Researchers, like Linda Babock, have found that men and women are indeed often different when it comes to opening negotiations. The American Association of University Women released a study in April 2007 shows that the pay gap for women starts at around 80% out of college but widens to 69% after ten years. On Monday July 30, the Washington Post/MSNBC profiled new study, published by the Kennedy School of Government, Â that found that men and women get very different responses when they initiate negotiations.
“It is not that women always act one way and men act another way; it tends to be moderated by situational factors,” Bowles said. “The point of this paper is: Yes, there is an economic rationale to negotiate, but you have to weigh that against social risks of negotiating. What we show is those risks are higher for women than for men.”
Given that the workforce of our arts & cultural sector is predominantly female and we work with an abudance of scare resources, are we perhaps more conditioned not to ask for more? Or, do arts professionals view negotiation (in all its forms and manifestations) differently? Or maybe by placing the arts at the core of our work, we approach the construction of “value” quite differently?
Care to share some negotiating tips for the common good?
Tagged with: LeadershipVolunteerism
July 31st, 2007 at 01:46pm
Rebecca Borden
Direct arts coverage in newspapers is often seen as sparse but I always like to look for where arts issues seep in unexpectedly in articles in the business section or front page. On July 29, in The Washington Post’s Opinion Page, art is at the center of an editorial about whether three statues of Former Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, author of the 1857 Dred Scott decision declaring that blacks had no rights, should be removed from public land in Maryland. The Post says no and a reason they cite references why public art or memorials are important in the first place: “Memorials are meant to cause reflection and not always celebration or even respect. The Taney statues should remain but be supplemented with signs explaining the significance of Taney’s contributions to American law, warts and all.” The Post is pointing out the power of art as a teaching tool.
The power of art is increasingly understood internationally. A China Daily article this week references improving China’s “soft power” through increased cultural exports. This is exactly what I saw happening last month when I visited Shanghai and Beijing. In my podcast this month, Artcast II, I point out that the main reason I was in China was to speak at a conference on building audiences and marketing the arts. The article quotes senior Chinese government officials calling for “a clear national cultural development strategy” and saying “some forms of cultural development have not been fulfilled and lack strong government support.” Recently China has established 15 cultural centers outside the country. More cultural investment, supporting cultural exchange, understanding the “soft power’ of the arts. In America the reduced investment in international arts exchange has been a severe mistake for which we are now paying. Our government and all of us might need to pay attention.
And apparently it is now okay to admit, and I assume, make mistakes. Thursday’s New York Times talks about the new trend among foundations to admit and examine failures. Actually I see this as very healthy, in both the recognition that not every foundation investment or every program that gets the money can or will be a complete success, and secondly that we can learn something from the effort. “Foundations are supposed to take risks,” says Paul Brest president and CEO of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. He is right and I would say it is equally healthy for arts organizations and arts enabling organizations to understand this for themselves, for the projects that they produce and for the programs that they support.
Finally in Sunday’s New York Times a great article explores a potential problem in the art museum community. Twenty-four of the two hundred members of the Art Museum Directors Association are looking for new directors. All twenty-four are highly significant institutions. On the other hand the vacancies are only about 12 percent of the whole and so it is not at a disaster level yet, although it certainly bears watching. My observation of the arts industry as a whole is that this need for new leaders is an industry-wide issue. And I assume it is going to get worse as more leaders approach retirement. I am pleased that at Americans for the Arts several years ago, we began our Emerging Leaders Program to help identify and nurture young or new leaders. I was equally pleased to see that the young arts administrators who sought out the program were not only leaders from arts-enabling organizations like arts commissions, united arts funds, and arts and business councils but professionals from dance, theater, music, the visual arts, and more. I am excited about the passion and the ability of the young leaders I have met through this Emerging Leaders Program and if the New York Times is right it is an area that all arts organizations need to develop more thoroughly and perhaps a bit more quickly.
- Bob Lynch, President and CEO, Americans for the Arts
Tagged with: President-and-CEO
July 30th, 2007 at 09:27am
Chad Bauman
The National Arts and Humanities Month website is fresh with new content in anticipation of October’s activities. One of the new features is the National Arts and Humanities Month Events Map. The Wayfaring website hosts user-generated Google maps that track everything from the best places to go ice fishing to art district walking tours.
Americans for the Arts is encouraging you to share your NAHM events by using the map and create your own Waypoints. After the jump is a short tutorial to get you started.
(more…)
Tagged with: Events
July 25th, 2007 at 09:39am
Liz Bartolomeo
Uploaded to this blog post, you will find an audio podcast of Dave Hickey’s speech from the 2007 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention. Dave Hickey was the 2007 Public Art Innovator.
MacArthur “Genius” award-winner Dave Hickey is the author of Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy. Hickey has served as owner-director of A Clean Well-Lighted Place Gallery in Austin, Tx; as Director of the Reese Palley Gallery in New York City; as Executive Editor of Art in America magazine; and as Contributing Editor to The Village Voice. He has written for most major American cultural publications, including Rolling Stone, Art News, ArtForum, Interview, Harper’s Magazine, Vanity Fair, Nest, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. Reviewer Lawrence Weschler describes Hickey’s writing: “The generosity of the man’s verve–the suppleness of its profusions–can get to be downright ravishing. On top of which, the guy’s really funny.”
Audio and video files from previous events, as well as Americans for the Arts’ monthly podcast, can be accessed from our website. To listen to this podcast, please click on the play button below.
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Tagged with: EventsPodcastPublic-Art
July 24th, 2007 at 09:44am
Chad Bauman
Find me a sofa without a picture hanging above it. It might not be original, fine art bought in a white-walled gallery. Most of us choose to hang a framed print of people kissing in Paris, or a reproduction of an Impressionist master picked up as a museum souvenir, or a poster of beer bottles from around the world held in place by thumb tacks. Whatever the medium, whatever the image, we all put something on that blank stretch of wall that runs between the furniture and the ceiling. What unites all of the different things we put there is that we choose them; we want to hang them there. “I think this one should go above the couch, we say.
Ask a person why they chose to hang a particular thing in their living room, and they’ll give you an answer that doesn’t take a masters degree in art history. They like the way it makes them feel. It complements the colors in the room. It’s interesting to look at. It matches the mood of the room. It’s happy.
In other words, without consciousness or recognition, we acknowledge that art has a role in our everyday lives.
Now here’s the question: how can we take this collective assumption, that art belongs in our homes, and use it to redefine how we make the case for the arts? I am by no means suggesting that arts professionals should walk into funders’ offices, and demand operating support because there’s a picture on the wall. What I am suggesting is that we as a culture broadly accept art plays an integral part in our lives. So why do we find it so difficult to translate that into case-making?
A recent Monograph,* based on a research study that was an outcome of the 2006 National Arts Policy Roundtable, asks corporations with a steady history of funding the arts why they think corporate support for the arts is declining. For many of the respondents, it came back to the perception that the arts are not relevant to a company’s business, their goals, their employees, or the communities in which they operate.
But we know that’s not true. The arts are just as relevant to communities, and therefore businesses in those communities, as paintings are to living room walls. Without them, we have a blank spot.
*The April 2007 Monograph, “The Quality and Nature of Corporate Support for the Arts’ A Pilot Study,” is one in a series of in-depth issue papers published by Americans for the Arts throughout the year. Monograph is a benefit of Americans for the Arts professional membership at the Standard level and above, and is also available for purchase in our Online Store.
Tagged with: BusinessFundraisingMembership
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:18am
Katherine Copeland
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