Jumper

A few weeks back, in a guest-post on Engaging Matters, Roberto Bedoya extended an invitation for others to join him in blogging about “how the White Racial Frame intersects with cultural policies and cultural practices.” The proposition grew out of a series of posts (largely written by a bunch of white people, like me) focused specifically on the Irvine Foundation’s new participatory arts focus and, more generally, on (funding) diversity in the arts. I don’t feel qualified to address this topic and I’m positive I do not do it … [Read more...]

Clay Lord has been on fire over this past week with a couple truly substantive and provocative posts—both aimed at issues around ethnic diversity in the arts. The first asserts that (1) valuing diversity and managing it are different (the former relatively easy, the latter not so much) and (2) funders interested in funding organizations to reach more diverse audiences are not as patient as they need to be if they want to see this change realized. The second post examines data from the Bay Area that attests to the (relative) lack of ethnic … [Read more...]

HuffPo blogger and Kennedy Center chief Michael Kaiser recently wrote a post reflecting on the financial corner that many arts organizations have painted themselves into (which he compares to the Fed’s fiscal cliff). His post got me thinking about our tendency to see the problems facing the arts and culture sector as inherently financial in nature. Kaiser ends his post with the following recommendations: I have spent the better part of my life arguing that revenue increases are not only advisable, but necessary. It is inarguable that over … [Read more...]

About a month ago, art critics Sarah Thornton and David Hickey threw in the towel citing frustration, disillusionment, and annoyance with corruption in the art world. Reading their back-to-back commentaries gave me pause. I found myself stewing on their words for several days--not because I am consumed with their particular concerns regarding the machinations of the art world (though these are, indeed, troubling), but because I'm beginning to lose faith that necessary transformation in the nonprofit arts sector will come. Recently, I … [Read more...]

In November 2011, twenty-five theater professionals gathered in Washington, DC to discuss nonprofit and commercial collaborations aimed at the development of new theatrical work. In spirit (if not structure and size) the meeting represented the third installment of an ongoing conversation that was sparked in June 1974 when 224 representatives from the American theater gathered at Princeton University to entertain the (then) remote possibility of cooperation between the nonprofit and commercial theater in the interest of advancing the American … [Read more...]

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about the recent turmoils at a few orchestras in the US which garnered several comments—all well worth reading and more interesting, in my opinion, than my original post—so I thought I’d continue the conversation. As one person wrote, the section of my post that seemed to provoke the most discussion was the statement: “I must be hopelessly naïve because I want to believe that if you go work for a nonprofit you’re not doing it for the money.” More than a few said that this was a potentially … [Read more...]