Carmen Graciela Díaz's Blog

California's state arts agency and appointed Arts Council adopted a strategic framework that includes a new mission, vision, and values statements; a racial equity statement; a decision support tool; and a set of aspirations for potential future actions.

A $150,000 planning grant to James Madison University from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will allow the University’s College of Arts and Letters and the JMU Libraries to learn, grow, and deepen their partnership for an integrated library, states the announcement.

"Diversity, equity, and inclusion are discussed at almost every philanthropic gathering," Keecha Harris and Ali Webb write, "but what action is needed?"

Micah D. Parzen, chief executive officer of the San Diego Museum of Man, reflects on the practice of decolonizing as part of shifting paradigms. In an article published by the American Alliance of Museums, Parzen emphasizes a museum has a part to play in the path to healing "pain and suffering comes in the form of structural racism, colonial legacy, or other forms of oppression."

An exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) brings together works from the BMA's collection "to demonstrate the critical role of women in shaping and maintaining social identities across 20th-century Africa," the museum details.

The recent report A Community-Centered Road Map Towards an Equitable and Inclusive Creative Economy in Seattle presents overarching goals "that address the question of how the City of Seattle can grow, support, and retain creatives while reducing disparities and inequities within the creative economy."

James Hirschfeld, program officer at the Howard Gilman Foundation, emphasizes the importance of responsive grantmaking and how, as he says, at the Howard Gilman Foundation they "view financial statements as one way of identifying opportunities for impactful grants."

A new podcast series, AZ Creative Voices, explores all that happens when artists are invited to contribute to community improvement efforts.

The federal administration’s proposed fiscal year (FY) 2021 budget, released on Monday, would eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as Americans for the Arts informed.

In the first of a series of essays celebrating the tenth anniversary of the National Endowment for the Arts’ creative placemaking grants program, Our Town, Lyz Crane, deputy director of ArtPlace America, reflects on the power of arts and culture to transform community development and how "artists keep, make, and transform meaning".