Readings

I have been an artist and arts administrator for over thirty years. Now that I'm on the other side of what painter Chuck Close calls "temporarily abled," I find my own profession not very accommodating. Unexpectedly,five years ago I was partially paralyzed from complications of surgery.

Museums seem to be the most problematic. My gallery visits are based on stamina, not driven by content. Are comfortable benches so contrary to the enjoyment of art? Group tours leave me behind: I often catch up just as the docent is leading the group on to the next room.

This piece was first published in the newsletter of the Grantmaker's Evaluation Network, Volume 9/Number 1, Winter 2001. It is published here with permission from Doug Easterling.

The bus-stop was outside the cathedral. I had been looking at the Mappa Mundi, with its rivers out of Paradise, and at the chained library, where a party of clergymen had gotten in easily, but where I had waited an hour and cajoled a verger before I even saw the chains. Now, across the street, a cinema advertised the Six-Five Special and a cartoon version of Gulliver's Travels. The bus arrived, with a driver and conductress deeply absorbed in each other. We went out of the city, over the old bridge, and on through the orchards and the green meadows and the fields red under the plough.

I would like to begin with a passage from the book Ceremony by the American Indian author Leslie Silko:

The following article is based on notes for a talk presented in June 2000 at Dance/USA's bi-annual conference, "New Directions in Moving Ground." Marda Kirn participated on a panel subtitled "Nurturing the Art of Creation" that invited panelists to talk about inventive ways that artists find time, space, and support to create new work.

Many years ago, I wanted to write a grant application to the NEA — as a kind of joke, and a kind of plea. I'd call it the Rip Van Winkle project.

The following paper was written in conjunction with two meetings sponsored by the Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and co-sponsored by the Heinz Endowments and the Walter and Elise Haas Fund.

This paper was originally given at the 1987 Conference on Private Philanthropy and the Social Good. It was brought to our attention by a GIA member, and is reprinted here with permission from Cambridge University Press and the estate of Michael Hooker. © 1987 Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation.

The remarkable growth of the online sector in recent years can be assessed in many ways — from the rapidly expanding number of wired households (over half are now connected to the Internet) to the sheer explosion of content on the World Wide Web (which now encompasses over a billion pages). Data traffic exceeds voice traffic on the nation's phone lines now, and far more email messages than postal letters are sent every day.

The theme of GIA's 2000 annual conference is The Source which refers literally to the beginnings of the Mississippi River and figuratively to the tributaries that together make art happen: the creativity of individual artists, the desire to come together in community, and the impulse to give. Author Paul Gruchow lives in Two Harbors, Minnesota, and writes of the Mississippi from first-hand experience. He is a participant in a GIA preconference, "Artists and the Natural World: Art-Making and Environmental Advocacy." This essay is published with his permission.

In each issue of the Reader we intend to include at least one piece in the voice of an artist. Here we've chosen to reprint writer Irene Borger's interview with choreographer Joanna Haigood, from Force of Curiosity, Borger's interviews with past recipients of the CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts. It is published here with Borger's permission.