ARTSblog

On March 31, 2009, Arts Advocacy Day, Americans for the Arts gathered a panel of acclaimed artists and experts to call on Congress for continuing and additional support and funding for the arts and arts education in America.  This hearing, entitled “The Arts = Jobs,” focused on congressional support of strong public policies for the arts, appropriating increased public funding for the arts and supporting arts workers.  Josh Groban and Wynton Marsalis were among the artists who testified before a Congressional Committee to champion the benefits of arts and arts education.

Josh Groban – GRAMMY ® nominated singer-songwriter

Wynton Marsalis, World-renowned trumpeter,
composer and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center

Play Your Part!
Add your voice to the growing list of arts advocates across the country by joining the Arts Action Fund.

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I recently volunteered to be one of the administrators for a cause on Facebook called Keep The Arts In Public Schools. Its incredibly rewarding.

In doing that, I believe I’ve been mistaken for someone I’m not.

I’ll clarify. I am a father.

photo Michael Hevesy

I am an entrepreneur. I am a co-founder of this site: Breakthrough Parenting Online

I am a writer. My Blog

And, I am a volunteer. This post was written voluntarily.

I have been recently mistaken for an activist and I am choosing this space to speak to that.

While activism is a perfectly admirable pursuit for some, I’ve found for me that I cannot pursue the approaches I associate with activism and remain a healthy contributor.

When I considered myself an activist (first Iraq war) I immediately realized the toll I was taking on my body and my relationships. They were suboptimal, and I was not achieving the results I sought in the world. Read the rest of this entry »

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As I approach my second anniversary at Americans for the Arts later this summer, I can’t help but think about the way things have changed for the arts and cultural community since my arrival in Washington, DC, in August 2007.

In addition to my new role as editor of Arts Watch, I also produce a weekly newsletter for the members of the State Arts Action Network and state arts agencies which focuses on arts issues at the state and local level. However, since the economic downturn began last fall, I suddenly found myself getting to know more than I cared to about state, city, and county budgets.

While many experts feel that we may be close to bottoming out for this recession, arts groups must be cautious and realize that it could take another three to five years before all of our funding sources become stable again. As I recently read, we can’t think of the future based on the past and hope that the funding will return to the “normal” levels of 2007, because the new “normal” is going to have a much lower bar. Read the rest of this entry »

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Why Americans for the Arts, a respected organization in the Humanities and Public Policy community is willing to let me speak my mind like this, I’ll never know. But, I can say, the minute I started taking risks with this topic, things started to happen.

A few months back I joined Keep the Arts In Public Schools, a cause on Facebook. I got pretty excited about maxing out that tool and came up with some ways to organize people around it. Its been extraordinary fun and I’ll touch on that in more depth as we go. Being invited to blog here is an enormous honor. I’m excited to document what happens when some passionate people push the edges of technology and the edges of caring to their limits. I’m uncontrollably enthusiastic about that.

Here’s what I see next. I’d like there to be no question about balanced education. The ancient Greeks lived in mud huts and perfected fine arts with the best of ancient civilizations. They also formalized much of the math our culture clings to today and left behind some of the most amazing architecture in history (a perfect blend of art and science). If they could get it, surely we can.

I’m not a total nutjob. To me, the purpose of understanding and affording arts education makes financial sense. When young people receive a balanced education, its been shown they are more productive, tend toward happiness and are creative problem-solvers. Strong civilizations are built on those foundations.

Dig around the site this post is on and you’ll bump into serious scientific research to back that up.

I’ll be using this space to showcase efforts that are really helping. I’ll introduce ways we are having impact in our communities. I’ll ask for feedback, ideas, help, guidance. I’ll collaborate with you here. And, I’ll learn as we go. With your help.

Looking back on the opening quote from the first part of this blog post, I remember the first time I saw, Stop Making Sense, the live concert movie featuring Talking Heads (and Tom Tom Club). I was with my Uncle Jay and best friend Tim at the (then) Plaza Theater in Petaluma, California.

When people still smoked and drank in movies. (Woah. Some things are way better now.) Anyway, I remember when it clicked. When the phrase oddly made ironic sense. There is such a freedom when we surrender and Stop Making Sense.

As with all aspects of our society, this year is big. We have a social climate demanding change. Our institutions have reached the completion of their missions and are asking to be redesigned using intuition and logic. Arts and Sciences together are the disciplines that allow our youth to constructively co-create a new version of the broken mess we’re rumbling around in now.

Here’s to getting there together.

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“Well, how did I get here?” David Byrne, Talking Heads, from the song, Once In A Lifetime

Looking back, I’m actually not sure. I know that I could draw some obvious conclusions, and that would make for a short introduction, but I’m tired of off-the-cuff. That’s not what got me here.

What got me here, on this page, was throwing away any resistance to taking a stand for the things that are important to me.

Let’s start, for the sake of getting to know one another, in that moment between youth and adulthood. Often known as college. Because that’s where education kicks in. Where individuation happens and the proving ground of every grade that came before shows up as internships on the resume, or the ability to connect with teachers and students and chance relationships with room mates who launch Napster, and… it’s where I got clear on the connection for me between Humanities and Science.

I graduated from High School with a reasonable GPA and a demonstrated interest in chemical and physical sciences. I don’t know if it’s because I liked the way atoms looked in my imagination, miniscule and unpredictable galaxies colliding at millions of nanometers apart. I could literally see them in my mind’s eye and calculate spins. Balancing chemical equations became second nature so maybe it was a deep appreciation for the zen-like balance that a well-done chemistry experiment shows up as on paper when it’s all said and done.

That stuff is pretty cool. Especially when you have a good teacher. And, in 1989, when Silicon Valley was not quite established, I attended San Jose State University where Next Computers (a company run by Steve Jobs now of Apple & Pixar) was plying their wares on the quad next to Amex and Spring Break in Cabo Bus Tours.

My SJSU professors (I don’t know if I ever actually saw them) weren’t anywhere near as committed to my success as I’d grown used to in High School. Labs were fun, but there no room for error, and my best learning method was trial and error.

So, alongside losing two grandfathers and being thrown out of the dorms for excessive and noisy creativity, I packed up my 0.08 GPA (not a typo) and moved ‘home’. (Never do this if you can help it. It’s against nature.) Read the rest of this entry »

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 3:48 — 3.5MB)

Bob Lynch, President and CEO of Americans for the Arts, discusses the  Forum for New Ideas which will take place on May 5th in New York City. The Forum is organized by the Business Committee for the Arts and is designed to bring about ideas that transcend traditional boundaries when thinking about the connection between business and the arts. This Forum will address core issues that businesses are facing today and how the arts can act as a channel of improvement for these areas by increasing employee morale and engagement. Speakers include Randy Cohen, Vice President of Local Arts Advancement, Americans for the Arts; Jonathan Spector, CEO, Conference Board; and Krista Pilot, Senior Vice President, Dan Klores Communications.

Register for the Forum.

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I’ve heard that your average museum patron looks at each painting for less than 2 seconds, a fact I cannot verify but which has held up anectdotally in nearly every gallery I’ve frequented…until recently.  I found the Arts Experience Initiative.

The research brief is actually quite entertaining as it weaves through history, painting a picture of engaged patrons that looks more like a sports bar than an arts event: “People came to the…gallery, and they talked to each other–before the show began, while the show was on and after the show ended. This was because the function of interpretation was understood as a cultural duty and a cultural right.”  Every person on a Pittsburgh City bus feels entitled to an opinion about the Steelers; when did the everyman lose interpretive authority w/ art?

As with all things theoretical, this whole idea didn’t sink in until I found myself smack in the middle of a practical application: an exhibit of egg pictures, to be precise.  For six weeks, I slipped down to a Southside gallery every Saturday morning for two hours w/ 8 other people, charged with the task of writing fiction in response the photographs.  The idea was, if you’re comfortable in one artistic genre (writing), then you’ll feel authorized to interpret another (photography) using the first. Read the rest of this entry »

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Chicago’s Emerging Leaders Network officially (re)launched yesterday.  Roughly 50 self-defined emerging leaders were in attendance to share resources, anecdotes, and opportunities and to network with other creative professionals.

Discussions were had, connections were made, and freakishly orange cheese puffs were eaten.  It was awesome. Read the rest of this entry »

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I woke up this morning all ready to come in and write about the recent NY Times article “Emancipated from the Shadows” (published April 17, 2009) — as follow-up to my recent post about St. Augustine’s Church, the slave galleries, and City of Memory’s model to share story about place through technology. [The article is a short read and offers some great background (and a slide show), plus we find out the church will open the restored galleries for tour at the end of this month]. However, sitting down at my computer and looking through my email, I found a great posting from ArtsJournal on place-based public art in St. Helens (England), which I didn’t want to lose!

A group of 14 miners – former workers at the Sutton Manor Colliery in St. Helens – working together with The Art Fund and the Arts Council of England, partnered with artist Jaume Plensa (well-known Spanish artist and sculptor — his works inlcude Crown Fountain in Millenium Park in Chicago, and Blake in Gateshead atop the Baltic Center for Contemporary Arts in Gateshead, among many others) to create the new work, entitled Dream. Part of Channel 4′s Big Art Project Initiative,  Dream is a 20-meter (or metre in this case?) high sculpture made from 90 panels of pre-cast concrete, precisely lowered into place (the last piece was added on April 21).

Gary Conley, a former miner says, “There’ll never be another mine here and we didn’t want the mine to die as a whole.”

Plensa says, ” When I first came to the site I immediately thought something coming out of the earth was needed. I decided to do a head of a nine-year-old girl which is representing this idea of the future. It’s unique.”  Check  out the brief article (and accompanying video) on BBC News UK. Read the rest of this entry »

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An ode to an avoidable (but oddly frequent) future for many arts organizations…

You and your friends are going to start an arts organization.

You will probably do it in response to something, like that crappy big arts organization down the street.  Their works sucks.  Yours will be so much better.

Together you will form a company.  You’ll put together a mission statement.  It will include words like “enlighten, challenge and inspire.”  The mission statement is a lie.  The real mission statement of the company is: To showcase us.

This is your fatal flaw.  It will be the thing that causes much pain later if you don’t realize this.

You’ll start to produce art.  This will be an incredibly good experience.  All the positive emotion will lead to some strange reactions within the group.

Company members will begin to date, sleep together and even make marriage plans with eachother.

This will be highly relevant later on. Read the rest of this entry »

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Every day it seems like another corporation is planning layoffs.  The employees who keep their jobs are often stressed, overworked and their morale is low.  Businesses are left wondering how they can get out of this recession when they are struggling to do more with fewer resources.  This is where the arts can play an important role by improving employee morale, encouraging creativity and, as a result, improving the bottom line.

U.S. employers rate creativity/innovation as one of the top five skills that will increase in importance in the next five years and they rank creativity/innovation as one of the top ten challenges they will face in the next ten years according to research from the Conference Board. CEOs view participation in the arts as one of the top indicators of employee creativity and innovation.  Whether it’s a performance in the workplace, an opportunity to volunteer at an arts festival, company tickets to a symphony or an employee art exhibition, the arts can stimulate innovation and creativity. Read the rest of this entry »

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We wanted to take the time at Americans for the Arts to wish every one a Happy Earth Day. While so many aspects of our “American way of life” seem to be changing in light of our national economy, the issue of sustainability becomes more relevant than ever.

How do each of us work to ensure the future of our communities and our world? What day-to-day strides are we making in ensuring the stability and sustainability of our arts communities and our arts organizations?

We encourage you to take some time today and think about these questions. Decide if you are doing everything you can to be a good steward of the things you value. In some small way, you may be able to change a part of your home or work life to make every day Earth Day.

Share with us how you’re promoting sustainability in your organization and community.

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What word (or words) best NAME the community that we represent?

Consider the breadth of organizations, missions and functions of our sector: theatre companies, music organizations, dance groups, art museums, galleries, zoos, science centers, natural history museums, botanical gardens, arts presenters, libraries, cultural heritage organizations, independent & art film presenters, poetry groups & so much more!

We are obviously bigger than an “Arts Community.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Americans for the Arts is proud to be the beneficiary of proceeds from an online auction of photographs by more than 50 masters and emerging talents in contemporary photography at iGavel. The “America” auction was organized by Fast Ashley’s Studios in Brooklyn, New York and its fine art printing service IC LAB and includes original prints that range from landscape, portrait, and documentary to fashion and still life. The diverse collection of participating photographers includes Jock Sturges, Les Krims, Ben Watts, David Armstrong, Cass Bird, Jason Nocito, and Joseph Szabo.

All proceeds from the “America” online auction will be generously donated by Fast Ashley’s Studios and IC LAB to Americans for the Arts. You can view the original prints at iGavel without registering, but you must click the “New Users” link if you wish to place a bid for an item. Read the rest of this entry »

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The middle of each month signals the moment when Animating Democracy begins assembling items for the Animating Democracy E-News, an e-monthly featuring news from Animating Democracy and Americans for the Arts, and from the field. There’s always great material submitted from the field — and pulled in from other sources — it’s a smorgasbord of news, events, grantmaking opportunities, new publications, and more — so much so that I often can’t include everything I’d like to — like this article from Duke Today (published online, February 18, 2009).

Detailing the last of 14 murals in a documentary public art project called Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life, the article explains the focus of the mural— “to help build a sense of community  between the hundreds of people who wanted to contribute to the Duke-Durham relationship.” The mural’s central feature is Pauli Murray, a prominent civil and women’s right activist from Durham drawn, painted, and pieced together by folks from Durham and Duke during social events beginning in the fall of 2007, and features quotes about Murray from local residents, historians, and her family. Read the rest of this entry »

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