It was a fairly quiet month, all told, and no news is good news after some of the horrible stories we’ve been treated to in previous years. It looks like we actually have a chance of seeing an increase in state arts appropriations this year for the first time since before the recession, though we’llRead More
Around the horn: St. Patty’s edition
ART AND THE GOVERNMENT Over at NewMusicBox, Mark N. Grant has a wonderful history of American Presidents’ and Founding Fathers’ fascination with music and the arts. Did you know that John Quincy Adams studied the flute and Ben Franklin invented a musical instrument? A bill to legalize crowdsourced investment in startup companies is inching closer to passage in Congress.Read More
Around the horn: Linsanity edition
Quick announcement: Createquity Writing Fellowship alumna Katherine Gressel is curating an art show! And raising money for it! OK, back to regularly scheduled programming… ART AND THE GOVERNMENT Kickstarter got a whole bunch of press mileage last week out of the idea that it “gives out” more money to the arts than the NEA. Tim Mikulski explains why that’sRead More
Public arts funding update: February
For whatever reason, this is about the time of year when things start to heat up in budget land, for the federal government and states alike. From February through May, we’ll find out a lot about where the NEA and state arts council budgets stand for fiscal year 2013, and what the corresponding ramifications mightRead More
Corporate vs. Government Influence on the Arts
Britain’s Independent has a short feature on the growing influence of corporate arts sponsorships in the wake of recent cutbacks from the government. While the article doesn’t offer much in the way of data or even examples demonstrating the purported trend, writer Emily Jupp does manage to get some beautifully candid on-the-record quotes from corporateRead More
The Top 10 Arts Policy Stories of 2011
Each year, Createquity offers a list of the top ten arts policy stories of the past 12 months. You can read the 2009 and 2010 editions here and here, respectively. In addition to the main list, I also identify my favorite new arts blogs that started within the past year. The list, like the blog,Read More
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: Independence edition
Whew! I think this past month might just have been the craziest ever for me. Two research contract proposals, a final report, visits to Chicago, DC (twice), San Diego, LA, and Boston, a birthday, committee work for the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader Council, editing Arts Policy Library pieces by the Createquity Writing Fellows,Read More
Around the horn: Happy New Year edition
Cities, Demographics, and People A while back, I pointed folks to Scarlett Swerdlow’s suggestion that the arts community get involved in non-arts advocacy in order to forge alliances with key partners in other sectors. Well, here’s an opportunity to do just that: the Livable Communities Act, which would grant $4 billion to communities for comprehensiveRead More
The Top 10 Arts Policy Stories of 2010
Everybody likes a Top 10 list, right? Especially the nerdy ones! So here’s my contribution: the second annual list of the top ten arts policy stories from the past year. You can check out the 2009 edition here. 10. Intrinsic Impact Research Marches On WolfBrown’s groundbreaking work on measuring “intrinsic impact” (the intangible, hard-to-define effectsRead More