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The GIA Library is an information hub that includes articles, research reports, and other materials covering a wide variety of topics relevant to the arts and arts funding. These resources are made available free to members and non-members of GIA. Users can search by keyword or browse by category for materials to use in research and self-directed learning. Current arts philanthropy news items are available separately in our news feed - News from the Field.

Beyond Price: Value in Culture, Economics, and the Arts

Beyond Price: Value in Culture, Economics, and the Arts; Edited by Michael Hutter and David Throsby; Cambridge University Press, 2007, 324 pages

The art that matters to us … is received by us as a gift is received. Even if we have paid a fee at the door of the museum or concert hall, when we are touched by a work of art something comes to us that has nothing to do with the price.
— Lewis Hyde

Fear and Anxiety, or Resilience and Creativity

How are artists weathering the economic downturn? Artist Trust wanted to take the pulse of the Washington State artist community and to consider what programmatic solutions Artist Trust and others might offer. Between March 15 and April 15, 2009 nearly 700 artists responded to an online survey. The survey was not designed to collect data for quantitative analysis; rather, it was conducted as a way to gain an informal snapshot of artists’ personal situations.

GIA Members Responses to Economic Downturn Survey

In late January GIA polled its 309 member organizations about their organization's responses to the economic downturn. 117 (38%) members responded, which provides a healthy sample of the membership.

Members reported their expected 2009 arts grantmaking would likely compare to 2008 as follows:

  • 41% expected that 2009 would be the same as 2008.
  • 13% expected that it would be reduced to 90% of 2008.
  • 12% expected that it would be reduced to 80% of 2008.
  • 11% expected that it would be reduced to 70% of 2008.

Connecting Public Interest Communications with the 2007 Council on Foundations Conference Themes

Ralph Smith, the 2007 Conference Chairman, issued a challenge in his welcome message – “that all who attend will leave with renewed energy, capacity and resolve to make a positive contribution toward meeting the challenges of our time.”

Puget Sound Funders Act Together

Historical data do not mean anything in this situation. There is no blueprint and there is no network. We are doing the best we can with a combination of hard facts and intuition. Every line item is up for grabs; every $1,000 is material. How we feel about it all depends on which newspaper we read that morning.
—Managing Director, large performing arts group

Introduction

Why Arts?... Why Arts!

Many of the feature articles in this issue offer tools for responding to GIA Executive Director Janet Brown's call to speak up, to not sit silently in the back but to stand up and illustrate or make the case for why arts and culture matters.

How Can the Arts Become Central?

In the past two years, several prominent foundations at national, regional, and local levels have appointed new presidents. Such leadership transitions are likely to increase in the years ahead in keeping with the larger generational shift in the nonprofit sector. Very few of the new foundation leaders are likely to come from the arts sector, and many will have had little direct experience with our field.

What Is Civil Society?

In The Place of the Arts in Multi-focus Foundations, Bruce Sievers writes that the rationale for supporting both the arts and the nonprofit sector as a whole is integrally linked to their capacity to advance pluralism, promote voluntary action, accommodate diversity, and champion individual visions of the public good. “Civil society,” Sievers notes, is increasingly the accepted concept to describe this sphere of social action.

read:write

2008, 64 pages. Arts Council England, 14 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 3NQ, UK, 0845-300-6590, www.artscouncil.org.uk

http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/documents/publications/
phpvMEmeh.pdf

Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody

2008, 327 pages.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.
— Jean Baptiste Alphonse Karr, 1849 French critic and writer