ARTSblog

For many years, the State Department has viewed cultural exchanges as an important tool for sharing America’s values, ideas, and creativity with the world.  Programs such as Rhythm Road: American Music Abroad have helped audiences abroad gain an understanding of our society and presented our country in a positive light.  On Monday, December 14, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted the importance of the arts and artists in her remarks at Georgetown University on the Human Rights Agenda for the 21st Century.  During a question and answer session, Secretary of State Clinton was asked about the importance of the arts and artists in helping to promote human rights.  In her reply, Clinton stated:

“I remember some years ago seeing a play about women in Bosnia during the conflict there. It was so gripping. I still see the faces of those women who were pulled from their homes, separated from their husbands, often raped and left just as garbage on the side of the road. So I think that artists both individually and through their works can illustrate better than any speech I can give or any government policy we can promulgate that the spirit that lives within each of us, the right to think and dream and expand our boundaries, is not confined, no matter how hard they try, by any regime anywhere in the world. There is no way that you can deprive people from feeling those stirrings inside their soul. And artists can give voice to that. They can give shape and movement to it. And it is so important in places where people feel forgotten and marginalized and depressed and hopeless to have that glimmer that there is a better future, that there is a better way that they just have to hold onto.”

Clinton also noted that she would be trying to increase the number of these types of artistic exchanges.  To read her remarks in their entirety, please click here.

On Sunday, December 6, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama hosted Kennedy Center Honors recipients Dave Brubeck, Bruce Springsteen, Mel Brooks, Robert De Niro, and Grace Bumbry at a White House celebration prior to the awards show at the Kennedy Center.  President Obama described how at age 10 seeing his first jazz concert starring Brubeck had made him a life-long jazz fan, saying, “The world that he opened up for a 10-year-old boy was spectacular.” 

Obama went on to describe the importance of the arts and artists such as these in America:

“These performers are indeed the best. They are also living reminders of a single truth – and I’m going to steal a line from Michelle here – the arts are not somehow apart from our national life, the arts are the heart of our national life.”

To read more about this story and the Kennedy Center Honors recipients, click here.

Since it feels like Halloween just passed, it came as a bit of a shock to me that it’s already December. With Thanksgiving now also behind us, the celebration of the holiday giving season can begin. I know that I do not have to remind you that it is a great time to give last-minute donations to your favorite arts organizations, but it is also a perfect time to support your local artists.

As I have been catching up on my Google News searches from the past week, I noticed a number of articles in both major and local newspapers encouraging people to buy their holiday gifts at local craft fairs, galleries, and the like. While the members of the arts community might think of this as a no brainer, a simple letter to the editor from a local arts council chair or statewide arts organization director encouraging the rest of the public to do the same could do wonders for the individual artists who have scraped by through this interminable recession. Read the rest of this entry »

I am personally saddened to learn that Jeanne-Claude, collaborator and wife of Christo, died late Wednesday at age 74. It is widely-known Jeanne-Claude was the passionate proponent and advocate behind the artist team’s spectacular works of art in public space. My life’s work has been dedicated to publicly-sited work in the environment after witnessing Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s Running Fence at the age of 10. The image of the white billowing fence stretching across the California hills was an experience that impacted me profoundly – a parallel experience of the many audiences that have witnessed the duo’s great works. The arts field will not forget Jeanne-Claude’s tireless advocacy, so many art leaders diligently trod, in pursuit of grand-scale creative works, realized in unique spaces for moments in time.  May Jeanne-Claude’s next gate of transition billow in spectacular saffron.

photo credit: Liesel  Fenner

The NEA is inviting the public to watch a live webcast on Friday, November 20, 2009, about America’s artists and other cultural workers who are part of this country’s real economy.  Some of the topics the panelists will speak about include Artist Labor Markets, Artists and the Economic Recession, Artists in the Greater Economy, and a number of other important arts research and information topics.  For more information click here, and to watch this live webcast tomorrow from 9:00 am-4:00 pm, visit www.arts.gov.

Have you been invited to Rome to attend the Pope’s upcoming arts event?  The Catholic News Service reports in an effort to “renew friendship and dialogue between the church and artists and to spark new opportunities for collaboration,” Pope Benedict XVI will be meeting with artists from around the world November 21 inside the Sistine Chapel.  The guest list is comprised of 500 representatives from the visual and creative arts, architecture, literature, poetry, music and the performing arts.  At press conferences leading up to the event, Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums, said, “Over the last century,…artistic excellence and faith have separated and it’s the job of people of culture to try to mend the rift.”  Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, announced that next week’s meeting was to be the “first of many initiatives aimed at bridging the gap that has developed between spirituality and artistic expression.”  Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, First Lady Michelle Obama continued her show of support for arts and culture by honoring recipients of the Coming Up Taller Awards, given out each year by the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities. The Coming Up Taller Awards recognize and support outstanding community arts and humanities programs that celebrate the creativity of America’s young people, provide them learning opportunities and chances to contribute to their communities. Mrs. Obama recognized the importance of these programs in her remarks:

“Ultimately, each of your programs is using achievement in the arts as a bridge to achievement in life.  And you see all this every day, each and every one of you working so hard.  You see this in your students as they become more confident and more engaged and more willing to take risks and to take responsibility for their futures.  You see it when their academic performance improves, when you see improving attitudes and higher GPAs.  And you see young people who never saw themselves as college material, you see them getting those acceptance letters and you see them going on to pursue their degrees.  So we all know in this room the power of the arts to change young people’s lives.”

To read all of the First Lady’s remarks, click here.

Before every major sporting event, the mayors or governors of the cities/states taking part often wager local goods and/or services on the outcome of the game (or games). When Major League Baseball’s Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees made it to the World Series last week, Mayors Michael Nutter and Michael Bloomberg did not offer up the traditional items of Philly cheesesteaks or New York-style pizza. Instead, the pro-arts politicians offered up something humiliating with a side of the arts.

The losing team’s mayor will have to take part in a day of service in the winning team’s city, sporting their opponent’s jersey in the process. If the Phillies win, Mayor Bloomberg will assist in painting one of the city’s signature murals on the outside of a recreation center, and if the Yankees win, Mayor Nutter will help paint the interior of a public school.

As the TV show Glee has taught us, sports and the arts do not have to be two mutually exclusive activities, and as a fan of both, it was heartening to see the elected officials of two of our country’s largest cities offering up the arts (and volunteerism) in a bet over professional sports.

As for me, I can’t wait to see Mayor Bloomberg sporting the red and white stripes of the Phillies sometime soon…

For more information on the bet, visit the City of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program website.

 It has been inspirational to be in a room full of people who are so passionate about the arts that they’ve committed their weekends (when I prefer sleeping to doing) to learning about and discussing how they can do more for their organizations, their cities, and the policies that are shaping our future. As a side note, I have been to many other marketing conferences that were not arts focused and the energy wasn’t even a quarter of what it has been at NAMP. We definitely rocked it, but don’t laugh at me for saying that.
 
What has excited me most is the number of questions asked.  Most have been brilliantly answered and many have been left unanswered, but the questions raised and discussions started are what have made this conference for me.  I can’t wait to go back to Chicago with the new tools I’ve learned under my belt, but my anticipation lies mostly in posing these questions to my colleagues–oh the heated discussions we’ll have.
 
Thank you to the Joyce Foundation, American’s for the Arts, the incredibly fun city of Providence, and of course NAMP for allowing me this unique experience.  I’ll be returning to my organization energized and ready to really think.  Watch out Hyde Park Art Center…my enthusiasm might get annoying.

I am starting to ask myself some interesting questions as an artist at this conference. This conference is focused on how in this struggling economy can arts organizations take advantage of current marketing trends to engage their patrons in new ways that will allow their patrons to feel like they are more significant than just a source for money. Current arts organizations’ marketing trends are starting to suggest that they start to include the patron in more behind-the-scenes activities to bring more value to the patron’s experience. One of the ways to achieve this is to offer some kind of “meet the artist experience,” i.e. short videos of the artist in their studio, artist interviews,  special events where people meet the artist, etc. The general arts public seem to want to have more of an experience than just being thought of as a monetary donor.

Does that mean that the artist themselves is becoming a marketing tool? In the future, how much choice and privacy will the artist be able and expected to keep and still fulfill the organization’s requests? If as an artist you decide that your work is really about the work and not you as a person, how do you keep the artist as a person separate from the artist as her art and process? If you don’t have some separation will the artist start to take on people comments like they are talking about the artist personally? Read the rest of this entry »

Across the country, bankers painted, insurance agents rocked, and lawyers took to the stage to demonstrate their creativity and passion for the arts.  Take a look at what these organizations are doing, just a sample of the creative partnerships that have been popping up in the arts and business world.

In Nashville, businesses put together bands and performed in the First Annual Music City Corporate Band Challenge. Bankers, insurance salesmen, plumbers, and surgeons took part in this contest which demonstrated the musical talent of the city and promoted Nashville’s status as “Music City USA.” AllState Insurance Company’s The Good Hands Band, Myers Company’s Next of Kin, The Nashville Symphony Association’s Phil & the Harmonics, and Vanderbilt University’s Soul Incision were among the competitors in the Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville’s first annual Corporate Band Challenge (which, incidentally, was won by MTA’s band, “Transit’). Read the rest of this entry »

Five hundred miles northwest of nature’s scouring of the southern California landscape a planned burn is about to take place in the Black Rock desert of Nevada. At midnight August 31, the gates opened to hundreds of cars, RV’s and truckloads of people and arriving for the week-long Burning Man festival of art, self-expression, self-reliance, participation, and community.

Americans for the Arts featured Burning Man founder and director Larry Harvey at the 2007 Las Vegas Annual Convention. Harvey co-presented with artists Lady Bee, Louis Brill, and Leslie Pritchett discussing the interactive art of Black Rock City, the temporary experimental community of over 40,000 people that exists the week before Labor Day every year. Each year, participants bring art of all forms as well as materials to create more art during the week-long event. This year’s theme, Evolution, was posed to Burners, “What are we as human beings, where have we come from, and how may we adapt to meet an ever-changing world?”

What is Burning Man? According to their website, “Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’m writing this blog post immediately after reading Edward Clapp’s Open Letter to Young Arts Professionals, titled This is Our Emergency.  Edward is the editor and project director for 20UNDER40, “an anthology of critical discourse that aims to collect twenty essays about the future of the arts and arts education – each written by a young arts professional under the age of forty.”

While the 20UNDER40 project has received strong support and praise, there has also been an undercurrent of criticism (as Edward references in his letter).  However, what is more surprising – are the number of letters Edward has received from young arts professionals who have something to say and contribute – but do not feel they have the authority or courage to do so.  Is it possible that so many members of the Gen X and Gen Y generation are afraid to speak out?  What is it that we are worried about – Failure?  Criticism and judgment from our peers?  Losing our jobs?  Engaging in a debate?  Read the rest of this entry »

Arts teach many things – and one really important lesson of the arts is persistence and perseverance. I was thinking about this notion all week as a new TV show, Ruby and the Rockits premiered on ABC Family. The show is a family sitcom centered on the Gallagher family, two of whom were pop stars of the 80s (Patrick and David Cassidy).  Ruby, the daughter David never knew existed, suddenly comes into their lives at which point all the fun begins to unfold.

My friend Larry Reitzer is a writer on the show, so I’ve been following the show’s development for nearly a year, and  to celebrate the premiere of the show, my daughter hosted a big premiere party.  Later that week, having the inside track, we were lucky enough to attend a live taping of the show in Los Angeles, and were able to meet some of the cast and crew. Read the rest of this entry »

Peripatetic arts visionary Sabato “Simon” Rodia completed his artist-initiated private art project, Watts Towers, in 1954.  He moved away from his masterpiece and LA property that year,  and he died in 1965 purportedly without seeing his lifework again.

Mike Boehm’s Los Angeles Times artblog articulated the history, maintenance and conservation shortfalls of the City-owned Watts Towers in a recent post. The complaint is that the City doesn’t spend enough to take care of the 55 year-old work.  Truthfully, few cities, counties or states adequately fund public art collection maintenance or staff collection management to implement the multiple assessments, maintenance and conservation projects that are part of a mature civic collection.

When collecting and commissioning art in public spaces as building enhancements, governments rarely consider the specialized maintenance and continuing conservation needs of art in public spaces.  The results are predictable. All stuff, from buildings to computer systems, car fleets and carpets, need maintenance. Public art assets need specialized attention that can be anticipated and should be planned. Read the rest of this entry »