This essay is based on a key note address given on Tuesday, October 29, 2002. The talk was preceded by a short media presentation that told the story of Angels in America in Charlotte through sound and images.
Search
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.
The following essay was jointly commissioned by Grantmakers in the Arts for its 2002 annual conference and by the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities as one in its series of Translation Papers.
Introduction
In a crowded auditorium at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, funders, community activists, and artists gathered in March to listen to a panel discussion on hip-hop activism in the Bay Area. The goal of Constant Elevation: The Rise of Bay Area Hip-Hop Activism was twofold: to inform and educate funders about hip-hop activism and how it fits into foundation support, and to highlight local best practices that use Hip Hop as a framework.
Booms and Busts
From the depths of our economic trough it is hard to look ahead, clear-eyed, and to see where U.S. foundations are headed. But consider, for a moment, where we have been. We have experienced an era in which: :
• New scientific and technological advances captured the popular imagination.
• These innovations promised a huge jump in economic productivity.
• There was talk about a new economy replacing an old economy.
• Many business corporations were consolidated and reorganized.
Editors of the Reader invited GIA's research advisors to reflect on challenges facing arts grantmakers in light of current research findings on arts funding trends.
What do recent research findings suggest about the prospect for the support of arts and culture in the years ahead?
Ed Pauly: After a decade of dramatic growth in foundations' support for the arts, the funding news is now somber. Yet the meaning we make from the most recent study of foundation funding for the arts depends, as always, on the perspective we choose.
Recently, several studies of arts funding have been conducted in specific cities and regions. We report on a few of these here. In the winter 2002 issue of the GIA Reader Vol. 13, No. 1, Lisa Cremin and Kathie de Nobriga reported on a comparative study of arts funding in Atlanta and nineteen other cities. The report was both an inspiring and a cautionary tale for Ann McQueen and others in Boston as they planned the study that Cindy Gehrig reviews below.
Economic language and ideas have increasingly found their way into discussions of artistic value and cultural benefit. For better or for worse, the discipline of economics has been the lingua franca of public policy discourse for at least the past fifty years. Sometimes the terms resonate harshly on our ears. How do people in the world of arts and culture answer those who speak this language, who try to value cultural activity in terms of economic multipliers, cost-benefit analysis, quantitative outcome measures and, a current favorite, contingent valuation methodology?
September 2002, 292 pages, $24.95, paper. Center for Urban Policy Research, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. 732-932-3133, ext 555, cuprbook@rci.rutgers.edu
2001, 36 pages. Alliance for the Arts, 330 West 42nd Street, Suite 1701, New York, NY 10036, 212-947-6340
Who Pays for the Arts? is a fascinating analysis of funding trends for 575 cultural institutions in New York City from 1995-1999. Although charts, graphs, and statistics fill the study, the information they present is explained clearly and simply.