Carmen Graciela Díaz's Blog

Last year, six of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund’s arts grantees merged or were acquired, as Frances Phillips, program director of the Arts & the Creative Work Fund at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, writes in a blog post. Phillips interviewed staff and board members at each of these organizations to learn what shaped their decisions and to ask what advice they have to offer others.

The organizers of an exhibition in Berlin inspired by the Afrofuturism movement and Elon Musk did not include a single black artist in its lineup, as an The Guardian reported, criticism followed. The Künstlerhaus Bethanien space, where the exhibition takes place has fallen into “old curatorial habits that favor white men," according to the activist group Soup du Jour, wrote The Guardian.

A consortium of four foundations — the Andrew W. Mellon, Ford, and MacArthur foundations and the J. Paul Getty Trust — recently announced the acquisition of a historic African-American photographic archive, pending court approval and the closing of the sale.

While some grantmakers "have moved toward the participatory model by bringing advisory panels on board," the North Star Fund, which identifies as a social justice fund that supports grassroots organizing and communities building power in New York City and the Hudson Valley, has "turned over most of its grantmaking decisions to committees composed of activists and others from the neighborhood," as a piece by The Chronicle of Philanthropy states.

Following the resignation of Warren Kanders from the board of the Whitney Museum of Art, after months of protests over his company’s sale of tear gas, Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, wrote how this case reveals how "museums have become contested spaces in a rapidly-changing country." Furthermore, Walker emphasizes that to engage diverse leaders, "museums should redefine the terms of trusteeship."

For the month of August, GIA’s photo banner features work supported by National Performance Network (NPN).

The New York City Cultural Agenda Fund in The New York Community Trust brought eight foundations together to improve advocacy and equity in the arts sector.

After funding loss, the Alaska State Council on the Arts closed its doors Monday July 15.  In a recent communication, Grantmakers in the Arts expressed its support of Alaska State Council on the Arts (ASCA) and encouraged the state legislature and Governor’s office to restore the agency at prior funding levels in FY 2021. With … Continue reading Grantmakers in the Arts’ Response to Alaska Arts Council Funding Veto →

Internships need more attention in organizational DEI efforts, states a recent article in Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Executive directors/CEOs of color are leaving their positions and, as Vu Le puts it in a recent blog post, this is an "urgent issue" that "will have serious implications for our sector."