Arts in America webisodes

Ovation TV launches webisode series Arts in America

Their conversation touched on a lot of really interesting issues, including: the value of creativity, how we pay for the arts, and what leaders might do to help the arts. As a citizen, and an advocate for the arts, I question our government's spending priorities. We're spending billions and billions to save companies too large to fail, and not enough on smaller bailouts - including arts bailouts - that would reap larger and more widespread economic benefits. Michael Kaiser, arts organization guru and current President of the Kennedy Center wrote in the Washington Post that "the arts in the United States provide 5.7 million jobs and account for $166 billion in economic activity annually." According to the GM website, that company employs just 252,000 - and that's globally - not just in the United States. Why are we not spending more to save arts institutions? Given the many compelling priorities facing the administration such as the economy and Healthcare reform, and the competition for funding, I think public discussion about the arts, arts education and America's cultural system is critical.

Michael Kaiser advocates for a Federal Arts Policy:

For example, grants for arts education are given by several agencies yet there is no effort to coordinate the educational programming of the arts organizations receiving federal funds. This cannot yield the most effective or efficient results.

There is also no organized process for sharing what has been learned so that every arts organization must learn from its own mistakes. As a result, the federal government has been funding arts education in our public schools for decades and we still have not implemented a coherent approach to using the arts to benefit our children.

The problem is not that federal funding for the arts is unwarranted; the problem is that we need to be assured, as citizens, that we are getting the most value for our money. What is needed is a coordinated approach to arts grants to ensure that the arts programming supported by federal funds truly serves our national interest.

Recession adds to challenges for suburban arts

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090705/ap_en_mu/us_meltdown_suburban_arts

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – When he hired Itzhak Perlman as artistic director of the Westchester Philharmonic in 2007, Joshua Worby thought he'd hit a grand slam.

He figured that Perlman, a popular, world-famous violinist, would attract new subscribers, raise the reputation of a suburban orchestra just outside New York City and spur fundraising by 40 percent.

"That's the way we projected it," said Worby, the Philharmonic's executive director, "and most of it came true."

Sure enough, attendance doubled. Perlman said he was "extremely happy." Even one category of fundraising, donations from individuals, went up 25 percent.

Then the economy tanked, corporate giving dried up and the orchestra ended the 2008-09 season with a deficit instead of a surplus.

Orchestras, theaters, museums and other arts organizations in the nation's suburbs face the challenge to attract customers — and donors — from the same population going to the Chicago Symphony, the Smithsonian or Broadway plays.

NY Ats Power Couple Profile

A little tidbit from New York Magazine on NY arts "power couple" Katherine Farley and Jerry Speyer. Just what does it mean to be an arts power couple??

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/topic/57491/

House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee increases NEA funding

As reported by Americans for the Arts:

On June 10, the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, which sets the initial funding level for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), approved a $15 million increase for the NEA in its FY 2010 spending bill, setting it on a path towards final House consideration. Chairman Norm Dicks (D-WA) has once again championed the arts and culture and proposed an increase in funding.

Currently funded at $155 million, this increase would bring the agency’s budget to $170 million. In his statement, Chairman Dicks referenced the Arts Advocacy Day hearings the subcommittee held as demonstrating that “the endowments are vital for preserving and encouraging America’s arts and cultural heritage.” On Arts Advocacy Day, Americans for the Arts presented a panel of witnesses before Chairman Dicks’ Appropriations Subcommittee calling for a significant increase in funding for the NEA. Witnesses included Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center Wynton Marsalis, singer-songwriter Josh Groban, legendary singer Linda Ronstadt, Reinvestment Fund CEO Jeremy Nowak, and Americans for the Arts President and CEO Robert Lynch. Watch video from that panel here.

The FY 2010 Interior Appropriations bill will next go to full committee and then to the House floor for final consideration where your help may be needed to defend against floor amendments attempting to cut this increase. We must now put pressure on the Senate to match this funding level. Please take two minutes to visit the Americans for the Arts E-Advocacy Center to send a letter to your Members of Congress letting them know that the arts are important to you!

Arts & Culture giving down 6.4% in 2008

A report by The Giving USA Foundation says that charitable giving to arts/culture/humanities organizations was down 6.4% in 2008, higher than the average decline in nonprofit giving of 2%.

An article from the Associated Press summarizes the situation, saying that although the situation is bad, it was not unexpected and, actually, was not as bad as many feared it would be:

"Charitable giving by Americans fell by 2 percent in 2008 as the recession took root, only the second year-to-year decline in more than a half-century, according to an authoritative annual survey released Wednesday....

The last previous overall drop in giving was in 1987, the year of the record-shattering Black Monday stock market collapse.

The Giving USA Foundation, which has conducted the survey since 1956, expressed relief that the 2008 decrease was not worse, given that many Americans lost more than 2 percent of their wealth during the year.

However, the report underscored the daunting circumstances facing America's nonprofits, many of which have been forced to lay off staff and cut programs because of declining revenue."

Not surprisingly, Giving USA predicts that 2009 will continue to be difficult, which many of us nonprofit fundraisers could attest to.

Read the full article here and learn more about the report here

Government arts funding and the culture wars

Over at book/daddy, Jerome Weeks provides an insightful and informative review of Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy. It's worth a read, both for his take on the book as well as his insights on the history of American funding for the arts. Read the first part of the article here.

"It's dead certain that our culture wars will rage again.

David A. Smith, a senior lecturer in history at Baylor University, does not actually make that prediction in his book, Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy. But it's there. It's there because, according to Dr. Smith, the culture wars have never really ceased fire. Federal support of the arts has been the trigger for an argument, he believes, that has flared on and off practically since the origins of the republic. Dr. Smith's book is the first to study government arts funding in this light."