Author: Laura Collins Hughes

Tending Mid-Level Donors (Or: Turning $500 Into $100K)

“Although it’s the million-dollar donations that get headlines, cultural institutions in fact draw a significant proportion of their support from large networks of mid-level donors, whom the institutions reward with perks, such as preferential seating and access to artists, and carefully nurture as they, ideally, move up the ladder to higher levels of giving. A look at so-called patron programs around town offers insight into the sophisticated art of fund raising and donor cultivation.”

Cape Cod Mansion May Mar Hopper’s Landscape

“What Edward Hopper cherished most about his home in Truro were the silence and the view. From his window looking north over the windswept heathlands and Cape Cod Bay, the American artist found inspiration for some of the most celebrated paintings of the 20th century.” Planned for an adjacent lot is “a 6,500-square-foot mansion, complete with reflecting pools and a wine cellar, on nine acres in the middle of what locals call the Hopper landscape. And the proposal has incited sometimes loud debate over the once silent landscape of South Truro.”

Puppets. Cartoon Movies. Why All The Kid Stuff?

“Wherever you look, from opera houses and live theaters to movie houses and museums, the machinery of fantasy and make-believe has been working overtime to captivate audiences of all ages.” Is this a symptom of a culture of arrested development or a much-needed way of viewing “the dizzying complexity, dark ambiguities and pressing urgencies of contemporary life”?

Director Of S.F.’s African Diaspora Museum Departs

“Denise Bradley, executive director of the Museum of the African Diaspora, is reporting for work for the last time today. Bradley has been at the helm of the museum, which is devoted to the origins, dispersal and cultural legacy of African populations, since it opened two years ago. … Bradley said the museum’s financial health had nothing to do with her departure. Several sources said MoAD is having significant financial problems.”

MLK Statue Draws Ire For Sculptor’s Nationality

Chinese artist Lei Yixin is sculpting a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. that’s bound for Washington, D.C. “For China’s artists, the selection of Lei as the lead sculptor for the project, to be unveiled in 2009 on the Mall, is a triumphant moment.” But some Americans object. “By awarding the contract to a Chinese artist, the foundation financing the project has touched on sensitivities at the core of U.S.-Sino relations: nationalism, racism and worries about what China’s emergence as an economic and cultural world power means for America.”

Possible Rove Book Stirs Publishers’ Interest

“Karl Rove has set imaginations ablaze with his recent comments that he plans to teach and write a book. Would Rove, the nation’s man of mystery who is legendary for his loyalty, actually write a book that revealed life behind the White House’s wrought-iron fence? That’s the question publishers are asking themselves and eager to take a chance on.”

Cultural Battleground: A School’s “Christmas Concert”

On Monday night in a Long Island town bordering Queens, “more than 250 people showed up to demand that the name of the annual Christmas Concert not be changed to Winter Concert. … The small school district is one of the few in the New York region that continues to call its December program the Christmas Concert. Almost all the others have switched to the term holiday or winter concert, both to avoid seeming to exclude non-Christian families and to move toward the ideal of a level cultural playing field for pupils of every possible background.”