americans for the Arts, Randy Cohen details a couple of novel ways of understanding the competitive environment for arts organizations in a region through the Local Arts Index: millennial share and the four-firm concentration ratio.
• Which neighborhoods in the US are gentrifying the fastest? Here is one estimate by the Fordham Institute, which names such surprising cities as Oklahoma City, Chattanooga, and Roanoke VA among the leaders. But Matt Bevilacqua at Next American City takes issue with the methodology of that analysis, which uses an increase in the share of white, non-Hispanics as a proxy for gentrification.  Bevilacqua makes the case that in certain cities such as Washington DC, people of color can be the agents of gentrification as well. While I don’t disagree with Bevilacqua’s point, it underscores the need for a clearer sense of what we actually mean when we invoke the g-word. Because honestly, my sense from hearing lots of people talk about this issue over the past few years is that most have a pretty clear picture–some might say stereotype–in their minds of what gentrification looks like, and to them it looks like  “white people moving in.” Rightly or wrongly, it seems like Fordham’s proxy measure is pretty faithful to this idea.
• Fascinating: some university researchers are turning to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to find psychology test subjects and survey respondents, in order to avoid the “WIERD” (from Western, Industrialized, Educated, Rich, Democratic societies) bias inherent in using college students for that purpose. There’s even a whole blog about using experimental methods on crowdsourced populations.

ETC.

• This beautiful Father’s Day tribute from Rocco Landesman brightened my day when I read it, as did the photos of Fred Landesman’s gorgeous paintings. Well worth a read.

Photo by Dave 3024

In April, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) announced the launch of a Netflix-style membership model where you could “get all the SPCO you want for $5 a month.” Still relatively untested in the arts world, this pricing model allows subscribers to see an unlimited number of performances for a low monthly fee. Additional perks may be included, but the key differentiator between this membership model and traditional subscriptions is that subscribers cannot select their seat and can choose to go (or not go) at the last minute.

The Netflix model, although currently under the gun due to strategic misfires, was the go-to in the home movie business for most of the last decade due to the convenience of mail delivery, Netflix’s wide selection of DVDs, and affordability. Its success was a disruptive innovation that permanently changed the video rental market. The Netflix model is now the superlative example for new or existing businesses that want to increase share of wallet (and time) of existing customers.

So how does Netflix translate into the world of the performing arts? The existing subscription model ties a customer to an annual fee for a fixed number of pre-determined performances. We’re well aware that audiences are increasingly reluctant to commit to 12 or even 6 concerts ahead of time. Although choose-your-own subscriptions allow flexibility in the subscription package, they still demand commitment to a set program far in advance as well as substantial upfront costs. A Netflix model allows subscribers to attend any performance on an organization’s schedule at the last minute and importantly, spreads out the financial burden.

What makes this model really interesting is the psychology behind it. The approach captures an individual’s desire, not commitment, to attend more arts events. Arts marketers know that in order to become a subscriber, an individual must first have been a single ticket buyer, then a multi-ticket buyer. The Netflix model’s purchasing psychology is different; people decide that they can part with a small amount of their monthly earnings to have the opportunity to see art. There is less upfront financial commitment than a subscription and a lot of promise that they will become closer to the art form. Latent demand may be captured in ways that single tickets or traditional subscriptions do not.

Another interesting facet of the Netflix model is that memberships are able to capitalize on excess capacity. On any given night at the theater or concert hall, seats go unused. If there are too many seats left available, marketers will try to paper the house with free tickets. The membership model doesn’t necessarily address the issue of empty houses, but it does allow arts organizations to sell unoccupied seats at a discount, acting as an additional source of cash when the monthly memberships come in. Even if no subscribers of a monthly membership attend a performance, a fraction of their monthly fee can be attributed to the performance. Similar to gym memberships, you can have many more members than can actually attend the concert because 1) there is no guarantee that you will get a seat and 2) it is highly unlikely that all members will attend the same performance.

So where’s the rub? Essentially free money for seats that you had anyway?  Arts marketers have plenty to say about why this won’t work. Just like Netflix or any subscription, after a while, if it goes unused for too long, members eventually cancel their account. Additionally, the amount of staff time it takes to run such a program might not be worth the incremental revenue it would bring in.

Research by TRG Arts shows that people who attend once are only 30% likely to return, but if they attend twice, that number doubles. If purchasing a membership encourages repeat attendance, those who are able to attend even twice within a season are more likely to become loyal to the organization. You can almost think of the membership model as trial pricing. It can be a low-cost entry to increasing the lifetime value of an audience member.

In Seattle, this model has been working for the ACT Theater, which has created a Netflix-style subscription called the ACT Pass. Becky Lanthrop, marketing director for ACT, says that two-thirds of their members who have an ACT Pass use it on a monthly basis. Launched in 2009, the program started with 40 subscribers and grew to 1200 in 2011. At $25 a month ($20 if you are under 30), this fee is more expensive annually than ACT’s subscription for 4 performances for $200. Thus, the ACT Pass could cannibalize the theater’s traditional subscribers, and yet the company would not lose revenue. In fact, ACT might even reduce marketing costs, as annual renewal campaigns are no longer be necessary when subscribers have to opt out of the program in order to end their subscription. Regardless of whether the ACT Pass becomes the primary model for subscriptions, it’s clear that the goal of the ACT Pass is to increase revenue and loyalty to the theater company.

The SPCO’s goals are quite different than ACT. At only $5 per month, the SPCO claims the goal is to increase access, not revenue or members. Ticket sales are a marginal source of revenue and the SPCO is not focused on increasing earned revenue from subscriptions. Marketing Director Jessica Etten has this to say about the project:

Over 80 percent of our revenue is related to philanthropy and less than 20 percent comes from ticket sales. We exist because people come to the concerts and fall in love with what we do and want to support the organization. So, we’ve always said that what we need to do is make it possible for people to come to concerts and come often and come over a long period of time, so the SPCO becomes a big part of their lives.

With prices for single tickets starting at $10, this new program seems to be aimed at audiences who already know they want to see the SPCO multiple times per season. Although the program is well positioned to increase access for existing audiences, it may not be as successful in attracting newcomers. There is nothing wrong with this, except that increasing access in the arts typically refers to broadening participation rather than deepening it.

There is another major difference between the ACT’s and SPCO’s model. ACT’s inventory of performances is a bit larger than the SPCO’s. ACT works with other venues and companies to produce additional shows, significantly expanding their choice of offerings. In addition, they produce shows all year, so subscribers do not run the risk of not having enough selection during the summer months. Although SPCO presents concerts in ten venues across the Twin Cities, there is no summer season and its typical season has 100 concerts. This is the biggest issue for any performing arts organization considering the Netflix model. Unless an organization has a large and diverse selection of productions or partners with other arts organizations to increase its offerings, the value proposition just isn’t strong enough. Netflix’s model hinges on its inventory – even now, one reason Netflix is struggling because its streaming business does not have as large a selection of new movies as its DVD business.

Lastly, targeted marketing and compelling pricing is necessary when adopting a membership program. The ACT Pass had a very clever marketing campaign, including videos, clear pricing, and purchase channels. The ACT Pass is listed separately across the top navigation of the webpage, and you can start ordering online with one click. Although not too difficult to find, the SPCO’s membership is listed under “Concerts & Tickets”, and you can purchase online, after clicking through 2 or 3 pages. I did find a zinger in the SPCO model  – you have to keep with the program for a year or accept a $50 cancellation fee. The ACT Pass only requires that you stay on 3 months. This latter approach is in better alignment with the commitment-phobes who are likely attracted to this program in the first place.

After years of working to expand audiences, it turns out that performing arts organizations’ problem is not with attracting new people; it’s getting them to come back. The membership model can be part of a retention strategy for certain performing arts organizations with a wide selection of offerings and excess seat capacity. Regarding the SPCO, it’s likely their program will increase attendance by loyal audiences, but I’m not convinced the new pricing structure or marketing messages are going to broaden their audiences as they claim. Even so, if the program does increase loyalty of current audiences and increase attendance, it will send a strong message to other orchestras that this model is worth trying out.

• The California Arts Council is in danger of losing its right to solicit voluntary contributions from California citizens through their state income tax returns. Though that wasn’t proving to be a very effective way of raising money anyway – the agency banked only $165,000 from CA’s nearly 40 million residents last year.
• Arts Council England has published an evaluation of its ambitious program to give out half a million free tickets to the theatre (in actuality slightly less than 400,000 were distributed).

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Heather Pontonio has joined the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation as its new arts program officer.
• Welcome Ayanna Hudson, new director of the NEA’s Arts Education program.

IN THE FIELD

• Whew! The Los Angeles Times published a brutal exposé earlier this month of problems at Watts House Project, a darling of the fledgling creative placemaking movement that attracted nearly half a million dollars in grants last year from the NEA’s Our Town program and ArtPlace and others. (Update: the NEA wrote in to clarify that while Our Town has supported projects around Watts, the grant is not associated with Watts House Project specifically.) According to the article, the Project and its founder Edgar Arceneaux have alienated some of the residents the organization is supposed to be helping by failing to deliver on promises and succumbing to mission drift. I found  this little bit of gotcha journalism particularly cute:
  

  As for [Rocco] Landesman, reached by phone in Washington, D.C., he said he based his positive impressions on a slide show by Arceneaux as well as a tour of the block, “and it all looked good.” He also talked to one enthusiastic 107th Street resident, Rosa Gutierrez, whose home received a bright flower mural as part of the program. He said he was not told she was on staff at Watts House Project.

  Consequences were swift. Arceneaux didn’t last the weekend as executive director of the organization, though the announcement leaves the door open for him to remain involved in another capacity. However, another former board member disputes elements of the article, presenting a compelling case that it was unfair to WHP. Nevertheless, the problems don’t seem like they’re going away anytime soon. (Interestingly, I heard Arceneaux’s replacement, Will Sheffie, keynote the Rustbelt to Artist Belt conference in St. Louis just a week after all this went down. He got a warm welcome from the audience, but avoided addressing the controversy in any real depth.)

• The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is upping the ante again on its radical drive to democratize classical music. The latest move is to offer members tickets to every single one of its concerts for just $5 a month. The article is worth reading in full; essentially they’re saying they’re all but giving up on earned revenue as a serious income driver.
• Is there a future for cash mobs to support local arts organizations?
• RIP San Antonio Opera.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The NEA has a new literature review out on audience impact, conducted by WolfBrown as part of a larger project to study audiences at NEA-funded events.
• The Nonprofit Finance Fund has released its 2012 State of the Nonprofit Sector Survey, which reports that nonprofits are still feeling the economic pinch of the recession even though we’ve officially been in recovery for almost three years. (As an aside, I always have this funny cognitive dissonance whenever I read about nonprofits having a hard time because they’re “unable to meet demand.” If only arts organizations had such problems!)
• Now conservatives are making a stink about the American Community Survey (the government’s annual replacement for what used to be the long-form Census) because of the nature of its questions. They want to make it optional to fill out, which of course would make it just another poll and destroy its statistical usefulness.
• Americans for the Arts’s Randy Cohen offers a 2012 update to his popular Top 10 Reasons to Support the Arts post. AFTA also released the latest edition of the National Arts Index this month, and this time, there’s a new website–and a nifty new Local Arts Index–to go with it.
• The Center for Effective Philanthropy finds no major differences between how grantees of color and others experience relationships with their funders.
• The Ford Foundation has made its internal records from the 1950s and ’60s available for review at the Rockefeller Archive Center in upstate NY. This was a fascinating time in Ford’s history during which it was largely responsible for the growth of symphony orchestras and the regional theater movement across the country.

• Americans for the Arts CEO Bob Lynch has been appointed to the US Travel and Tourism Advisory Board. The advisory board “consists of up to 32 members that advise the Secretary of Commerce on government policies and programs that affect the U.S. travel and tourism industry, offers counsel on current and emerging issues, and provides a forum for discussing and proposing solutions to industry-related problems.”
• Sarah Lutman, CEO of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, which has made waves recently with some field-leading audience engagement initiatives, is stepping down at the end of the month.
• Margit Rankin is the new director of Seattle’s Artist Trust.

GETTING HITCHED

• In 2010, the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA) took on back office services for the financially troubled Columbus Symphony Orchestra, building a shared services empire that already included several theaters and has since added Opera Columbus. Now, another Ohio city, Dayton, is taking the concept a step further: the three “SOB” organizations (symphony, opera, ballet) are merging into the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance. The new organization is billing itself as a “first-in-the-nation” entity.
• Two of Hollywood’s largest unions, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, are set to merge.
• The city of Abu Dhabi is combining its culture and tourism entities into one agency.

GETTING ENGAGED

• Check out this dialogue vehicle created by blogger and theater-maker Guy Yedwab. The second video is particularly interesting, as it combines audience responses to the Broadway show Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and an event designed to question the depiction of Andrew Jackson in the musical. So the video basically makes what was a one-way dialogue bidirectional.
• Joe Patti ponders what it might look like to get arts organizations engaged in arts advocacy campaigns in a deeper way.
• Wait – so Nina Simon’s a boxer too? Could this woman possibly get any cooler? (In seriousness, that’s a very wise post on audience engagement linked there.)

IN THE FIELD

• The Wallace Foundation has made a $4 million mega-investment in arts education on behalf of the Boston public school system. The local education nonprofit EdVestors has been leading the fundraising charge for this initiative, a nice example of a non-arts organization recognizing the value of the arts.
• Michael Kaiser sees dollar signs for American arts fundraisers in Europe and Asia.
• Seemed like a nice idea at the time, but a number of artists are finding that the value proposition of streaming services like Spotify just isn’t there for them and are pulling their tracks from the service.

CONFERENCES AND TALKS

• Rosetta Thurman has a great list of 10 national nonprofit conferences with registration fees under $500, and I was glad to see the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention on there. (I wouldn’t be that surprised to learn that these are all conferences she’s speaking at, by the way.)
• Materials from last October’s 5th Annual World Arts Summit in Melbourne, Australia are now available online, including a summary report of the proceedings and full transcripts of the three-plus days of panels and keynotes – Rocco Landesman was one of the presenters. I’m often struck in reading about international arts policy gatherings how different the tone and content are from American conferences; they are generally more serious/academic and concerned with very different issues, particularly cultural preservation and globalization. Worth a skim if you have the time.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Two book reviews: the NEA’s Sunil Iyengar has a nice analysis of Stanford professor Robert Flanagan’s new book on the economics of symphony orchestras, and Elizabeth Quaglieri takes on Nina Simon’s The Participatory Museum.
• What makes a street beautiful? OpenPlans.org is trying to put some data to this question by asking website visitors to engage in a sort of HotOrNot-style comparison of images from Google Street View. Try it: it’s kind of addictive, and will also teach you a lot about your own urban aesthetics.
• Have you ever been in a brainstorming session in which you’re told to “just get as many ideas out as you can,” withholding criticism of any of them? I was just in one of those earlier this month at the Yale School of Management Philanthropy Conference. And yet that same week, Jonah Lehrer had published a fascinating takedown of the brainstorming concept in the pages of the New Yorker. His piece is worth reading in full, but in a nutshell a number of studies of brainstorming effectiveness have concluded that it doesn’t really add value over and above people working alone – and that instead, creativity comes from just the right amount of clash and debate between people with diverse perspectives and backgrounds. The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Phil Buchanan, for one, says he’s seen the light.

BEYOND THE ARTS

• Yikes! The International Humanities Center, a fiscal sponsor representing some 200 projects worldwide, imploded in scandal over the holidays, causing the evaporation of more than $1 million in donations intended mostly for grassroots activist activities. Some great investigative reporting by Nonprofit Quarterly‘s Rick Cohen in that article.
• Ever wondered how many L3Cs there are in the United States? Turns out there are a little over 550; here’s a helpful breakdown and list by state.
• I have to say, I cracked up at these nerdtastic economist Valentines by Elisabeth Fosslein, writing in response to the #FedValentines Twitter meme. Well done!