A short post on the Artful Manager that addresses some big questions…
When a for-profit enterprise wants to build its capacity to do something (manufacture a product, launch a new service, provide a new option for their clients, or the like), they face a classic business question — should we rent the capacity, buy the capacity, [...]
Diane Ravitch suggests three simple ways to provide the kind of education a parent wants for their child. Seems so simple. Maybe it’s time to simplify our approach to education reform…
Well, I certainly agree with you that all kids should have the quality of education now available only for students in the best schools. [...]
What defines “fair use” in dance? Is it permissible to “borrow” choreographic devices if the movement is reinvented? If the dancers can’t execute the movement in the way it was originally intended, is there something interesting about that failure? If someone “stylistically” references a choreographer, should it be acknowledged as a derivative work, or is [...]
John McCann proposes consolidating the major arts service organizations for efficiency and a single voice. The efficiency part seems reasonable. The single “influential” voice part seems a bit at odds with the healthy growing trend of hearing and valuing the diversity of American voices and communities. Don’t we already have one very effective and influential [...]
“We believe strongly that the arts aren’t somehow an ‘extra’ part of our national life, but instead we feel that the arts are at the heart of our national life. It is through our music, our literature, our art, drama and dance that we tell the story of our past and we express our hopes [...]
Some may see other value in international exchange in the arts, but here is Kaiser’s take:
While other countries have been active exporters of their arts — China and Great Britain come to mind — the United States government has been reticent to invest in this form of diplomacy.
This was not always the case: both American [...]
The Kennendy Center promoting its arts management program is a bit of a rehash, but the comments that follow Kaiser’s editorial are an eye-opener if you’re feeling isolated or out-of-touch with what the folks in the street are thinking.
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Here’s a wonderful essay….
When it comes to ambulatory life-forms, the developmental timeline is shorter, but the same principle pertains: it is a good idea for human beings to pay attention to systems and solutions that have evolved over time in natural contexts, because something very like them may work just as well in cultural contexts.
That [...]
In Act One of their administration – the well-lit, heavily reviewed and widely watched opening months – Barrack and Michelle Obama have positioned themselves actively in the arts. For the country, and especially for those of us interested in culture, it has been remarkable to see how quickly and how seriously the President and the [...]
Karen Brooks Hopkins, BAM president, channels Aretha and chats with Rocco Landesman…and makes an articulate case for a needed change in how the arts are percieved.
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Jordan Levin in the Miami Herald
Two South Florida dance companies closed recently. West Palm Beach’s lively, lovely Ballet Florida filed for bankruptcy two weeks ago, and Miami-Dade’s gallant Ballet Gamonet, after months of financial struggle, suspended performances in March and seems unlikely to return.
Meanwhile, American Idol host Ryan Seacrest will get $45 million to stay [...]
Albert Ruesga on Courtesy White Telephone Blog
Those of us in the business of grantmaking often get so caught up in the mechanics of our work that we lose sight of the transformed lives and communities we strive to bring into being. We forget the good we set out to accomplish. This is a great shame. [...]
Ben Donenberg in the LA Times
Irecently sent an article to a local philanthropic leader about the importance of helping arts organizations during the recession. I thought he might draw inspiration from it, but that was too optimistic.
“I don’t need inspiration,” he quickly responded. “We aren’t supporting the arts; we’re supporting essentials.”
I know [...]
The problem with arts education is not confined to the five boroughs. As reported in the Times earlier this month, a federal study has found that “music and art instruction in American eighth-grade classrooms has remained flat over the last decade.” The feds surveyed 7,900 eighth-graders at 260 public and private schools throughout the country [...]
Michael Kaiser on Huffington Post
American arts organizations are threatened, but it is not the economy that poses the largest threat.
It is the decision-making of boards and staffs in response to economic challenges that has much greater long-term implications for the health of our arts ecology.
While arts funding only fell 6% last year, many arts organizations [...]
John Killacky, artist and arts funder, not only knows that we need the arts now more than ever, but gives us ten survival strategies for arts organizations and one for audience members — and reminds us that all of us are audience members.
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Thoughtful comments of Andrew Taylor of The Artful Manager and the Bolz Center for Arts Administration on the topic of mergers and one funder’s innovative approach.
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If you don’t regularly read White Courtesy Telephone, you might want to add it to your bloglist.
I understand, however, that behind each of these exhortations lies a beating heart. Behind the plea to give more to the poor is the uncomfortably reality of deep poverty in our own country. And set against [...]
A variety of voices from the Council of Foundations Conference and beyond are discussing ideas raised at the conference.
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Wisdom of Jeff Chang in The Nation…
…Artists played a largely unheralded role in Obama’s victory. But they had been tugging the national unconscious forward for decades, from the multiculturalist avant-gardes of the 1970s and ’80s to the hip-hop rebels of the ’90s and 2000s, plying a fearless, sometimes even unruly kind of polyculturalism. By the [...]
