Visual arts

April 30, 2009 by giarts-ts-admin

In the past two years, several prominent foundations at national, regional, and local levels have appointed new presidents. Such leadership transitions are likely to increase in the years ahead in keeping with the larger generational shift in the nonprofit sector. Very few of the new foundation leaders are likely to come from the arts sector, and many will have had little direct experience with our field.

April 30, 2009 by giarts-ts-admin

When presidents and CEOs of foundations try to balance a range of equally justifiable social agendas, where are the arts? Sponsored by GIA, six foundation leaders spent a day and a half together discussing just this topic in the summer of 2008. The relevance of their conversation and the preliminary conclusions they drew are perhaps even more urgent today than they were then, as foundations face increasingly serious questions of priority.

What Is Civil Society?

April 30, 2009 by giarts-ts-admin

In The Place of the Arts in Multi-focus Foundations, Bruce Sievers writes that the rationale for supporting both the arts and the nonprofit sector as a whole is integrally linked to their capacity to advance pluralism, promote voluntary action, accommodate diversity, and champion individual visions of the public good. “Civil society,” Sievers notes, is increasingly the accepted concept to describe this sphere of social action.

April 30, 2009 by giarts-ts-admin

As we, individually or collectively, set out to make a case for the many ways the arts have relevance in today's world of economic turmoil and change, it's helpful to be clear what we mean by terms like “art,” “culture,” and “industry” and also to understand what the same terms might mean to others. The words we use are telling. Their use has a history that says much about where the work we call “art” resides in our collective lives from one period to the next.

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