A couple of weeks ago, the Nonprofit Finance Fund, which makes loans and provides financial consultations, released the results of its annual State of the Sector survey. In this year’s edition, of 1,315 nonprofit leaders, it found most were bracing for a tough 2010. No surpise, there.

But it also found, in the arts sector, that many want help with their boards — maybe that’s no shock either, but it speaks to an issue I’ve mentioned before as worrisome.

In general, across all kinds of non-profits —  arts, human services, environment, education, animal welfare, etc.:

Nearly 90% expect 2010 to be as difficult or more difficult than 2009; only 12% expect 2010 to be financially easier for their organizations.

80% of nonprofits anticipate an increase in demand for services in 2010; 49% expect to be able to fully meet this demand level.

Only 18% of organizations expect to end 2010 above break-even; 35% of organizations ended 2009 with an operating surplus.

The majority – 61% – have less than three months of cash available; 12% have none.

Arts groups made up the biggest component — 32% — of respondents, but I still wanted to see just the arts’ picture. I asked the Nonprofit Finance Fund for the results just from those 417 arts leaders, and it obliged. Here are a few interesting points I pulled from them:

–54% experienced an increase, slight or significant, in demand for their services in 2009, but 64% expect an increase in 2010.

–In 2009, 37% had an operating deficit, while 26% expect to have a deficit this year.

–In 2009, 32% had an operating surplus, but only 26% expect a surplus this year.

–28% could not fully meet demand last year, and 34% do not believe they will this year.

–13% have no cash reserve, and only 16% had more than six months’ worth of cash in reserve. The vast majority — 65% — have less than 3 months cash on hand.

[Read more…] about Worrisome Numbers For 2010 Budgets And Boards

NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman is making news again, and I’m not talking about what he said in The New York Times’s Sunday Arts & Leisure piece. It did say that he had become “perhaps more politic” since taking office. And it quoted him as saying he had to cut down on his whining. Both good.

The article also disclosed that Landesman is “hoping to make an end run” around his budget constraints by forging collaborations with agencies that have more money, like the Housing and Urban Development and Transportation departments. Let’s hope he does get that on down on paper.

But by paying close attention to what Landesman said on Friday, when he spoke at the Arts Education Partnership’s Spring 2010 Forum, I saw a little more evidence that he has evolved since, well, August.

For a start, then he told the Times that in contrast with his predecessors, who had pointedly spread NEA funds to every Congressional district, he would instead focus on funding the best art. That’s when he made his famous comment about the probable lack of good theater in Peoria. “I don’t know that we have to be everywhere if the only reason for supporting an institution is its geography,” he said.

Fast forward to Friday, when he said:

I have challenged my staff to see if we can make sure that there is at least one arts education grant in every Congressional district.

OK, arts education should indeed be universal, but isn’t he implying that good art isn’t? If he has to make choices about funding the best in one area, shouldn’t he also fund the best in another? Or has Landesman simply learned that it is good politics, if bad policy, to court Congress with NEA funds, no matter how small they are?

Look at it another way: Landesman noted that NEA had $15 million for arts education grants which, divided by 435 Congressional districts, equals less than $35,000 per grant. That’s not even one art teacher’s salary. Maybe larger, innovative pilot projects would have more impact.

In Friday’s speech, he also made this point:

At the NEA, we will shortly be releasing data that shows that arts education drives arts attendance, and the producer in me thinks that butts in seats is reason enough to do anything. But there are more reasons: in addition to audiences, arts education creates arts administrators and artists.

And loosely summarizing experts like Daniel Pink, Howard Gardner and Mark Stern, he said:

The arts provide us with new ways of thinking, new ways to draw connections. They are important social capital, and they help maintain our competitive edge by engendering innovation and creativity. So an arts education grant in every Congressional district is an important goal.

And he went on to endorse the idea of turning STEM, the emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math, into STEAM — adding art. And then on to making it TEAMS, meaning learning based on collaboration, and then on to allowing failure, using “the arts to give the luxury of failure to our students.”

And that brought him to this odd statement: “How many water lilies did Monet paint, trying to get them just right?”  

Huh? Not sure that’s what Monet was doing there….

The NEA emailed the speech to me, and it’s not (yet) posted online, so I can’t provide a link. All in all, it shows Landesman’s heart is in the right place. But that may not be enough to make him an effective chairman.

UPDATE, 4/12: The speech is online (thanks to commenter, below) here.

He’s supposed to testify on Capitol Hill on the NEA budget on Tuesday. That ought to be interesting.

 

Are these the artists of the future? Art Basel, which begins its 41st edition on June 15, thinks so. It has just released the names of 26 artists, all born since 1966, who will be featured in this year’s Art Statements section of the fair. They were selected from more than 300 applications by the Art Basel Committee, and they come from 17 countries: Brazil, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States.

Art Statements, now in its 11th year, has apparently had a fairly good track record of raising the profiles of participants with curators and collectors. “Many previous participating artists have been awarded major exhibitions as a result of being discovered at Art Statements,” the press release says.

Among them are Ghada Amer, Vanessa Beecroft, William Kentridge and Elizabeth Peyton.

Of course, since it’s dealers who make the choice, the artists’ galleries may figure in the choices. Nonetheless, here are this year’s artists, who will make new works for Art Basel. Art Basel lists them by their galleries:

A Gentil Carioca (Rio de Janeiro): Maria Nepomuceno, born 1976

Miguel Abreu Gallery (New York): Sam Lewitt, born 1981

Arataniurano (Tokyo): Takahiro Iwasaki, born 1975

Galerie Balice Hertling (Paris): Kerstin Brätsch, born 1976

Laura Bartlett Gallery (London): Elizabeth McAlpine, born 1973

Boers-Li Gallery (Beijing): Yang Xinguang, born 1980

Chatterjee & Lal (Mumbai): Nikhil Chopra, born 1974

Cortex Athletico (Bordeaux): Benoît Maire, born 1978

Ellen de Bruijne Projects (Amsterdam): Lara Almarcegui, born 1972

Dépendance (Bruxelles): Benjamin Saurer, born 1977

Freymond-Guth & Co, Fine Arts (Zürich): Dani Gal, born 1975

Hollybush Gardens (London): Claire Hooper, born 1978

Hunt Kastner Artworks (Prague): Eva Kotatkova, born 1982

Galerie Iris Kadel (Karlsruhe): Adrian Williams, born 1974

Galerie Kamm (Berlin): Michelle Di Menna, born 1980

David Kordansky Gallery (Los Angeles): Rashid Johnson, born 1977

Michael Lett (Newton / Aukland): Sriwhana Spong, born 1979

Lullin + Ferrari (Zürich): Edit Oderbolz, born 1966

Proyectos Monclova (México): Nina Beier, born 1975

Monitor (Roma): Francesco Arena, born 1978

Neue Alte Brücke (Frankfurt am Main): Simon Fujiwara, born 1982

ProjecteSD (Barcelona): Iñaki Bonillas, born 1981

Rokeby (London): Bettina Buck, born 1974

Gallery SKE (Bangalore): Sreshta Premnath, born 1979

T293 (Napoli): Patrizio Di Massimo, born 1983

Sassa Trülzsch (Berlin): Dieter Detzner, born 1970

 

You can read the full press release here.

 

Photo Credit: two works by Maria Nepomuceno, Courtesy Steve Taylor Contemporary, Los Angeles

  

Otto Dix, as I write in my review of the Otto Dix show at the Neue Galerie, published in today’s Wall Street Journal, is not an easy artist to like. But he is one to admire, mostly. I am glad he has his first solo exhibit in North America in my backyard.

Although I have a hard time with his sexual murder pieces, his portraits are fantastic (see some on the WSJ slide show). And although they are not his best, I enjoyed looking at most of the paintings that he toned down, for various reasons.

The picture of his family at left, painted in 1927, is an example. It’s a Madonna and child, as are one or two other paintings in the show.

Back to those lustmord paintings, though. Olaf Peters, the art-history professor at the Martin-Luther-University-Halle-Wittenberg who curated this exhibit, told me that Dix created them in the full knowledge of, and desire for, the notoriety they’d spark. It worked.

I call this the “shock and awe” tactic and many artists and writers of all disciplines use it. When the artists actually awes with talent — as Dix did — it doesn’t bother me so much. But too often artists deploy shock and awe to great effect without the necessary raw talent. They are long on shock and short on awe. It’s a mystery to me why curators, etc., go along.

Of course, everyone is entitled to his or her definition of talent — so I won’t name names that I think are getting away with it. But it’s worth thinking about.

Photo Credit: Courtesy Neue Galerie

 

 

This is definitely a post I’d rather not write. But since it was just a few days ago when I told the story of former museum director Edmund “Ted” Pillsbury’s short tenure as U.S. director of the French Regional and American Museum Exchange, I feel duty bound.

His death on March 25, at age 66, has been ruled a suicide. It was not a heart attack, as I orignally reported here. The Dallas Morning News was the source of the original obit, and is also the source for the update (here).

Pillsbury was director of the Kimbell Art Museum for 18 years, during which time he purchased many masterpieces. As The New York Times obit said:

Among the paintings Mr. Pillsbury acquired were “Portrait of Don Pedro de Barberana,” an unusually large piece by the 17th-century Spanish artist Diego Velázquez; “The Cardsharps,” a seminal work by Caravaggio from the 1590s; a 1906 Picasso, “Nude Combing Her Hair,” “L’Asie,” a 1946 oil by Matisse; and art by Fra Angelico, Titian, Tintoretto, Rubens, Cezanne and Mondrian.

Pillsbury was a scion of the Pillsbury flour company. 

Sadly, when I spoke to him in mid-March, he told me he wanted to do some writing about his life.

My thanks to Lindsay Pollock for telling me about the updated news about Pillsbury’s death in the Dallas paper.

Photo Credit: Courtesy Heritage Auctions