I was all set to write about something else, which I may write about later, but then something happened. I saw the news on Sunday that 19 people were shot at a Mother’s Day parade in New Orleans, and that made me extremely sad to hear, but that’s not actually the something that happened that made me not write about the something else. Because I felt like plenty of people were going to write about that, right?, a shooting in broad daylight at a large group of people—one that injured 19 people, … [Read more...]
The Untenable Whiteness of Theatre
Today I'm foregoing my usual verbosity in favor of a picture. This is a combination of US Census data, data from the Arts Diversity Index report and data from another survey of 56 Bay Area theatre companies about the diversity of their boards, staffs and artists. Please share and discuss--the Arts Diversity Index report should be coming out shortly (we shared an executive summary and short presentation of some of the data at the Theatre Bay Area conference earlier this week). Click to enlarge … [Read more...]
Carrying Forward, Clumsily
A week or so ago, I was in a cab from Chicago O’Hare into the city to speak at the National Alliance of Musical Theatre conference. The traffic was heavy and the cabbie was chatty, and at one point he ended up asking me whether I was married, and I said yes. He then, logically but erroneously, assumed that I was married to a woman, and with that assumption he then carried on the conversation, asking me first just generally what she did and whether she minded me traveling so much, and then—as … [Read more...]
Yes/And — tackling racial diversity by looking to the things adjacent
Today, in DC, people are sporting red shirts and red scarves, red hats and pants, socks, one assumes underwear--and many of them are wandering toward the Supreme Court, where today there is hope that nine people dressed in black will carry forward a message of equality. There's a buzz here, and it has encouraged me to think about diversity more broadly, to understand that tackling the issue of whiteness that has disseminated so widely through the blogosphere (and been discussed so eloquently … [Read more...]
Giving Shape to Whiteness
Roberto Bedoya has asked some amazing questions lately, all designed to interrogate the concept of whiteness in the arts. He’s asked a few bloggers to think about the questions he has raised and write back (so watch for posts in the coming weeks on Jumper, Createquity, Barry’s Blog, Engaging Matters, Museum 2.0, etc), and this is mine. Or at least my first attempt. Before going into it though, I think it’s important to say that I feel a little like a lamb in the woods on this diversity … [Read more...]
Stages of Life
A small break from all the discussion of diversity. Adam Thurman from Mission Paradox will be guest-posting later this week on that--in the meantime, some thoughts on the fear that comes with change, and doing it anyway. Last night, my husband, Seth, and I were curled up on the couch binge-watching Downton Abbey. As it got later, I kept warning Seth that we wouldn't be able to fully catch up before I had to go to sleep, and at the end of each episode, mimicking our daughter, he would look … [Read more...]
All the People
Over on Facebook, my co-worker Sam Hurwitt reports an audition listing in San Francisco that requests “No obvious ethnicity” for a role. His friends, when asked, guessed that statement meant everything from “mixed” to “white” to my favorite: “‘whitable’ or ‘passable’ or ‘non-threatening ethnic looking person’.” The Bank of Canada recently released a new $100 bill as part of an overhaul of their currency. Per this article: An earlier, uncirculated version of the $100 note, illustrating … [Read more...]
The weight of white people in the world
Before I knew her, Tina, one of my best friends growing up, was made to stand in front of a room full of her white elementary school classmates on a Connecticut school day. In an effort to teach children about race, the teacher instructed the white kids, all sitting behind their desks, to look at Tina, who was Korean, standing in front of them, and to point out the things that made Tina different. She did not then put a white kid up there and afford Tina the same opportunity. I think about … [Read more...]
Diversification as Disruption
Over at Museum 2.0, I’ve been sparring with Nina Simon and others about the new guidelines and funding strategy at the James Irvine Foundation, all emerging out of the revelation from Nina Simon that the Irvine folks are having trouble getting great proposals that align with their new “participatory” strategy. Take a look there for more of the specifics, and if you really have some time read my long and academic dissection of Irvine’s new policy and how it’s problematic over at Artivate, but … [Read more...]
Quantifying Diversity
This is the first in a series of posts I'm planning to write about measuring and understanding goals around diversification of our boards, staffs, artists, art and audiences. I'm using this as an opportunity to work out thoughts, and I'm very much hoping you'll help me -- please give me your thoughts in the comments, as I'm writing this report and muddling through some very hard questions that need answers. Thanks - CL I am deep into analyzing a giant dataset that combines data from our Arts … [Read more...]
To My Parents on the Occasion of Good News
I found out a few days before Christmas that I’m going to be the new Vice President of Local Arts Advancement for Americans for the Arts. The official announcement will be made in a few days, and when it's out there I'm going to post this. I’ll be overseeing a team that generates and disseminates research, programs and services to help local arts agencies, service organizations and advocacy-minded arts groups and artists to put art back in its proper place as a driving force of betterment in … [Read more...]
Margy Waller on What’s In a Frame
I've been reading The Victory Lab lately, an absolutely fascinating look at how elections are won and lost. And more than it's about anything--even more than it's about technological advancement--it's about messaging, and framing, and rhetoric. Amidst many exciting, soaring scenarios about changing the landscape of public good will towards the arts that have flitted through my head while I read about the rise of modern politics, I've had this constant buzzing of "never gonna happen unless we … [Read more...]
Heal The World
I grew up maybe a half-hour from Newtown, Connecticut, in a town called Ridgefield that, today, became momentarily someplace you might know about when someone spotted someone with a gun (or something) near one of the schools and all of the schools in town went on lockdown. That would have included Ridgebury Elementary School, where I went, high up on a hill in an out of the way part of town, surrounded by woods and bordered by a swampy area at the bottom of a grade that was great … [Read more...]
Standing Up for the Charitable Tax Deduction Is Standing Up for a Healthy Society; or Reframing away from giving a tax break to the rich
In a comment on my post from last week about framing, John Carnwath honed in on a comment I sort of tossed off about the threat to the charitable deduction posed by the fiscal cliff. Take a look at his comment, which is very well laid out—he notes that while the tax deduction for charitable giving is surely and important driver for the arts, he’s not convinced that, given the topic of the post, a frame that suggests favoring the wealthy with a “tax break” is the best idea. He notes that, … [Read more...]
Nothing New Under the (Ever-Closer, Ready to Incinerate Us) Sun
On his way out the door, Rocco Landesman lobbed one final, wonderful bomb out there in a conversation with his counterpart in France (who, by the way, receives $9 billion-with-a-B in annual funding whereas the NEA has about $150 million). He was speaking at the World Arts Forum, and spoke about a “fundamental, visceral distrust of the arts” by the American public. He called the NEA funding level “pathetic,” and who can disagree, and his blunt honesty about what he called the arts’ “cowboy … [Read more...]
Helping Someone Get to Second Base Is Not Mission Fulfillment
Before getting to the actual entry, a couple places I encourage you to visit. (1) I was humbled to learn earlier this week that I was selected as one of the 50 Most Powerful and Influential People in the Non-Profit Arts in Barry Hessenius' annual rundown. I'm honored, and thank everyone who reads this blog for the kind attention. (2) A few months ago now, I was equally humbled to learn that a paper of mine, "Shattering the myth of the passive spectator: Entrepreneurial efforts to enhance … [Read more...]