Family Foundation

Art collector, philanthropist, and software entrepreneur Peter Norton, inventor of Norton Utilities, established his family foundation with his wife Eileen Norton in 1989. Based in Santa Monica, California, the Foundation has an endowment of approximately $33 million; its giving last year was close to $4.5 million. The primary focus of the Foundation is on contemporary visual arts nationwide.

The Allen Foundation for the Arts is one of six foundations that make up the Paul G. Allen Foundations, a family of foundations established by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen. The other Allen foundations focus on medical research, health and human services, forest protection, virtual education, and most recently, music.

Last year when RAND released The Performing Arts in a New Era, (Performing Arts) the prediction that times were going to be particularly difficult for mid-sized performing arts organizations was widely quoted. It was prominent in press coverage of the report and quickly embraced as a fact by grantseekers and foundation colleagues. I was curious to return to Performing Arts and the conditions it cites for organizations in the middle, to see how they apply to readings of recent field reports for different performing arts disciplines.

We just returned from yet another community gathering where arts leaders sought the support of their business and civic counterparts by documenting the "economic impact" of arts spending and employment in their region.

A New Framework for Building Participation in the Arts
Kevin F. McCarthy and Kimberly Jinnett, RAND, 2001,
112 pages, 310-451-7002, order@rand.org.

Another research report lands on your desk. Do you make time to read it, or does it add to a growing pile of things-to-read-someday?

Two streams of thought come together here. On the one hand, we want the Reader to reflect the continuing impact on our lives of the events of September 11, 2001. On the other, we want to follow an emphasis in GIA's current plan on the organization's second purpose — to increase the presence of arts philanthropy within philanthropy in order to strengthen support for arts and culture.

2001, 345 pages. The MIT Press.

2001, 80 pages, $7.00. Dance/USA, Washington, DC, 1156 15th Street, N.W., Suite 820, Washington, D.C. 20005-1704, 202-833-1717, danceusa@danceusa.org.

2001-2002, 51 pages. Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, P.O. Box 10169, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504, 505-988-3251.

The Reader rarely reviews foundations' annual reports, but makes exceptions on occasion — in this case for the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry's reaching its 30th year of grantmaking. The handsome 2001 Witter Bynner commemorative report is engaging to read, and presents grant descriptions alongside poems by supported writers, presses, students, and presenting programs.