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State Seeks Data on Pay of Leaders at Nonprofits
Posted on August 26, 2011 by Steve

From Russ Buettner at The New York Times:

A New York State task force on Thursday began sending letters to hundreds of nonprofit organizations that receive state money demanding details about how much they pay their executives and board members.

The information will be compiled electronically and could shine a light on executives who take home an outsize share of their organization’s revenue.

MetLife Foundation and Theatre Communications Group Announce Fourth Round Recipients of the A-ha! Program
Posted on August 25, 2011 by Steve

MetLife Foundation and Theatre Communications Group (TCG) announce the fourth round of recipients for the MetLife/TCG A-ha! Program: Think It, Do It, which supports the creative thinking and action of TCG member theatres with the goal of impacting the larger theatre community. Five theatres were awarded grants, totaling $225,000, to either research and develop new ideas or experiment and implement innovative concepts.

Association of Performing Arts Presenters Announces New President and CEO
Posted on August 24, 2011 by Steve

The Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) announced today the appointment of Mario Garcia Durham as President and CEO. He is the fifth executive director since the organization’s founding in 1957, and follows Sandra Gibson, who stepped down June 30, 2011. Gibson has continued to serve as APAP Special Executive, and will remain in that position through September 30, 2011.

Collecting and Using Information to Strengthen Citywide Out-of-School Time Systems
Posted on August 23, 2011 by Steve

A number of U.S. communities have been building citywide systems to make high-quality after-school programs more available to children. Many such efforts have shaped their work around the collection and analysis of current, credible data. This guide looks at the kinds of data cities are gathering, how they collect it and how they put it to use.

Stanford Social Innovation Review Covers Issues of Advocacy
Posted on August 23, 2011 by Steve

A pair of reports have come out from Stanford Social Innovation Review dealing with Advocacy. Both are well worth a read.

The Elusive Craft of Evaluating Advocacy, by Steven Teles and Mark Schmitt, looks at the problems of evaluating advocacy given the chaotic nature of the political process in America. The explore various methods to examining advocacy (and advocates).

Museum Miles: The Past and Future Of Public Art In New York
Posted on August 23, 2011 by Steve

From David Freedlander at The New York Observer:

Forget bronze. The new public art can be sound installations, graffiti-inspired commissions for roll-down gates, and cartoonish painting over public buildings, as in 2009, when a mini-uproar was created over the Public Art Fund’s commissioning of the artist Richard Woods to paint the guardhouses in front of City Hall in Lego-land-looking redbrick design.
PBS Off Book Examines the State of Visual Culture Online
Posted on August 22, 2011 by Steve

Also, "How to Make a Meme":

For decades now, people have joined together online to communicate and collaborate around interesting imagery. In recent years, the pace and intensity of this activity has reached a fever pitch. With countless communities engaging in a constant exchange, building on each others' work, and producing a prodigious flow of material, we may be experiencing the early stages of a new type of artistic and cultural collaboration.
Art Criticism: A New Golden Age?
Posted on August 15, 2011 by Steve

From Abraham Ritchie at Art Works:

Like a ship heading towards open ocean, progressive art is constantly moving away from us. Culture does not slow down or stop when visual art is cut from school curricula or when art critics are fired from major newspapers. Rather it is the community that suffers, as the public becomes distanced from its own culture. Unaware of the innovations that are going on and why, the community can become alienated from art. The artists can also suffer, though they are still fundamentally connected to culture in ways that the public is not. Without critics, artists can pursue unproductive or backwards paths.
Five Ways Museums Are Reaching Digital Audiences
Posted on August 15, 2011 by Steve

From Zoe Fox at Mashable:

New platforms are allowing museums to break free of the confines of the academic ivory tower and engage with their communities like never before.

Ian Padgham, former social media guru of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art says museums started flocking to social media in 2009. Museums initially used social media just to advertise events and exhibits, but quickly jumped into a world of interactive education and user generated content.

Burning Man's Big Plan To Reshape A Depressed San Francisco Neighborhood
Posted on August 15, 2011 by Steve

From Ariel Schwartz at Fast Company:

Burning Man—that once-a-year sojourn to the Nevada desert—is much more than a hedonistic experiment in self-reliance, art, the sharing economy, and psychotropic drugs. It's also an event that has spawned a tight-knit worldwide community that has created a number of Burning Man-related organizations, including Burners Without Borders, Black Rock Solar, and the Black Rock Arts Foundation (a group that brings public art installations to cities). It's only fitting that the Burning Man community's latest do-gooder venture—the Burning Man Project—will work on revitalizing a down-and-out area of San Francisco, Burning Man's home city.