Category: issues

“Jobs will be lost from the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen when they merge to become Creative Scotland, according to the long-awaited business model for the new organisation which sets out its structure and operational design.”

“The rustic properties on the Baltic island of Fårö – where the director Ingmar Bergman lived and worked, produced several of his films and died – will become a nonprofit retreat for artists and scholars.”

“The program, called BoardServeNYC, is hoping to train 500 volunteers in nonprofit governance each year and then connect those volunteers with nonprofits seeking new directors.” The need is in “the more than 8,000 smaller nonprofits, particularly those located outside of Manhattan.”

“[ACE] chief executive Alan Davey has warned any future government against cutting public funding for the arts, arguing that not only will it affect the cultural quality of life in the country but will also be economically damaging. … [He] insisted that every £1 of public money invested in the arts levers a further £2 from elsewhere.”

“The city fathers and business leaders understand the value that an exuberant arts community has for a metropolitan area, but the urban developers still have not created a vibrant life, as opposed to a lifestyle, in downtown Dallas, where too many shops on Main Street remain boarded up, and where not enough people live.”

“The district will be receiving a $750,000 grant from the Wallace Foundation,” which “will help the district develop a strategy for rolling out more arts programs, and it could lead to a larger donation to implement more programs.”

“The other day, my four-year-old daughter told me with a grin: ‘I’m chopping the fish.’ She had a toy knife and a plastic bowl. Inside the bowl was a jigsaw piece with the word ‘fish’ on it. Kids, eh – teach them to read and they think they’re René Magritte.”

According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “the nation’s biggest charities are forecasting a 9 percent decline in giving this year. That would be the steepest drop since the group started tracking private donations in the early 90s.”

“You can’t just go to Congress with your hat in your hand.” You have to make the case that the arts are an economic engine. Landesman continues to characterize the NEA’s budget of $155 million as “pathetic,” although he says he’s been advised that saying so is impolitic. “The State Department has more money for the arts in its budget than the NEA,” he said. “The Department of Defense is the single biggest purchaser of musical instruments in this country.”

When large, white organizations produce minority works they typically select the “low hanging fruit,” the most popular works by diverse artists featuring the most famous minority performers and directors. This almost invariably hurts the minority arts organizations in the neighborhood, most of which are small and underfunded, and cannot afford to match the marketing clout or the casting glamour of their larger white counterparts. How else to explain the reduced strength of American black theater companies over the past twenty years?