Trump mural, Downtown Los Angeles, California, USA (Credit: Cory Doctorow, via Creative Commons)

A bitter and divisive 2016 Presidential election is finally over, and Donald J. Trump’s seat in the Oval Office awaits him, with Republicans holding their grip on both houses of Congress. Trump’s views on the arts are vague; the Irish Times reported that, when asked his position on the arts, Trump spoke of decorating his promised border wall with Mexico so that it “looks real nice.” His main connection to the arts is through architecture, although he has a contemptuous relationship with the critics and an American Institute of Architects letter congratulating his victory left many of the organization’s members reeling. (For whatever reason, a similarly congratulatory message from Americans for the Arts escaped an analogous public backlash.) As with nearly every other sector, questions abound about what a Trump presidency will look like. The litany of artists’ concerns include the future of public arts funding, the fate of the Affordable Care Act (which provides insurance for many independent artists), the possibility of a rollback of the tax incentive for charitable giving, and fear of moving backward after decades of work to ensure equity for all Americans. Trump’s authoritarian impulses could have a major impact on freedom of expression, including in the arts: while the likelihood of overturning a mountain of precedent favoring the first amendment, be it flag burning or lecturing Mike Pence at a Hamilton curtain call, is relatively slim, Trump has many legal and quasi-legal means at his disposal to intimidate policymakers, journalists, and artists. The bizarre contours of the election likewise have “provided significant thought-fuel for cultural organizations” and called into question the role of truth and evidence in public dialogue. On the plus side, several pro-arts ballot measures passed electoral muster on November 8 (the most significant of these being the reauthorization of a $50+ million public funding stream in the Denver area through 2030), several museums publicly affirmed that they will continue to provide safe spaces and work to ensure the arts and culture are available to all, and healthcare robber baron Martin Shkreli is keeping at least the first part of his promise to release the only known copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album in the event of a Trump victory.

Yet more regulations in the rapidly growing Chinese film market. A new law further promotes nationalism in Chinese films. According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, the law imposes massive fines against companies that fabricate box-office earnings or other data, and further states that films should “serve the people and socialism, prioritizing social benefits and bringing about harmony of economic returns and contribution to society.” The growing film industry in China is second only to the United States, and may soon take over the top spot with plans to build a new $2 billion studio in Chongqing. Anxious to join the Chinese market, U.S. studios have been able to avoid the country’s quota to release just 34 foreign films per year by incorporating Chinese characters and plot lines. China appears equally anxious to find a grip in the U.S. market, with the Chinese firm Dalian Wanda picking up big swaths of the entertainment industry, buying AMC Theatres in 2012, and more recently adding Legendary Entertainment and Dick Clark Productions for $3.5 billion and $1 billion, respectively. As the world’s largest media conglomerate, Dalian Wanda’s recent moves made Congress sit up straighter, raising concerns about the potential influence of Chinese nationalism and socialist propaganda infusing the American entertainment industry.

Is impact investing finally hitting its stride? The arts could benefit from an emerging trend among wealthy donors. Of those surveyed in the 2016 U.S. Trust Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy and the First National Benchmark Survey of Family Foundations, the Denver Post reported that a third are interested in impact investing, or taking a financial stake in ventures designed to create social, economic, cultural or environmental impact. The arts are a little late to the game, because it’s tricky to create a competitive return on investment in many areas of the arts sector. So despite corporate donations of $2.4 billion annually toward impact investing, the arts’ best chance for joining the trend may be with individuals. At least that’s what the folks at Upstart Co-Lab believe; the startup headed by former NEA Senior Deputy Chairman Laura Callanan has forged an agreement with Calvert Foundation to create a Community Investment Note for opportunities like low-income artist housing developments. For corporations and foundations, impact investing is partly about who they give to, and partly about who they don’t. The Brooklyn Community Foundation is leading the charge in this area, committing to divest all its interests in corporations or initiatives that harm communities of color.

Equity is the newest Indiegogo perk. The crowdfunding platform Indiegogo announced a new partnership with Microventures, joining the lesser-known Crowdfunder, OurCrowd, and EquityNet as vehicles for regular folks who want to invest in new companies. Budding entrepreneurs can now offer potential investors a financial stake in their companies (think Shark Tank on the Internet) instead of the traditional crowdfunding model that trades products and other perks for donations. Equity crowdfunding became possible in 2012 due in part to President Obama’s Jumpstart our Startups (JOBS) Act lifting regulations on capital investments that kept average Americans from seeking a financial stake in new companies. Rival crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, whose main difference from Indiegogo is its “all-or-nothing” model, remains committed to project-based funding over entrepreneurial pursuits, and does not currently have plans to implement equity crowdfunding.

Philly parks and libraries get a facelift. The William Penn Foundation announced it will give up to $100 million to the city of Philadelphia’s Rebuild initiative to enhance community parks, libraries, and recreation centers. The gift, which is the largest in the foundation’s history by a factor of four, covers more than 80% of the city’s fundraising goal for foundations and private donors. Penn intends not only revitalize Philadelphia’s infrastructure but also make a significant social and economic impact by creating jobs and promoting community engagement. The big news follows on the heels of executive director Laura Sparks’s departure from the foundation, the latest in a series of such transitions for Penn that has prompted a renewed call from the author of a previously published critical report to diversify its board and delegate greater authority to staff leadership.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• University of Iowa Museum of Art names former Congressman and National Endowment for the Humanities head Jim Leach as its interim director.
• Former Colorado Business Committee for the Arts head Deborah Jordy has been appointed as the new executive director of Denver’s Scientific and Cultural Facilities District.
• Ken Tabachnick will be the new executive director of the Merce Cunningham Trust.
• A tenure-track Assistant Professor position is available at the University of Arizona in the Division of Art and Visual Culture Education
• University of Oklahoma’s School of Visual Arts seeks a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Art, Technology & Culture.
• Queens Museum seeks a full-time Director of Education, supervising in-school and community programs and New New Yorkers, an arts and literacy initiative for and with adult immigrants.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE:

• A new study on tax filings by the Institute for Policy Studies found that U.S. giving is top-heavy, with more than half of donations coming from the top 10%. Market Watch summarized the report, noting that the middle class is giving less to charity compared to 10 years ago while those earning at least $100,000 annually have increased donations by 40%.
• GLAAD reported record-high representation of LGBTQ, black, and disabled characters on broadcast television series this season.
• New evidence further links viewing of reality TV to narcissism. And a study out of Michigan State University explains why we gravitate toward ideological bubbles, surrounding ourselves with those who agree with us. The short version: it’s more comfortable.
• U.S. orchestras fare relying more on donations than ticket sales, according to a report by League of American Orchestras. With subscriptions down and donations up, the shift is forcing organizations to revisit funding models and mission statements. Similarly, the Arts Council of England reports that UK nonprofits are increasingly relying on private funds, with revenues dropping despite an uptick in charitable giving.
• The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s data dashboard reveals online giving trends to arts and culture, among other causes, using data from the Network for Good platform.
• The MacArthur Foundation released an evaluation of a loan fund program designed for small and mid-size arts and culture organizations.
• Women in the arts are not exempt from the wage gap between genders, according to a study in the journal Social Currents. And men are the most creative of the sexes…and the least, says Pacific Standard’s Tom Jacobs in a review of the literature.
• New research at the University of Waterloo makes the case that arts experiences should be accessible to all because they are tied to wellbeing.
• European researchers may have found the heart of creativity, locating structures in the brain that form novel connections between known and new information. Meanwhile, a new study funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China suggests that the brain responds differently to classical music compared to popular music. And Keith Sawyer discusses interesting new research on musical improvisation and the influence improvisers have on each other’s contributions in a jam session.
• A study from Fort Collins, CO yields promising results about music’s positive effects on delaying and perhaps preventing dementia. Sadly, though, a survey of 2,200 musicians conducted by the charitable organization Help Musicians UK found high rates of anxiety and depression.
• Belgian researchers find that even experts have a difficult time discerning between fake art and real art.
• The New England Foundation for the Arts published “Moving Dance Forward,” an in-depth report analyzing the dance field’s pressing needs and the impact of the National Dance Project.
• Theater is a more popular leisure activity than sports for Brits, according to a survey by Birmingham’s Town Hall Symphony Hall. The results suggest that younger generations are even more likely to attend a show, with nearly two-thirds of respondents under age 25 saying they enjoy live performance across all genres.
• A new Slover Linett report highlights the changemaking potential of the Levitt chain of music venues (disclosure: Createquity founder Ian David Moss was an advisor to the project).
• Chicago-based Ingenuity’s report on “State of the Arts” in Chicago Public Schools indicates that access to arts education during the school day is on the rise.
• UNESCO’s Culture for Sustainable Urban Development initiative aims to become a policy framework to support governments in promoting arts and culture as a means of sustainability.
• A meta-analysis published in EPJ Data Science claims that most fiction falls into one of six core story lines.
• Tim Robbins’ “Improv for Inmates” expands to 10 California correctional facilities next year, as promising data from a preliminary study by the California Department of Corrections suggests that the program reduces recidivism.
• A study from the McKinsey Global Institute suggests that robots will eventually take over nearly a third of our jobs.

Sony’s The Interview hits theaters – photo by Travis Wise

The massive cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, purportedly by North Korean hackers, captured the popular imagination in December. Recent hoopla has focused on Seth Rogen and James Franco’s movie The Interview, one of five Sony pictures leaked in the attack. The movie, which depicts the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, provoked threats of violence from the hackers, leading Sony to delay a theatrical release. After much debate — even President Obama weighed in on the mess — Sony moved forward with limited release in theaters on Christmas Day, coupled with a broader (and massively successful) online release. (The debacle made the No. 2 spot on our 2014 Top 10 Arts Policy Stories roundup.)

Lost in The Interview‘s shuffle, however, are revelations about Sony as a business and questions about the journalism and the First Amendment that bear a closer look. Hollywood (heck, lots of major US corporations) has long suffered a gender and race gap. Leaked documents revealed the situation at Sony is pretty stark: only one of the seventeen Sony employees making more than $1 million is a woman, and 88% of these top execs are white. (The pay gap trend extends to actors, too.) More troubling than the obvious, however, is Sony’s efforts to stop the flow of information. Sony successfully took down Reddit content citing copyright infringement, threatened twitter with legal action, and demanded that media outlets to refrain from publishing stories about the hack. In good news for journalism, however, Sony is not in the legal right, as media outlets are generally protected by the First Amendment (as long as they aren’t stealing the data themselves.)

Arts Council England Prioritizes Diversity: In December, Arts Council England (ACE) announced new funding regulations with several strategies aimed at making the arts more accessible. Chief among these is a diversity tenet, in which organizations must demonstrate diversity – of audiences, programming and in their workforce – in order to continue receiving public funding. This “fundamental shift,” presented by ACE Chair Peter Bazalgette, “[places] responsibility on every funded organization to make their programme of work more reflective of the communities they serve.” British theater companies have mostly welcomed this “diversity drive,” though some do question its feasibility. The 670 nonprofits currently receiving ACE funding have some time to get their act together. The Council will not systematically consider diversity data when making funding recommendations until 2018. The monitoring of progress, however, is to begin next year.

Level Funding for Arts Agencies Secured in Cromnibus: The end of 2014 found the “least productive Congress ever” hard at work on eleventh hour legislation, with many implications for the arts. On December 14, the Senate narrowly passed the annual budget bill, this year colorfully nicknamed the “Cromnibus,” thus funding the federal government through next September. The bill, signed into law by President Obama on December 16, includes stable funding for National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities; each will receive $146 million. In addition, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Arts in Education program within the U.S. Department of Education, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will all be funded at previous levels. While a bill to make permanent certain charity tax breaks – including the popular IRA Charitable Rollover – was rejected, the Senate did approve a bill retroactively extending these breaks for 2014, providing donor incentives through December.

Penn Foundation Wipes Out Two Philadelphia Arts Organizations: Philadelphia’s only remaining major arts funder, the William Penn Foundation, has been a driving force behind the push towards capitalization of institutions within the grantmaker community over the past few years. Unfortunately, when you invest in capitalizing some organizations, there’s less left over for others, as a few Philly organizations recently found out the hard way. In November, the Foundation declined to renew its general operating grant to Dance/USA Philadelphia (Dance/UP), which it has funded for the last eight years to the tune of $2.7 million. As a result, Dance/UP announced last month that it would have to close, prompting an angry outcry from the local dance community. The foundation later agreed to provide short-term transition funding to allow Dance/UP to close responsibly by migrating some of its programs to other area organizations. Meanwhile, Penn also declined to fund The Philadelphia Singers; in recent years, grants from the foundation had accounted for almost a full third of the chorus’s annual operating budget. The chorus, founded in 1972, announced that it too would cease operations following its May 2015 concert, citing loss of funding as the major contributing factor in the decision.

US Reaches Diplomatic Breakthrough with Cuba: In a historic breakthrough reversing fifty years of U.S. policy, President Obama announced on December 17 that the US would begin normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba. The announcement, considered by many to have been a long time coming, offers potentially significant implications for artists. Although the embargo has not prevented cultural exchange between the US and Cuba in recent years, many are hopeful that improved relations will ease logistical headaches around visas and artist payments, encouraging more presenters to book Cuban artists and fostering new relationships with our neighbors to the south.

MUSICAL CHAIRS/COOL JOBS

• The New England Foundation for the Arts has named Cathy Edwards as its new executive director, replacing longtime leader Rebecca Blunk who passed away last year.
• Sharnita Johnson is the new arts program director at New Jersey’s Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.
• Arts Council England has appointed former Classic FM director Darren Henley as its new chief executive, replacing Alan Davey who is leaving ACE to become controller of Radio 3.
• In two retirements at the New York Times, celebrated music critic Allan Kozinn and veteran arts writer Carol Vogel left the newspaper of record after tenures of 37 and 31 years, respectively.
• William Ruprecht, chief executive of New York-based Sotheby’s, and Steven Murphy, chief executive of London-based Christie’s, departed their respective posts at the end of the year.
• Two staff departures this month came with some public controversy. Matthew Lennon, Houston Arts Alliance’s Director of Civic Art and Design, resigned his post over objections to the city’s handling of a major arts commission. And longtime Artistic Director Ari J. Roth was fired from his position at Washington DC’s Theater J, following a tumultuous tenure that frequently saw him pushing the boundaries of his home institution’s tolerance for free expression. Roth’s ouster prompted a strong protest from his colleagues in the theater world.
• New Yorkers for Parks is hiring a Director of Research and Planning. Posted December 10, no closing date.
• The Barr Foundation is looking for a Program Officer for Arts and Culture. Posted December 15, no closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• New research published in the journal Urban Studies looks at the economic impact of cultural hubs on urban development nationwide, suggesting that localized, place-specific approach to arts initiatives are the most beneficial to economic development.
• On the other hand, the What Works Network, a government-backed organization in the UK, released a report suggesting that large sports and arts facilities have “zero” economic impact.
• The National Endowment for the Arts has released a summary of its June 2014 symposium, which was titled “Measuring Cultural Engagement: A Quest for New Terms, Tools, and Techniques.”
• Southern Methodist University’s National Center for Arts Research published its second major report on the health of the arts industry, with in-depth data on 26 of 184 previously identified performance indices.
• The American Alliance of Museums published the first-ever field wide survey of compensation in the museum industry, with information on salary, benefits and demographics for 51 positions, broken out by geographic area, museum discipline, governance and operating budget.
• The Hewlett Foundation released an assessment of its regranting intermediaries strategies in San Francisco, which includes key takeaways for the larger field.
• The Irvine Foundation released its third and final study of arts engagement strategies, this time partnering with AEA Consulting to analyze the relationship between arts programming, new audiences and unusual spaces.
• A study released by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations shows grantmakers are shifting support towards general operating & multiyear funding.
• Finally, in less than promising news for this section of the Newsroom, research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that our beliefs are driven more by psychological associations than by hard facts.

Capitol Hill, Washington DC – by Flickr user KP Tripathi, Creative Commons license

Several policy shifts are underway in Washington that may have significant effects on arts nonprofits and funders. First, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the America Gives More Act, which would 1) make permanent three expired tax deductions – including the important IRA Charitable Rollover provision that allows seniors to donate up to $100k of their retirement disbursements without paying taxes on it – while 2) allowing individuals to credit deductions made before April 15 of one year to the previous tax year, avoiding the Christmas scramble for donations before patrons know their tax situation, and 3) simplifying the excise tax rate paid by foundations to 1% (it can currently rise to 2% in some circumstances). The future of the bill is uncertain: Obama Administration and many Congressional Democrats oppose it because it does not contain any revenue provisions to offset the reductions in tax income. The Senate is not expected to consider the bill before the fall.

Second, the IRS has released form 1023-EZ, a dramatically streamlined application for 501(c)(3) status that will allow applicants to become tax exempt simply by filling out a 3-page form (vs 26), paying $400 (vs $850), and swearing under penalty of perjury that they have less than $50k in annual income and less than $250k in assets. Some 70% of applicants are expected to be eligible for the EZ path, and the IRS won’t even review these applications as a matter of course. Some fear this may open the door to abuse, but aspiring nonprofits eying the 60,000-organization line to be reviewed may feel differently.

Finally, in pre-legislative news, the House Appropriations Committee approved level budgets of $146m for the NEA and NEH, restoring $8m cuts made to each in subcommittee, while the artist resale royalty rights bill is gaining momentum, attracting new Congressional co-sponsors in advance of a potential vote this year or next.

More money, more problems at the DIA: As the City of Detroit’s much-anticipated bankruptcy trial looms – it begins on August 16 – two contending valuations of DIA’s art have emerged. Artvest Partners, hired by the city, placed the total value of the 60k-piece collection at $2.8-4.6B; a creditor’s expert, Victor Weiner Associates, at $8.5B. But that’s in theory: Artvest estimated that the works would fetch only $850m to $1.8B in the current market, accounting for a potential glut of masterpieces if the museum were to deaccession en masse. (Victor Weiner acknowledged the actual haul would be lower but did not venture to say by how much.) Meanwhile, donations continue to flow toward the “Grand Bargain” that could spin DIA off as a separate non-profit, if the courts allow it, with a group of business leaders, companies, and corporate foundations pledging $26.8m toward the $100m DIA must raise. Oh, and there is art happening, too: DIA began installing reproductions of its masterpieces in Michigan communities for the fifth year of its Inside/Out project.

The fate of the Corcoran’s collection hangs in the balance: Back in February, the long-troubled Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art and Design announced they would be taken over by the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. The Corcoran’s 17,000-piece collection would be split up, with the bulk going to the National Gallery and the remainder distributed to museums around the country. Now, a group of advocates — including museum donors and alumni of the college — has filed suit to stop the deal, arguing longtime board mismanagement is to blame for the current state of affairs. At issue is whether the Corcoran’s lawyers can show that the proposed arrangement is the “next best” option to maintain the original intent of the institution. While alternative solutions are bandied about and exhaustive arguments laid out on both sides, the Corcoran’s fate should be decided by the end of August.

Another shakeup at the William Penn Foundation: Philadelphia’s only remaining major arts funder is showing alarming signs of instability. Managing Director Peter Degnan, the foundation’s second leader in less than two years, has resigned after less than six months on the job, citing “personal reasons.” He succeeded Jeremy Nowak, whose tenure ended in 2012. Chief Philanthropy Officer Laura Sparks will take over as leader of the foundation with the new title of executive director. While she will likely have broader authority and responsibility than her predecessor, she is not expected to make major changes in the grantmaker’s strategic areas of focus.

Looking for affordable artist housing? Take a number: In a jarring indication of how bad New York’s affordable housing crisis is, a recent lottery for housing slots in one renovated Harlem building generated a whopping 53,000 applications from artists. The building, El Barrio’s Artspace PS 109, is a former public school that was sold to Artplace two years ago. Foundations, politicians, and local departments of housing and cultural affairs contributed $52.2 million in renovations to create 89 housing units — begging the question of how big an investment would be needed to make a dent in artists’ demand for affordable living spaces.

MUSICAL CHAIRS/COOL JOBS

• Andy Horwitz is leaving New York City to launch a new consultancy called Applied Creativity; though he will continue writing in other venues, Culturebot will go on sabbatical indefinitely from September transition to new leadership.
• Reuben Roqueñi will join Hewlett as a program officer in Performing Arts; he is currently program director at the Native Arts and Culture Foundation in Washington State.
• Laura Packer has become ED of the Howard Gilman Foundation in NYC. She had been Arts Program Director at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation in New Jersey.
• The Nathan Cummings Foundation has tapped former Trustee Ernest Tollerson as interim CEO while a search gets underway.
• Longtime National Arts Strategies VP Gail Crider will take over as President and CEO from Russell Taylor at the start of the year.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• The California Film Commission reports that film and TV projects worth $2 billion relocated their production away from California over the last four years, often when other states offered better tax breaks.
• Another bleak snapshot of the writer’s life: median author income in the UK fell by almost a third over the last decade, to $18.5k per year.
• Meanwhile, on stage: Last year, London’s 241 theatres served 22m patrons, earned $1B, and employed 3,000 performers at a time. This was the first quantitative report of this kind, so the historical trend is unclear.
• More than a third of 18-34-year-old tourists to the UK identified culture as a major draw in a new survey; historical buildings and arts institutions got special mention.

• 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 copyrighted material if used for parody, caricature, or pastiche.
• Over at ARTSblog, Ciara McKeown argues municipalities are commissioning too many permanent public art pieces, and suggests public art programs “generate goals that are not defined as permanent or temporary, but that are about people and experiences.”
• Well, this is one way to make it as a DIY band: Canadian electro-industrial rockers Skinny Puppy have invoiced the Pentagon for $666,000 for the unauthorized use of their music during interrogations at Guantanamo.
• Confused about the ins and outs of all those visual art lawsuits of the past few years? Daniel Grant has a detailed overview over at Hyperallergic.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Geoffrey Canada, the charismatic face of one of the most ambitious and widely watched education and anti-poverty initiatives in the country, is leaving the Harlem Children’s Zone after two decades at its helm. He will be succeeded by Anne Williams-Isom, the organization’s current Chief Operating Officer.
• The William Penn Foundation has found its new leader: Peter J. Degnan, Vice Dean of Finance and Administration at the Wharton School. The foundation’s new structure (his title is “managing director”) will allow him to “focus on aligning interconnected organizational functions, including strategic grantmaking, knowledge-building, and community engagement.”
• Ron Ragin will jump coasts from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to become the first arts program officer for the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
• The National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University recently appointed Kate D. Levin, former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, as its first fellow. As part of role, Levin will be responsible for raising the center’s visibility and providing input on its research. Levin will continue in her new position with Bloomberg Associates, a consulting firm founded by the former Mayor that advises local governments around the world.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The Artist Pension Trust controls some 40,000 works of contemporary art as part of a risk-pooling retirement plan for the artists themselves. As it begins to sell some of them off in its tenth year, dealers express concern about the effect on the market – and others question whether the plan can possibly make money.
• Arts funders, take note: the New York-based F.B. Heron Foundation has ceased requiring its grantees to submit reports, moving instead to a “outside, cooperative data warehouse” to provide real-time information. It’s also transformed its structure and operations to maximally integrate investing with grantmaking. President Clara Miller’s annual letter describes the nuts and bolts of the foundation’s ambition to maximize the social return from every dollar in its corpus.
• Foundation transparency is all the rage this month. It emerged as a major theme in a recent arts funders’ convening on failure hosted by NYC’s The Field. GrantCraft published a new guide with tips for funders interested increasing the transparency of their day to day work. And the new site Inside Philanthropy targets potential grantees with eye-catching headlines (“Find Out How You Can Get $10,000 From the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation”), and offers subscribers insight into individual program officers’ giving preferences. It also exposes staff email directories and allows anonymous Yelp-style reviews.

IN THE FIELD

• The National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) has been hard at work drafting new national arts standards for K-12 classrooms. These standards are rad for a number of reasons, most importantly 1) because they are aligned to the Common Core, and 2) they bring us into the 21st century by including media arts as a distinct discipline. A final draft of the standards is up for final public review through February 28; get on over and check them out.
• The New England Foundation for the Arts has launched a new directory mapping artists, “creative businesses” and cultural nonprofits across six states.
• Following an encouraging trend started last year, issues of race and diversity continue to spur conversation, with HowlRound devoting a week of blog posts to asking whether or not “a white person can write, adapt, direct, or perform stories from a different culture or race.” Meanwhile, new studies on how perceptions of an individual’s race change over time underscore race as a social construct.
• Even better than talk, though, is action, and there’s good news on that front: Detroit’s Sphinx Organization and management agency IMG Artists have a budding partnership aimed at creating greater diversity among classical musicians while broadening audiences for classical music. Stay tuned for the first trial run at this summer’s Napa Valley Festival del Sole where the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra will perform.

BIG IDEAS

• We’ve mulled whether computers can generate art, but a related question is whether computer programmers are artists when they dabble in code. A novelist makes an eloquent case that they are.
• Been a while since your last nerdgasm? Read up on social physics, which explores how ideas flow, evolve, and (we hope!) improve within communities — and asks whether “our hyperconnected world may be moving toward a state in which there is too much idea flow.”

RESEARCH CORNER

• Following up on the first-ever official count of the arts’ contribution to the GDP, the NEA has released more detailed estimates for individual industries, including a breakout of performing arts groups by tax-exempt status. (Most of the $526 million added by dance comes from non-profits; most of $407 million from circuses is pure capitalism.)
• Southern Methodist University’s National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) released a study claiming that, contrary to the insinuations of Republican lawmakers, NEA doesn’t simply represent a “wealth transfer” from poorer to wealthier citizens. Michael Rushton, however, argues that the study doesn’t succeed in the argument because it looks at wealth at the level of the community, preventing firm conclusions about the wealth of individual attendees of NEA-sponsored arts. The comments on Rushton’s article contain a lively methodological debate if you like that sort of thing. In other news, NCAR officially launched its inaugural report (originally reported by Createquity back in December) on the health of U.S. arts and cultural organizations; the event was webcast by HowlRound TV.
• A new study from the College Art Association shows that visual arts professionals – scholars, curators, publishers – don’t understand fair use, and they avoid or abandon projects because of it. The CAA is working toward a Code of Best Practices for Fair Use to assuage the anxiety; such a code proved helpful to documentary filmmakers.
• Anyone who works with schools should carve out a few hours to play with this: DonorsChoose.org, which in 13 years has allowed teachers to raise more than $220 million in funding for their classrooms, is making its 20+ million project records on proposed and successful projects available via a free, interactive data analysis tool.
• Are too many of our research and evaluation efforts in the arts theoretical rather than directly applicable to practice? Nina Simon thinks so, and the comments from Peter Linett, Jay Greene, Carlos Manjarrez and others are worth checking out as well.

• With a rare, wide-open mayoral race underway, Boston’s arts community has come together to assert some political sway of its own. The new advocacy coalition MassCreative organized a nine-candidate forum that actually pushed back a televised debate. The primary is today.
• North Carolina’s Randolph County just banned Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man from school libraries following a parent complaint that the novel is “too much for teenagers.”

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation welcomes Createquity’s own Daniel Reid as its new executive director and Courtney Hodell as director of the Whiting Writers’ Awards.
• The Ford Foundation announced Martin Abregú as its new vice president for the Democracy, Rights, and Justice program, and Hilary Pennington as the vice president of Education, Creativity, and Free Expression. Pennington, who previously led education initiatives at the Gates Foundation, will oversee all of Ford’s arts funding beginning October 1.
• Nearly a year after its prior president, Jeremy Nowak, resigned after eighteen months on the job, the William Penn Foundation has announced a search to fill its top leadership position, newly reframed as a “managing director.”
• John Palfrey, an expert on technology and civic engagement, is succeeding Robert Briggs as the new chair of the board of the Knight Foundation.
• G. Wayne Clough, who has served as the director of the Smithsonian Institution since 2008, will step down in October 2014.
• So long, Technology in the Arts blog; hello, Arts Management and Technology Laboratory. The rebranded/reimagined service from Carnegie Mellon’s arts management program will serve as “a research outlet for those working and learning in the arts management and technology sector,” and features interviews, case studies, research summaries, and more.

IN THE FIELD

• Nathan Zebedeo reviews Sarah Durham’s Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications for the (ahem) brand-new Fractured Atlas Book Club.
• Last week, Americans for the Arts hosted a blog salon focusing on arts education and the “trifecta of education accountability—standards, assessment, and evaluation.” The salon included a perspective from Createquity’s own Talia Gibas and a nice summary from Kristen Engebretsen, and touched on testing, teacher evaluation, the Common Core, and more.
• Speaking of accountability, Tennessee is rolling out an ambitious evaluation system for visual and performing arts teachers that relies on portfolios of student work. Teachers select samples they feel show evidence of growth over time, and submit them electronically for peer review. Time-consuming and complicated? Yep. Worth following? You bet.
• Udacity, a popular provider of online college-level courses known as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), has announced the launch of Open Education Alliance, bringing together leading tech companies and educators to “bridge the gap between the skills employers need and what traditional universities teach.” Is there an Open Arts Education Alliance in the near future?
• The Detroit Free Press takes an in-depth look at the embattled Detroit Institute of Arts’s long and tangled relationship with its hometown, providing insight into the current threats of deaccessioning.
• Last Wednesday, September 18, #AskaCurator Day “connect[ed] experts in venues large and small directly to gallery and museum fans across the world, inviting both parties to take to their [Twitter] handles and ask each other anything they want.” You can catch up on the conversations here.

BIG IDEAS

• “Arts Dinnervention” participants Devon Smith and Laura Zabel each reflect on the recent WESTAF-supported discussion, which brought together twelve arts leaders to consider new solutions to old problems. While the convening did not result in a singular path forward, there was one notable consensus: “the arts are not in trouble, it’s the institutions that are failing.”
• The Dallas Morning News has taken a novel approach to hiring a new art critic to its staff, a position empty since 2006. The addition of Rick Brettell, an art history professor at the University of Texas, will strengthen the news org’s arts coverage and is the second time it has worked with UT to hire a local professor as a cultural critic.
• Is it ethical for arts funders to start what they cannot finish? Diane Ragsdale, one of the official bloggers at the upcoming Grantmakers in the Arts conference, has her doubts.
• How is an artist like a social entrepreneur? Laura Callanan explores the similarities at SOCAP13.
• If you’re looking for a dose of wisdom to go with your morning cup o’ joe, start here: an array of arts leaders including Roberto Bedoya, Janet Brown, Richard Kessler, Margot Knight, and Mara Walker reflect on what they have learned from their years in the field.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Break out the champagne – the arts have stagnated! Americans for the Arts’s new 2013 National Arts Index is practically identical to last year’s, following several years of steady decline. The study finds deeper reason for optimism in the wake of the Great Recession: over the last 10 years, total private giving to all charities and the total number of workers in all occupations have been strong predictors of the health of the arts sector, and both are up.
• Jon Silpayamanant digs into the WPA Federal Music Project with an annotated bibliographic timeline and argues the WPA, as well as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration that preceded it, were crucial to classical music during the Great Depression.
• Data on the relationship between cities’ aesthetics and economic health may be soon within reach thanks to Place Pulse, a project out of MIT that asks users to rank  photos from cities as more or less “boring,” “safe,” “lively,” etc.
• A new survey conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy catalogs concerns about foundations from non-profits: nearly half of the respondents felt that foundations are not aware of the challenges the respondents face, and more than two-thirds believe foundations fail to use their various resources to help nonprofits with their challenges. Commentators blame power dynamics and the “inherently self-serving” structure of foundations.
• Connoisseurs of fine wines and classical music may be dismayed over recent studies examining the complexities involved in critical judgement. Turns out that experts and amateurs alike are susceptible to everything from presentation, environment, and even price (gasp!) when it comes to evaluating quality.
• When faith and evidence collide, sometimes it’s faith that wins – at least when it comes to politics. See also Margy Waller’s Uncomfortable Thoughts piece for Createquity from back in the day.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• Who should be the next chair of the NEA? Barry Hessenius and Ray Mark Rinaldi trot out some possibilities.
• Penn Hill Group, which is working with Grantmakers in the Arts on federal arts education policy, has published a report that “provides an initial analysis of the people, process, politics, and policies that are crucial to the consideration of federal education and job training policies in the next Congress and Administration.”
• Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who’s had an uneasy relationship with the city’s arts community, has been kicked out of office by a judge for a minor corruption charge. The judge’s decision is pending appeal.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Jeremy Nowak, the head of the William Penn Foundation who had joined from The Reinvestment Fund only a year and a half ago, has left due to “differences in approach” with the foundation’s board.
• Congratulations to Susie Surkamer, new executive director of South Arts.
• The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, which supports arts and culture in the Phoenix, AZ area, has named Clarin Collins research and evaluation officer.

IN THE FIELD

• Take that, Roger Ebert: video games are art! New York’s Museum of Modern Art announced recently that it is buying up 14 classic games for inclusion in its permanent collection, including Tetris, Pac-Man, and Myst. If it’s good enough for MoMA, it’s good enough for me. Too bad advances in technology are disrupting video game store economics.
• Probably the most thorough English-language overview of the music scene in China that you’re going to find.
• I’m scratching my head a bit wondering how a midlevel employee who didn’t work in the finance department of the Woodruff Arts Center was able to embezzle $1.5 million out of the organization over a five-year period without anyone noticing before now. That’s a lot of per diems to lose track of.
• Who earns nearly $1 million a year for an arts organization and is still a relative bargain? Hint: he’s Venezuelan and directs a major orchestra. Culture Monster’s Mike Boehm runs the numbers.

BIG IDEAS

• The new issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review has a look back on lessons learned from the early years of impact investing.
• A deeper look into Google’s super-high-speed broadband experiment in Kansas City. If you care about infrastructure (and I imagine most Createquity readers do), you should read this.
• This epic article by Emily Badger on the Miller brothers’ experiment in crowdfunding real estate development is well worth the time invested.
• More from the Americans for the Arts Scaling Impact blog salon: Victor Kuo reflects on a collective impact effort in Cincinnati involving my sometime partner in crime arts funding, ArtsWave; Joanna Chin offers a very good wrap-up.
• Are management consultants worth the money? A thoroughly entertaining Freakonomics podcast investigates.
• Kris Putnam-Walkerly considers the role and rise of design thinking in philanthropy.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Slightly old news, but here goes: The NEA is partnering with the Bureau of Economic Analysis to measure the contribution of the arts to the national GDP. The arts were already counted as part of GDP, but we didn’t have a good way of isolating their contribution – the relevant figures were only counted once every five years, and categories were unhelpfully broad (combining performing arts with sports and recreation, for example). The main short term significance of this, as I understand it, is that it will be a boon to researchers doing economic impact analyses of the arts and creative industries. Congrats to the NEA research team on making this happen – I know they’ve been working for a while on it. Meanwhile, more recently, the NEA updated its very helpful “How the United States Funds the Arts” publication for 2012.
• Does Generation Y have unrealistic expectations about how much money they’ll be inheriting from their parents?

On to the news:

YOU’RE FIRED

• The orchestra world has been shaken to the core this month. The largest institution yet to face such troubles, the Philadelphia Orchestra, has filed for bankruptcy (the restructuring kind, not the “we’re throwing in the towel” kind). On the one hand, I am sure that the Fabulous Philadelphians’ financial troubles are very real. On the other, it does strike me as curious not only that (as others have noted) an organization with a $140 million endowment would file for bankruptcy, but that the move precedes the announcement of a $160 million fundraising campaign to save the orchestra. Andrew Taylor digs into the bankruptcy filing docs.
• The Syracuse (NY) Symphony Orchestra has filed for Chapter 7 (we’re throwing in the towel) bankruptcy, after canceling the rest of its season a week earlier. Looks like it’s lights out for this one, not to mention the SSO’s 95 musicians and staff.
• Albuquerque’s New Mexico Symphony has filed for Chapter 7 as well. 80 musicians and staffers will lose their jobs.
• On the plus side, the Detroit Symphony musicians are back to work, albeit six months later. The new three-year contract calls for 25% cuts in salaries (to $79,000 base pay, hardly slave wages) and additional funds available for optional community-service work. The orchestra’s size will be reduced from 96 to 85 musicians.
• The artistically successful but financially troubled Intiman Theatre  in Seattle has cancelled the rest of its season due to money problems. Its artistic director, Kate Whoriskey, has now left as well.
• The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival is kaput after 17 years in operation, making it the second major Baltimore arts organization to fold since the start of the Great Recession (after the Baltimore Opera). The article contains this quote that would make Tyler Cowen smile: “‘We started as a non-Equity company, and if we had dropped our contract, it would have cut our costs,’ Toran said. ‘But that’s exactly what we weren’t going to do. You want to pay your actors, just like you pay lawyers and doctors and teachers. Our goal wasn’t survival at any cost.'” So because they wanted to pay the actors so badly, they decided to give them fewer work opportunities?
• The New York City Opera, two years after spending the 2008-09 season inactive and raiding most of its endowment to stay alive, is facing a possible strike and the delay of its season announcement for next year.
• Pittsburgh arts groups are exploring increased collaboration as a survival strategy.
• Meant to write about this a while ago, but Pepsi Refresh has relaunched with a different process and set of rules after complaints of gaming the system last year.

I QUIT

• Ellen Rudolf is stepping down as longtime director of the Surdna Foundation’s Thriving Cultures Program, which she had initiated with the foundation 17 years ago.
• Jeremy Nowak, a noted advocate for the power of the arts in revitalizing communities, will no longer be the President and CEO of The Reinvestment Fund – for good reason: he’s about to become the new head of the William Penn Foundation. (via GIA News)
• Nina Simon, author, blogger, and museum design consultant extraordinaire, is quitting her consulting and speaking business to be the new Executive Director of the Museum of Art & History at McPherson Center in Santa Cruz, CA. Thankfully, she is not quitting her blog.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

• Whoa…a donor’s estate in Bermuda is withdrawing an £82 million donation to Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival for no reason at all, apparently.
• Chad Bauman riffs on the recent cuts to DC’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission from a marketer’s perspective.
• Michael Kaiser takes a dim view of the trends in corporate giving to the arts. Here are some numbers from the Foundation Center.
• Americans Gave a Lot Less in the Recession Than Experts Predicted, reads the Chronicle of Philanthropy headline. Among other things, this story is a pretty big black eye for Giving USA, the annual report on individual giving that had estimated that donor activity was holding steady or barely dropping during the same period.
• Meanwhile, foundations gave (slightly) less in 2010 than 2009, despite the fact that their assets increased by 5%.
• Why don’t more foundations publicly explain the rationale behind their gifts?
• It looks like the growth of new 501(c)(3)s has finally slowed (and the numbers will actually drop considerably once the IRS releases the names of the nonprofits whose status it has revoked as a result of nonfiling). Of course, this hasn’t stopped composer Philip Glass from founding a new festival in Carmel Valley, CA.

SHOW ME THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE

• My colleagues at Fractured Atlas have a new publication laying out what the health insurance reform law means for artists.
• A new publication from the Boekman Foundation in Amsterdam: Cultural Policy Update. And check out this fab cultural policy blog salon put together by my friends at Emerging Arts Professionals – San Francisco Bay Area, featuring an admirably diverse range of voices.
• Not surprisingly, the social media cognoscenti are all abuzz about the new report from the Knight Foundation, “Connected Citizens: The Power, Peril, and Potential of Networks.” Beth Kanter is all over it here.
• CEOs for Cities reports on the residential clustering patterns of the “young and the restless” – college educated 25-34-year-olds. Seems cities’ “close-in neighborhoods” are more important than ever.
• Partners for Livable Communities reports on strategies for arts organization outreach to senior and immigrant audiences.
• Shannon Litzenberger is back with a massive report on cultural policy in the Windy City.
• Won’t you help Devon with her epic Facebook experiment? (It begins tomorrow.)

SEE YOU IN COURT

• David Byrne has come to a settlement with former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who had used the Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere” without permission during Crist’s unsuccessful campaign for Senate last year. (Seems a rather auspicious choice, no?) The settlement terms apparently included Charlie recording this apology video, which actually almost makes me feel sorry for him.
• Matthew Guerrieri reports on a dispute between the Music Publishers Association (UK) and the International Music Score Library Project.

BEAUTY CONTESTS

• Bubble sort as demonstrated by Hungarian folk dance.
• Eric Whitacre is back with the Virtual Choir 2.0, this time performing his “Sleep” and featuring over 2000 performers. Sounds great, but fair warning: the video is even cheesier than in the last one.
• To draw in new audiences, an orchestra plays for cows.
• I find a lot of public art less than inspiring, but I have to admit, this is pretty awesome:
  

  After more than a decade of disagreement, Berliners have settled on a monument to celebrate German reunification and the 1989 peaceful revolution: a giant, rocking dish.

  The 55-metre, 330-tonne glittering steel wing can hold up to 1,400 people at any one time, but it needs at least 20 people to get it moving.

  The monument to unity is called Citizens in Motion, and is apparently all about people coming together. If you want to make it move, you have to get a group together and all go in a particular direction.