The chosen work is Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, with a libretto by Kasi Lemmons based on the memoir by New York Times columnist Charles Blow, premiered this past summer at Opera Theater of St. Louis. When will it arrive in New York? That hasn’t been worked out yet. – The New York Times
Eight Operas About The Black American Experience That Are By Black Composers
“Though they’ve been ignored or underheard, African-American composers have long been crafting ambitious music dramas. Some of the works cited below exist in complete editions, ready to be programmed. Others are still emerging, thanks to the work of scholars reversing decades of neglect.” – The New York Times
Who’s Fighting For Gender Equity In Classical Music?
“Making classical music a more equitable place demands a cultural change – and cultural changes don’t happen without conversation and action. Just in the past five or so years, there has been an explosion in initiatives working to address the gender disparity in classical music. Here are some of our favorites.” – 21CM
Do Arts Organization Boards Need To Be Battlegrounds?
Darren Walker: “Unfortunately, some people have framed having a diverse board as oppositional to having a wealthy board. These are one-dimensional ideas. I’m simply saying that you can have both, and you should have both. It would be a grave error to demonize wealthy people. That is something that I find regrettable about the discourse around the Whitney board, around this whole controversy.” – artnet
It’s Time To Insist That Arts Orgs Follow Wage And Hour Laws
Alan Harrison (who has run a few arts outfits in his time): “If a revenue budget cannot survive the number of paid hours required to reach the goals, then the organization itself is not viable, at least not for that budget year. No longer should artists — performing, visual, administrative — tolerate the lack of compensation.” – The Clyde Fitch Report
Throw Out the Bathwater and Keep the Baby: How to Stage Racially Problematic Works from the Western Canon
Phil Chan, co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface: “What is emerging is a series of best practices that any performing arts organization can employ when staging works from the Western canon which may contain outdated representations of race. Many of these ideas can be applied and shared across performing art forms.” – Americans for the Arts
Artists, Funders, and Disruption in the Public Realm
“When artists activate the social imagination and cultural practices bring people together, when new images and events claim or create public space, and when cultural organizing mobilizes people to action, art disrupts and influences social and political dynamics and discourse in the public realm. And, when funders shape programs to support this work, they too are influencers and activists in the public realm. … And, as funders step into the public realm along with the artists they support, they must consider their own implications and risk factors.” – Grantmakers in the Arts
Programs Supporting Art in the Public Realm: A National Field Scan
“In the spirit of advancing field dialogue, Americans for the Arts and the Barr Foundation are happy to share Programs Supporting Art in the Public Realm: A National Field Scan. The scan, while not intended to be comprehensive, highlights overarching themes and offers snapshots of 28 programs supporting and building capacity for artists to work in the public realm. Detailed summaries from interviews with seven selected programs provide additional insights.” – Americans for the Arts
The Overlooked Anchors: Advancing a New Standard of Practice for Arts and Culture Organizations to Create Equitable Opportunity in America’s Cities
“This report introduces a framework – with examples drawn from arts and culture organizations – that strategically leverages organizational operations for community development. It is primarily a call to action for arts and culture organizations and their funders. We hope city leaders, community and economic development practitioners and the anchor field will also pick up the report – to change their perspective and start to consider arts and culture organizations as anchor institutions alongside hospitals, universities and corporations. ” – The Kresge Foundation and the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC)
Can Arts Organizations Become Engines For Economic Justice In Their Communities?
The “anchor institution approach” for nonprofits — using their purchasing decisions, hiring, and other business practices to actively affect their communities’ economic well-being, especially that of historically marginalized groups — is usually thought of as applying to large universities and health-care institutions. But, argues a new report, arts and culture organizations can also serve as such “anchor institutions” — and many do, from Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center and the Cleveland Museum of Art down to smaller groups such as Houston’s Project Row Houses and the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio. – Nonprofit Quarterly
How Kristi Edmunds Disrupts The Arts World
“In my late twenties (living in Portland, Oregon as an artist and emerging curator), I recognized that the art institutions at the time had settled on mission-priorities that would follow the conventions of art-historical successes which were long proven and regionally familiar. This left a rather large gulf between the ideas and work of living artists, and the towering significance of the established canon.” – Authority Magazine
Latinos Aren’t Visible Enough In American Popular Culture. Trump And El Paso Show Why That Matters
Carolina Miranda: “If ever there were an urgent moment for the various culture industries — film studios, theater companies, art museums and TV production companies — to act on issues of diversity and inclusion, that moment is now. And not because diversity is some feel-good thing that makes for a nice talking point during Hispanic Heritage Month, but because rendering an entire segment of the population invisible makes the cultural arena complicit in a marginalization that is entering increasingly dangerous” — literally dangerous — “territory.” – Los Angeles Times
Five Years On, How Artists, Writers, Musicians, And Theatermakers Have Responded To Ferguson, Missouri
“Their art was not only a response to Brown’s death. It was also a way to bring understanding to issues that had angered and oppressed African Americans for generations.” A package looking at responses to Michael Brown’s death and its aftermath in visual art, classical music, theatre, literature, popular music, and cinema. – St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Watching A Play, In Black And White: Two Critics Discuss How Who You Are Affects The Way You See African-American Theater
“In a cultural medium whose producers, audiences and critics are still predominantly white, [Jackie Sibblies Drury’s] Fairview challenges playgoers to think about how the different backgrounds and assumptions they bring to the theater may produce vastly different results once inside.” Jesse Green and Salamishah Tillet talk about that issue with respect to Fairview and African-American plays more generally. – The New York Times
New York City Told Its Museums To Get More Diverse Or Lose Funding. Here Are What Museums Are Doing And How The City Will Enforce The Mandate.
“Directions on how institutions should incorporate these objectives were left intentionally vague. Rather than issuing blanket checklists, the city wanted individual institutions to formulate plans that made sense for their respective audiences and agendas.” Reporters Taylor Dafoe and Brian Boucher talk to leaders at the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA PS1, Queens Museum, and Brooklyn Children’s Museum about how they’re responding to the city’s directive. – Artnet
NYC Cultural Agenda Fund: A collaborative effort to build an equitable arts ecosystem
“Over four years, the fund” — a group of eight foundations — “made 89 grants to 67 groups totaling $2.27 million, helping ‘build a broader commitment to a fairer and more equitable arts ecosystem in New York City and a more deeply connected network of arts organizations,’ according to a new report that shares insights, strategies, and key takeaways for grantmakers.” – Grantmakers in the Arts
New York City To Arts Orgs: We Both Know You Have A Diversity Problem — How Are You Going To Fix It?
“After years spent measuring and analyzing the problem, the city is now asking organizations to work on fixing it. In recent months, 33 cultural institutions on city-owned property submitted plans to boost diversity and inclusion among their staff and visitors; if they failed to do so, the city warned, their funding could be cut.” – The New York Times
Bumpy Start: On Entering Classical Music
Every classical musician who is not from a musical background has a different story of how their interest in the art was sparked. But for most of them, their early forays into music were baffling and awkward: more like riding a unicycle than brushing their teeth. – Van
‘Radical Hospitality’ — Why Seattle’s Intiman Theatre Has Made All Its Tickets Free
“The initiative, artistic director Jen Zeyl explained, is about more than the standard theater problem of getting ‘butts in seats.’ (Though, of course, there’s that.) It’s about getting the butts one wants in seats — not just the people who can afford to take the $25+ crap shoot known as a theater ticket, but the people who can’t: the woman at the corner store, high-school sophomore, the guy asking for spare change on the sidewalk.” – The Seattle Times
Why One Trustee Quit The Board Of The British Museum
Ahdaf Soueif: “Public cultural institutions have a responsibility: not only a professional one towards their work, but a moral one in the way they position themselves in relation to ethical and political questions. The world is caught up in battles over climate change, vicious and widening inequality, the residual heritage of colonialism, questions of democracy, citizenship and human rights. On all these issues the museum needs to take a clear ethical position.” London Review of Books
Meet The Remarkable Darren Walker
“To me the question is, How do we as the Ford Foundation, and I as its president, leverage the foundation’s and my networks, and on behalf of whom?” – The New York Times
Toolkit tackles ‘class crisis’ in arts sector
“Arts organisations should treat social class in the same way as identity markers protected by equality legislation in order to combat a ‘class crisis’ in the sector, a new guide argues. … It recommends employers measure and report on socio-economic diversity, stop offering unpaid and unadvertised job opportunities and create a more inclusive work culture and recruitment process to diversify their staff. The toolkit also offers practical advice on how to achieve sustainable institutional change, based on research involving 110 arts organisations.” – Arts Professional
Chineke!: Changing the record
“In its four years of existence, Chineke!, Europe’s first majority black and minority ethnic (BME) orchestra has transformed the attitude of the classical music business towards race, diversity and inclusion. ‘Before Chineke! there was nothing like it,’ says founder Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE. ‘Today, people of colour are acceptable in the industry, whereas the establishment used to say classical music is not for people like you.'” – Classical Music (UK)
Employers who recruit graduates for entry-level jobs are preventing diversity in the arts – report
“Employers in the creative industries risk alienating diverse young talent by ‘needlessly asking for degrees’ for entry-level jobs, according to a new report. This was identified as one of a number of barriers that are ‘excluding young people from [Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic] and lower-income backgrounds’ from working in the arts that were revealed in the study.” – The Stage
A Thorough Consideration Of Access To The Arts In The Internet Age
The challenges vary between access to the consumption of art and access to making and platforming it. In this multimedia age, these have to an extent blurred. However, a hierarchy remains. – Ken Taylor
Look At Art. Be A Critic. Get Paid
The initiative is a socially engaged art project that pays people who wouldn’t otherwise visit art museums to visit one as guest critics of the art and the institution, flipping the script between the institution and its public, the educator and the educated, the paying and the paid. – Hyperallergic
Want To Make Orchestral Auditions More Inclusive And Less Discriminatory? This Is How
Writing in the house magazine of Local 802 (the New York City chapter) of the American Federation of Musicians, Shea Scruggs and Weston Sprott both suggest ways to change the mindset around orchestral auditions and offer specific steps to take, such as keeping screens for all audition rounds (including chamber music and ensemble) and eliminating trial weeks. – Allegro (AFM Local 802)
The Mainstream U.S. Theater World Is Finally Starting To Diversify — Do We Still Need Culturally Specific Theater Companies?
In a word, yes. As one such producer puts it, “There’s layers of conversation of what diversity really means in a cultural arts landscape. … We have the opportunity to go deep within multiple layers and not just check off the box.” Reporter Makeda Easter talks to members of African-American, Asian-American, and Latinx companies about that difference. – Los Angeles Times
If progressives want change, we must play the game differently. Here are five things we must do.
Vu Le: “I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences between conservatives and progressives (see “10 things progressive funders must learn from conservative ones or we are all screwed“). Last week I brought up how progressives come to a knife fight with a spreadsheet. Maybe a logic model. But the major difference may be that conservatives are united under a single set of philosophies and strategies (their “Theory of Change,” if you will) and spend most of their time and resources implementing it, while progressives waste endless years creating and debating thousands of separate theories and strategies that are then poorly coordinated and put into action. Let’s learn from our conservative colleagues, then. Let’s create and finalize the Progressive Theory of Change, the mother of all Theories of Change, the Theory of Change that will guide all of us in the sector.” – Nonprofit AF
Do Arts Philanthropists Make The Gentrification Problem Worse?
“Remaining residents, particularly those in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods like San Francisco’s Mission District, don’t see a huge distinction between a well-intentioned arts funder and a slick developer with blueprints for luxury condos. … But does arts-based development really push out long-term residents? The research is inconclusive at best.” – Inside Philanthropy