ARTSblog

Eureka!  I just found an application on the web that is so obvious – and so REVOLUTIONARY – I have to share it with you right away…

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

With the New Year approaching and my mood being reflective, I’ve been thinking about the challenges we will face in 2009.

How will we turn the economy around and strengthen the American spirit?  How will Illinois reclaim its political process and reshape its identity?  How will we support and protect the most vulnerable despite diminishing resources?  How will I lose 5 pounds when Sharon brings me chocolate cookies covered with chocolate-covered cherries?

To talk more about the challenges that the arts face – specifically, the impact of the downturn in the economy on the arts – I sat down with my fearless leader, Illinois Arts Alliance Executive Director Ra Joy.

Before I begin my interview with Ra, I’d like to share my take on Illinois’ unique economic and political reality.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

Podcast: Download (2.9MB)

Bob Lynch, President and CEO of Americans for the Arts, wishes a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year to all the people who have worked this year to create, enjoy, and support the arts in our country and around the globe.

Popularity: 1%

Is it true that business could fix the problems that social profit professionals haven’t? This guy thinks so. But is there any good argument for us?

http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/newsmakers/nwsmkr.jhtml?id=237200013

Popularity: 1%

I enjoyed Adam’s (first) post, ‘Arts as a Hub’ very much. As an arts educator with a new visual arts center in Harlem, we’re constantly thinking about how we can make ourselves a resource to the community that slowly and surely embeds itself into its fabric. It also goes along with Shane’s blog that postulates, ‘What Is Your Worth?’. These are hard questions for any organization to ask itself and I’m not sure whether it’s more challenging since we’re only five months in. Part of me actually thinks that it’s not any more difficult, just that the pool that we get our answers from are very different. It has much less to do with history and tradition, and much more to do with innovation and need. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

My name is Adam Thurman and I’m honored to be joining the ranks of Americans for the Arts bloggers.

As my way of getting the party started, my first post will look at what is often missing in the relationship between artists and their audience.

Hopefully it will help you see your work in the arts in a slightly different light . . . or maybe it will cause you to send me an email about how I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

Either one of those reactions is fine with me.

So let’s see which one it will be . . . right after this brief intro Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

Arne Duncan, Chicago Public Schools Superintendent, will be put forward by Obama as Secretary of Education – the head of the US Department of Education. The Washington Post summed him up like this: “In seven years as chief executive of the Chicago school system, Arne Duncan earned a reputation as a leader who pushed for strong measures to improve schools but also reached out to the teachers union and the community.” Meh. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

Performing arts organizations all across the country are seeing difficult times. From Broadway to Kansas City to Santa Cruz, times are tough and getting tougher. Many organizations will close and many more will cut programming and outreach. Staffs will get smaller and everyone will learn to do more with less. Will your organization make it? What impact would the closing of your organization have on your community? Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

Interview by Christopher Jagers (CEO, SlideRoom) with Jay Sullivan, Professor of Sculpture and Chair, Division of Art: Meadows School of the Arts. This is the second of two parts: 1)In the Public Eye and 2) Behind the scenes.

Part II, Behind the Scenes

CJ: In regard to education, is there much communication between Public Art agencies and the Universities?

There is not much. If there is, it usually comes from the University making an initiative. Sometimes we propose to do something.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

“If they don’t want to come to the ballpark,” Yogi Berra observed, “nobody is gonna stop them.”

Arts marketing folk are optimists by nature. So while we may occasionally take solace in that observation, it doesn’t take us long to crawl out of that hole, brush the pity from our clothes and ask, “So what do we do now?”

It’s once again one of those times.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

Interview by Christopher Jagers (CEO, SlideRoom) with Jay Sullivan, Professor of Sculpture and Chair, Division of Art: Meadows School of the Arts. This interview will be posted in two parts: 1) In the Public Eye and 2) Behind the scenes.

Part I: In the Public Eye

CJ: When I first asked you to do an interview with you about “Public Art,” what did you immediately begin  thinking about?

JS: I first thought of Foucault’s idea of Heterotopias: spaces within a space, where a certain kind of special activity can take place, both within and also slightly outside of society. Classic examples of this are hospitals, insane asylums or graveyards. These are places where society can have safe conversations about things that they don’t want to deal with all the time or everywhere. Ironically, when I think about Public Art, I think about the Percent for Art Project and this notion that we seek to beautify train stations, airports and other things. There is a heterotopic feel about that.  On one hand, it is defining certain structures (usually municipal) as being public in a way that other spaces (like major street intersections) are not.  For instance, if I put a big sculpture at a major street intersection, I could get into more trouble (aesthetic) than if I put the same piece of sculpture in a train station—the spaces are “public” in different ways and we expect different things to happen there. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

Podcast: Download (4.3MB)

Bob Lynch, President and CEO of Americans for the Arts, discusses how recognition of arts supporters provides key opportunities for championing the value of the arts.  He focuses on the recipients of the 2008 National Arts Awards and BCA 10 awards this past October during National Arts and Humanities Month.

Popularity: 1%

Hello! I’m blogging from the perspective of higher education. I’m the director of an arts engagement program at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. ArtsLehigh’s mission is to facilitate and deepen engagement in the arts at Lehigh University among students, faculty, staff and the local community. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

I’m not sure if you’ve all read the Obama Arts Platform – but it’s linked here for easy access. There’s one strong piece in it, right near the top ‘Expand Public/Private Partnerships Between Schools and Arts Organizations:” – that means to me, that higher education needs to consider more about how it shares its expertise in, support of, and commitment to the ARTS – not only for those within the Ivory Tower, but in our surrounding communities. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

By Merryl Goldberg, Ed.D., Professor of Visual and Performing Arts, California State University San Marcos

The selfish or shallow person might be a great musician technically, but he’ll be so involved with himself that his playing will lack warmth, intensity, beauty and he won’t be deeply felt by the listener. He’ll arbitrarily play the first solo every time. If he’s backing a singer he’ll play anything he wants or he’ll be practicing scales. A person that lets the other guy take the first solo, and when he plays behind a soloist plays only to enhance him, that’s the guy that will care about his wife and children and will be courteous in his everyday contact with people.
- Art Pepper, from Straight Life excerpted in Gottlieb (1996), p. 278.

The arts may have lost their way with regard to a purposefulness in today’s education, perhaps even in society, but it is not too late to revolutionize the wheel. I started this piece with a quote from Art Pepper, a great jazz saxophonist. Arts education is often framed as if it is outside the realm of life, as if it is simply a subject to be studied (or not studied). Pepper, in musing about musicians and their attitudes, stumbles upon key parallels to the role that arts can, and over the years have played, in education. Namely, what one learns in order to play music well, or for that matter, what one learns in practicing any art form, can transfer to what one does in everyday life. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2%