Readings

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 class—both in history and in the present—raising 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 Festival—creating 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.

Nonprofit organizations face a growing challenge of identifying sufficient numbers of future leaders and passing on leadership responsibilities. For a story about the needs of emerging leaders, we approached Alvin Warren, a young tribal leader and lieutenant governor of Santa Clara Pueblo, who played a seminal role in his Pueblo's success at recovering part of its ancestral land. Many funders who are concerned about the challenge of developing future leaders are addressing it by supporting workshops, training, and coaching.

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 work—work 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.

Classical opera is a glorious but expensive enterprise that is thought by many to be so caught up in traditional methods and structures that it cannot adapt to changing times. Not so at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, under the recent and widely discussed leadership of Peter Gelb. Here, GIA member Russell Willis Taylor, president and CEO of National Arts Strategies, interviews Gelb about his approach to leadership, and his ambitions for the Met.

Our Taos Journey essays depart by looking back at philanthropy's recent past. As the field has become more formalized as a profession, it also has attracted exposés and critiques. Many have called for greater accountability, transparency, and proof of effectiveness. While the critique is worthy and perhaps overdue, historian, philanthropist, and former GIA board member James Allen Smith calls for a deeper, shared understanding of professionalism.

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.

Last year AEA Consulting developed the working paper “Critical Issues Facing the Arts in California” for the James Irvine Foundation. Since its release, the report has generated extensive conversations and responses, both within and beyond California. GIA invited Adrian Ellis, principal of AEA Consulting, to offer further thoughts on the current state of the arts in the United States.

In the weekend leading into the 2007 Taos Journey conference, members of Grantmakers in the Arts and Grantmakers for Education will spend two days together in Santa Fe seeking better understanding of one another's priorities in arts and education—finding common ground. In the spirit of building this bridge between education and the arts, we sought an educator rather than an artist, a practitioner rather than a researcher, to write about arts education.