The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced today that Marc Vogl will leave his position as Program Officer in the Performing Arts Program, effective June 3, 2011. Marc has accepted the job of executive director at a San Francisco arts organization. He's been with the Hewlett Foundation since 2007.

The organization Arizona Town Hall gathers every few months around an important issue and creates a "forum for education and exploration of the topic and fosters leadership development." So it's exciting to see that the town hall held May 1-4 was titled Capitalizing on Arizona's Arts & Culture. And the featured speakers were Rocco Landesman, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts; and Marian Godfrey, Senior Director, Culture Initiatives, Pew Charitable Trusts.

From Tyler Green at Artinfo.com:

Although you’d hardly know it from Americans’ comparative silence... decreases in U.S. government funding to arts groups are almost certainly going to be deeper than the ones that have provoked such a strong reaction in the U.K. At the federal level, President Barack Obama proposed 13 percent cuts for both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities

From Graydon Royce, writing for the Minneapolis StarTribune, an inspiring report on four Minnesota arts leaders who have turned their organizations around, through innovation and elbow grease. One featured leader, Laura Zabel, executive director of Springboard for the Arts, made a notable appearance at the 2010 GIA Conference in Chicago as a presenter at the Support for Individual Artists Preconference.

Culturelab is a joint initiative of leading arts consultants and the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago, a nationally recognized interdisciplinary research center dedicated to informing policies that affect the arts, humanities, and cultural heritage. On April 29, Culturelab staged the Emerging Practice Seminar 2011, billed as a concerted effort to bring forward promising new practices in the cultural sector and transmit them to the field.

Findings from a national survey released this week show that, contrary to widespread belief, most arts graduates are employed and holding jobs consistent with their educational goals. For example, 92% of those who wish to work currently are, with most finding employment soon after graduating. Two-thirds said their first job was a close match for the kind of work they wanted. And almost three-quarters (74%) of those who intended to work as a professional artist had done so at some point since graduating.

Twenty-one arts journalists from 13 states have been chosen to participate as fellows in USC Annenberg's seventh National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater. Fellows include theater critics, reporters, editors and general arts & entertainment journalists. The Institute will be held in Los Angeles from June 13 to 22, with the generous support of the NEA.

Artists, leaders, and advocates will gather in Chicago on Saturday, May 7, for a TEDx event to talk about the paths ahead of us and what the arts need to do to remain relevant, active, and thriving into a new age. The long list of participants includes David Dombrosky, executive director of the Center for Arts Management and Technology; Lisa Canning, founder of The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship; and Ian David Moss, research director for Fractured Atlas. The event was organized by David Zoltan, director of ArtsAppeal.

Video from last week's Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media webinar, a funder briefing co-sponsored by GIA, is now available on the GFEM website, here. Titled Sustaining and Growing Community Media Centers: A Funder Briefing, the excellent presentation—I participated and walked away with a great deal—covers the following: