Another project underway for historian Jim Smith, author of the preceding “A Profession of Philanthropy,” is a new piece, commissioned by the Aspen Institute, that examines the ways that foundation giving to arts and culture is fundamentally different from giving to other fields. We coaxed Jim to contribute a brief preview of this line of inquiry. Excerpts from this nascent work in progress have been woven together by Jim and Anne Focke into this brief, provocative piece.
As we were recruiting writers for this issue of the Reader, we learned that John Rockwell was retiring from his position as arts critic for The New York Times. It was all too tempting to ask Rockwell to reflect on the arts as he has chronicled them through his career. His response was to address the relationship between culture and classboth in history and in the presentraising questions about patronage and access, and the differences across classes in the kinds of art that are supported and accepted.
Poet, novelist, and dramatist Denise Chávez lives in the borderland between New Mexico and Mexico. There, following in the footsteps of the women of her family, particularly her Tiá Chita (who created a lending library in a small town in Texas), Denise is a founder of the Border Book Festivalcreating a sense of community through books and writers. In visiting New Mexico, we wanted GIA members to experience the difference between its northern and southern regions.
Jeff Chang is widely known for chronicling the story of the hip-hop generation through his book Can't Stop Won't Stop and the recent anthology Total Chaos. In this Taos Journey essay, Chang looks back at the legacy of the multiculturalism movement of the 1960s and '70s; at the last several GIA conferences, grantmakers have gathered to discuss their concerns about crises in important culturally specific organizations formed during that period.
Changing media policy has affected and will continue to shape how art is made and distributed, whose voices are heard, and who has access to those voices. To take an angle on this multifaceted subject, we invited two articulate media experts into a conversation about their workwork that has profound implications for artists and for social justice activists. Jenny Toomey, executive director of the Future of Music Coalition, interviews Loris Taylor, executive director of Native Public Media.
In the Reader last issue I reported on the Cleveland Foundation's decade-long effort (in partnership with other area funders, cultural institutions, and the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture) to make the case for local public support for the arts here. At the GIA conference last November, anyone within shouting distance of those of us from Cleveland must have heard that we were suc-cessful. The grins on our faces lit up the host celebration that first night.
New Year's Day, 1980, found Arlene Goldbard living in Washington, D.C. monitoring and reporting on our nation's de facto cultural policy. The fact that Arlene was doing this says a lot about the leadership role that many of us were counting on the federal government to play in leveling the field so that our many U.S. cultures would have an equal chance to express themselves, to develop, and, inevitably, to cross-pollinate. It was a substantial and beautiful vision then, and remains so today.
When we visit our physicians, we naturally assume they bring a bundle of knowledge and insight to the meeting. For one thing, we expect them to bring a broad and nuanced understanding of human physiology, and how its many interconnecting systems (circulatory, respiratory, muscle, nervous, lymphatic, and so on) influence our health and well being. We also expect that they know how and where to look for indicators of our health (taking our temperature, testing our blood pressure, checking our blood for chemical balances).
1998, 82 pages, SPUR, 312 Sutter Street, Suite 500, San Francisco, California 94108-4305, 415-781-8726, fax: 415-781-7291, spur[at]well.com.
Produced by San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, this report provides details and insights from a three-day community workshop that addressed the following concerns:
the ability of cultural institutions to meet their full audience potential, to educate needy individuals, to attract new donations, and to secure major traveling exhibits
