GIA Blog

(12-16-10) Chicago is wondering what the Mayor's real plan for the CDA is. As of Friday, twenty employees were laid off, which brings the grand total to 29 people who have lost their jobs since October. The losses in the department keep people guessing about whether such staples as the World Music Festival, SummerDance, and Downtown Sound/New Music Mondays will be able to continue.

(12-16-10) The National Endowment for the Arts will post the next round of grant application guidelines on Thursday, January 13, 2011. Three short presentations are now available to prepare organizations for the new guidelines.

(12-15-10) AFTA's 24th annual Arts Advocacy Day, The 2011 National Arts Action Summit will take place Monday, April 4 and Tuesday, April 5. It is the only national event that brings together a broad cross section of America’s cultural and civic organizations, along with hundreds of grassroots advocates from across the country, to underscore the importance of developing strong public policies and appropriating increased public funding for the arts. Grantmakers in the Arts will be a co-sponsor of the event.

• LEARN how to lobby congress.

(12-14-10) United States Artists' (USA) innovative Projects Site is now public and ready for use by artists who have received grants from USA and a long list of USA partner or recognized award programs. (The site was originally launched with a test sample of past USA Fellows.) On Projects Site, artists describe the scope and budget of projects they would like funded and offer various funding levels, often including incentives, such as editioned artwork.

(12-13-10) The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has taken a strong public position against the Smithsonian's decision to remove a David Wojnarowicz video from "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture" at the National Portrait Gallery (story covered in Janet Brown's December 6 blog post): on Friday, the foundation's board voted unanimously to demand restoration of the work, threatening to otherwise refuse all future Smithsonian grant requests.

Enjoy!

(12-9-10) President Barack Obama today announced his “intent to nominate” Aaron Dworkin to Join National Council on the Arts. Dworkin, Founder and President of the Sphinx Organization, was a keynote speaker at the GIA conference in Chicago this past October. You can see his presentation to the GIA plenary here.

(12-8-10) Today, Metlife Foundation announced grants to eight museums in cities throughout the United States—New York to Texas to California. The awards, ranging from $50,000 to $75,000 and totaling $500,000, recognize "imaginative exhibitions and educational and public programs that extend [the museum's] reach into diverse communities and make art a part of people's lives."

(12-8-10) Responding to criticism of the sale at auction of more than 2,000 items from the Philadelphia History Museum collection—including a Raphaelle Peale still life that sold for almost $850,000—Gregory J. Kleiber, museum treasurer, noted: “We view the entire reconstruction project as preserving and caring for our largest artifact, the building...and making possible the display and conservation under museum-appropriate conditions of the other pieces of our collection.” (The proceeds of the sale will help fund a $5.8 million building renovation.) Kleiber's comment on the still life: “The Peale we felt was very much outside the mission. We’re a history museum, not an art museum. It’s a picture of a fish.”

(12-8-10) United States Artists today announced its 2010 Fellows. Each year, USA honors 50 of America’s finest artists with individual fellowships of $50,000 — unrestricted funds awarded across eight disciplines. We’re proud of our USA Fellows. To become a USA Fellow, one must be nominated. Each year nominations are made by a different anonymous group of arts leaders, critics, scholars, and artists chosen by USA. Nominators do not know one another; their identities remain confidential.