GIA Reader (2000-present)

I first met Carrie Mae Weems in 1976. I was teaching a photography class at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which was then located in a large second-floor loft space above a Kentucky Fried Chicken on 125th Street and Fifth Avenue. On the first day of class as a few students straggled in, a seemingly shy woman with big, expressive eyes, introduced herself, “Hi, my name is Carrie. Do you think I could be a photographer?” she asked, holding her Leica camera in her hand.

If you ever read information online or download and print materials from the Internet, you are part of the “digital divide.” While most, if not all, members of philanthropic organizations in the United States may take for granted high-quality access to the Internet, many people of color, indigenous people, and people living in rural areas have none or only very limited ability to use computers and gain access to the kinds of information and education that can improve their lives.

Every member of the arts community has been affected by the unprecedented challenges and opportunities proffered by technology. The last decade has observed our field coming to terms with this disruptive force in inspiring and innovative ways. Equally exhilarating and demanding, these transformations have challenged many previous assumptions about the role of the arts and culture sector.

In 2009, everyone was asking whether the change in the nonprofit sector was temporary, caused by the economic downturn or was the economy a catalyst that forced us to recognize that change had happened and this change was here to stay? I believe it was the latter. Pushed by technology, demographics, the changing behavior of audiences, and a disconnect between perception and the reality of the arts in our communities, there is a growing sense that funding changes are more necessary than we had first imagined.

For theater companies that are creating new work, fund-raising in the community of institutional funders poses a unique set of challenges.

Funders, by design, have strict guidelines in place, strict markers by which they measure outcomes. But most of the experimental theater companies we report on in this article have models of making art that challenge traditionally held industry standards. How can a meaningful dialogue between innovators working in the field and institutional funders, with the goal of furthering the art form, be nurtured and sustained?

I am fond of telling folks about my arts background, having grown up in the 1960s and ’70s in a town of two thousand people in central Wisconsin surrounded by cranberry bogs and paper mills. I didn’t see a professional arts performance until I was in high school, but from an early age my parents provided me with piano lessons and my school supplied me with an abundance of arts activities: bassoon lessons, chorus, marching band, art classes.

I was making my way home from the Financial District to the Mission on the train after work, feet pinched by the not-so-comfortable shoes I wore as part of my daytime drag, nose buried in some reading about cultural participation in the region while texting Ilia, one of the dancers in the group I sing with, about picking her up for rehearsal.

2009, 37 pages, Blueprint Research & Design, Inc., 720 Market Street, Suite 900, San Francisco, CA 94102, www.blueprintrd.com.

Los Lupeños de San José was founded in 1969 in San José, California. What began as a study-performance group formed to promote Mexican dance and culture grew over time to become one of California’s leading nonprofit organizations representing Mexican folklórico. From its inception, Los Lupeños has been a colorful cultural ambassador for San José and California, touring throughout the United States and Mexico performing a varied repertoire of dances from choreographers and teachers from both sides of the border.