Richard Kessler Blogs on Conference Day 1
Richard Kessler, one of three official bloggers for the GIA conference (which is happening now in San Francisco) has posted his Day 1 report:
“I am a grantmaker, I give and receive, I sustain culture, I am an artist, I give and receive, I sustain culture.”
Getting quickly to a sweeping review of the history of the NEA, Marc got to his point, a good way to set the tone for the entire conference and underscore the theme: Embracing the Velocity of Change.
The point: art as product, commodity, and the ways in which the funding community has coalesced around this model needed to be refocused into art as process and art as community builder. Rather than a world of winners and losers, a culture of scarcity, Marc’s work and what he argues for is that it is “not enough to place art in community without community context…No amount of Facebook or flyering can substitute for genuine public proximity and investment.”