The Artful Manager

If you’ve wondered about the number and distribution of arts organizations in your state, or wondered if your elected representatives ever wondered such things, there’s a wealth of insight now available from Americans for the Arts. Their effort to map the cultural industries across every state legislative district in the country is now on-line and […]

I’m neglecting my weblog duties this week due to an intensive conference schedule and sequence of meetings here in New York — all generating interesting ideas and challenging my basic assumptions. I’ll spin some of those out in the coming days and weeks. But for now, it’s back into the fray to talk policy with […]

The Irvine Foundation has just released a short report that seeks to capture the critical issues facing the arts in California. While the report is specific to the state, the tensions and dynamics it defines might as well be about any state in the Union. Irvine is also interested in gathering comments, and has created […]

I’m traveling today for a think-tank/roundtable/confab thing-y exploring the state of America’s professional cultural infrastructure, and whether or not it has grown beyond the scope of all combined sources of potential revenue and resources. Perhaps not a happy topic, but certainly a persistent one over the past few years (in fact, almost exactly two years, […]

There’s increasing evidence that the mission-driven world has focused a bit too obsessively (or myopically) on a single organizational form: the tax-exempt, 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation. It was a logical place to go, after all — if your goals are not defined by profit but by other motives, you should structure yourself as a nonprofit…right? Problem […]

If you were looking for another perspective on Manhattan, the folks at Gawker have just the map for you. Their new subway map tracks the various smells visitors are finding in each subway stop — from the sublime to the stinky. Why, exactly, would you want to know that the 14th Street and 6th/7th Avenue […]

During my time in Anchorage with the leaders of state arts agencies, the issue of ”public value” was still very much in play. Many state arts agencies had done extensive rethinking and planning around the public values they promote. And new communications strategies and publications were spreading this new word to legislators and constituents. But […]

I had an engaging but exhausting day here in Anchorage, chatting with the leadership members of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), an association of state arts agency executive directors, board members, and deputy directors. I delivered the keynote to the group yesterday morning, and facilitated a workshop in the afternoon on the […]