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The sinewy stuff: It makes it hard to connect the dots

May 21, 2012 By 1 Comment
BarnesMainGallery

In one of the more recent (of many) essays on the controversial move of the Barnes collection from the home of Albert C. Barnes (in Merion, PA) to a new facility in downtown Philadelphia, Peter Dobrin of the Philadelphia Inquirer questions some of the changes that have been made in the name of improvement of the cultural landscape of Philadelphia, which he perceives to be eroding some of the distinctive characteristics of the city. In his post, Barnes move to Parkway is progress, but a quirky something has been lost, Dobrin … [Read more...]

05/21/12 10:33 AM | filed under: Uncategorized |

Funder knows best

May 14, 2012 By 9 Comments
6a00d8341ee4c453ef00e54f29e4288833-800wi

In a recent thought-provoking Createquity post, Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem, Ian David Moss examines one of the newer initiatives of the NEA (and its private philanthropy friends) and finds it to be lacking a logic for how it will achieve its aims. Moss criticizes this program and others for attempting to connect the arts with economic development without considering the steps in between. Moss's post is a call for a clear and detailed theory of change for such initiatives and he goes so far as to share two models (one … [Read more...]

05/14/12 11:25 PM | filed under: Asymmetric power dynamics, Uncategorized |

Lessons in my struggles to learn Dutch

May 6, 2012 By 7 Comments
94560012

This is a post about my struggles to learn Dutch and assimilate to my new country (which I've endeavored to wrap back around to the arts). The past few weeks I’ve been studying rather intensely, preparing for my NT2 Staatsexamen I—the Dutch language exam that I must pass in order to be granted permanent residency status and the ability to stay in the Netherlands with my Dutch husband and his two daughters once my PhD position at the university ends in a couple years. It’s a two-day exam that tests reading, writing, speaking, and listening … [Read more...]

05/6/12 1:12 PM | filed under: Uncategorized |

Is Opera a Sustainable Art Form? Excerpts from a new keynote …

April 16, 2012 By 16 Comments
aida

I’ve been on hiatus in order to concentrate my time on the weekends to learning Dutch (state exam coming up). My last post was before Mike Daisey unhinged Ira Glass and Ira Glass exposed Mike Daisey and the whole world wrote about it. I’m not going to write about Mike Daisey. Instead, because I’m still concerned about the state of the arts and culture sector in the US (despite its “turnaround” according to Americans for the Arts), and because I’m still studying Dutch and neck-deep in my research at the moment, I’m going to share … [Read more...]

04/16/12 8:37 AM | filed under: institutionalism, Supply/Demand, sustainability, Undercapitalization |

Guest blogging this week on two sites

March 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Tulip fields in Holland

No Jumper post this week as I have the great honor to be blogging on two other sites. Laura Zimmerman at the Minnesota-based McKnight Foundation invited me to submit a post on the subject “What is the role of an artist in the world today?” for its new State of the Artist blog. My post, The Professional Lens: Are we a sector of underemployed ‘professional’ artists or successful ‘pro-ams’? is now live. I hope you will find time to read it and comment. Additionally, Arlene Goldbarb (writer, speaker, social activist, and … [Read more...]

03/12/12 9:24 PM | filed under: Democratization of Culture |

Theatre Bay Area’s “Counting New Beans”

March 5, 2012 By 7 Comments
counting new beans

Clay Lord and the fine folks at Theatre Bay Area have a new publication out: Counting New Beans: Intrinsic Impact and the Value of Art, which includes interviews with 20 prominent artistic directors and essays by Alan Brown, Rebecca Ratzkin, Arlene Goldbard, Rebecca Novick, and Clayton Lord. It also includes an interview with yours truly. Here's an excerpt from my long and winding conversation with Clay Lord. I've edited together excerpts (elipses mark missing sections) from two different parts of the interview. Clay Lord: You’ve … [Read more...]

03/5/12 9:07 AM | filed under: Democratization of Culture, engagement, Innovation, institutionalism, leadership, nonprofit model, subsidization of the arts |

On my Soapbox: Digitization of Live Performance

February 21, 2012 By 5 Comments
The Wooster Group

The Wooster GroupClay Lord has written a provocative and rather erudite post, The Work of Presentational Art in the Age of On-Demand Technological Empowerment, in which he cautions that as arts organizations embrace or respond to pressure to record and disseminate their live work that they not lose their identity and the core of what live performance (and theater in particular, perhaps) is all about. Clay mentions my post from last week in which I wrote: "If our goal for the next century is to hold onto our marginalized position and … [Read more...]

02/21/12 12:35 PM | filed under: Democratization of Culture, engagement, Innovation, Supply/Demand, Uncategorized |

If our goal is simply to preserve our current reality, why pursue it?

February 14, 2012 By 8 Comments
rabbit

About a month ago I read an article in the Atlantic (recommended to me by LINKED IN) on the phenomenal success of Finland’s primary and secondary education public school system—a success which, the article suggests, the US has failed to understand. There are some notable differences between the US system and Finland’s: Teachers in Finland are given prestige, decent pay and a lot of responsibility. Finland has no standardized tests; teachers are trained to create tests and assess students independently. (Periodically the … [Read more...]

02/14/12 8:34 AM | filed under: Democratization of Culture |

Making donor dollars stretch and perform miracles

February 5, 2012 By 2 Comments
shutterstock_66506893

The other day I received an email alert from the Philanthropy News Digest, which mentioned that a theater company had announced a $7 million endowment challenge grant. When matched, the 3:1 challenge grant (which requires the theater to raise $2.5 million) will boost its endowment from $500,000 to $10 million. Putting aside for a moment debates over the pros and cons of endowments for performing arts organizations, I was struck by the following quote by theater’s artistic director in the press: When reached, this unprecedented offer will … [Read more...]

02/5/12 3:27 PM | filed under: Asymmetric power dynamics, Undercapitalization |

AJ Discussion: Lead or Follow?

January 23, 2012 By 3 Comments
onion

In lieu of a Jumper post this week I have written a post (If this is leading, what is following?) for the Arts Journal Discussion, Lead or Follow.  Here's the question that launched the debate, posed by AJ's Doug McLennan: Increasingly, audiences have more visibility for their opinions about the culture they consume. Cultural institutions know more and more about their audiences and their wants. Some suggest this new transparency argues for a different relationship between artists and audience.  So the question: In this age of self … [Read more...]

01/23/12 7:34 PM | filed under: Uncategorized |

A planned ending for Merce Cunningham Dance Co.

January 15, 2012 By 5 Comments
Merce_Cunningham

Merce CunninghamIn last week’s post on direct subsidies to artists, I expanded upon a premise from artist/economist Hans Abbing--that direct subsidies to artists may provide incentives to more people to become artists, thereby increasing competition, and making it more difficult for any to make a living--and suggested that the same may be true of arts organizations. I wrote, "We have incentivized the exponential growth of the arts and culture sector in the US and, despite significant resources (government and private) flowing into the sector … [Read more...]

01/15/12 3:39 PM | filed under: Innovation, institutionalism, leadership, subsidization of the arts, Supply/Demand, Undercapitalization |

What are the aims of direct subsidies to artists?

January 8, 2012 By 12 Comments
why are artists poor

Polly Carl has posted a new piece on HowlRound, A Virtual Theater Movement,  in which she remarks on a recent trend in arts philanthropy: increased direct support for artists. This philanthropic trend prompts me to ask, “What are funders hoping to achieve by providing direct subsidies to individual artists?” and to raise the ideas of a colleague from Erasmus, artist/economist Hans Abbing, who wrote a book in 2002 called Why Are Artists Poor? The Exceptional Economy of the Arts, an excellent summary of the chapters therein you can … [Read more...]

01/8/12 4:25 PM | filed under: nonprofit model, subsidization of the arts |

Time to start pulling off the duct tape …

January 2, 2012 By 18 Comments
duct tape

In his article, Occupy the Arts, a seat at a time, NY Times critic Anthony Tomasini (like others) pounced on recent allegations of ‘elitism’ in the arts (growing out of the Occupy movement), decrying that there are loads of free and affordable arts events and that even those organizations that charge $400 per ticket also have cheap seats (and the experience is just as great from the nosebleeds, thank you very much!). Not only do Tomasini and others seem a tad defensive when they fly their Free Tickets Flag in the face of those seeking to … [Read more...]

01/2/12 9:30 PM | filed under: Asymmetric power dynamics, community, Democratization of Culture, engagement, Uncategorized |

On artists being tossed off the truck

December 19, 2011 By 13 Comments
people falling off truck

About a month ago I wrote a post on ‘'on artists making a living and artistic directors that could make a difference but don't.’ I had a significant number of comments (relative to other posts on my blog) including several from actors (thanks, all). One of the most inspiring posts came from Ron Russell of Epic Theatre in NYC. Epic (founded in 2001) has operating expenses of approximately $1.7 million (according to its 2010 990 filing on Guidestar) and recently renegotiated its contract with Actors Equity Association (AEA) to enable it to … [Read more...]

12/19/11 2:13 PM | filed under: institutionalism |

Instead of more data perhaps we should discuss why we keep ignoring the data we have?

November 26, 2011 By 12 Comments
shutterstock_55702153

I finally had found some time this week to read Scott Walter’s excellent second post in his trilogy (all three now published) looking at the 1% vs 99% issues in the US arts and culture sector. A compelling string of comments follows this post, led by one of my other favorite bloggers, Clayton Lord, who argues two points: (1) Is it effective to turn against the ‘top’ arts organizations at a time when the arts generally are under attack? and (2) We need to collect more data to understand how to improve the system. Walters responds that the … [Read more...]

11/26/11 7:03 PM | filed under: Asymmetric power dynamics, Democratization of Culture |
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