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The following remarks were presented at a symposium that was part of the 2004 Ars Electronica Festival: TIMESHIFT—The World in Twenty-Five Years. This festival for art, technology, and society was founded in 1979 and is held annually in Linz, Austria. Joan Shigekawa, associate director of Creativity and Culture at the Rockefeller Foundation, spoke on the final panel of the symposium, “TOPIA,” which was designed to “present scenarios around a wide variety of topics relating to art, technology, and society.

I believe it is time to begin a conversation about a new model for building a vibrant arts landscape. Since I left federal service in the fall of 2001, I have had an opportunity rare for former chairmen of the National Endowment for the Arts—the chance to create a research center engaging the very issues that fascinated me during my tenure with the endowment.

It was April 1968: I was out for lunch break with Jim and Mary, co-workers from the general accounting office where we worked in the University District. They were old hands in the office. I was new on staff and excited. This was my first real job out of high school after a string of just so-so jobs. There had been the eyeglass factory where I stood, eight hours a day for three months in a windowless basement knocking lead weights off newly polished eyeglass lenses with a mallet. A friend of my mother's had gotten me that job.

2003, 83 pages. Published by National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, 145 Ninth Street, Suite 250, San Francisco, CA, 94103, 415-431-1391, namac@namac.org, www.namac.org

Download Report: www.namac.org/youth-media-report

Edited by Barbara Rich, Ed.D, Jane L. Polin, Stephen J. Marcus

2003, 164 pages. The Dana Foundation, 745 Fifth Avenue, Suite 900, New York, NY 10151, 212-223-4040, daninfo@dana.org, www.dana.org.

Following up on Stan Hutton's introduction to arts blogs in the last Reader, in this issue we're looking at the beginnings of the philanthropic blogosphere. As with many blogs covering a specific field, philanthropic blogs tend to offer either personal journals of opinion and ideas or periodic news round-ups, brief abstracts of articles or publications and links to the original. Some, of course, provide both.

Through the ages artists with disabilities have been important to our history and culture. Beethoven was deaf, Van Gogh was mentally ill, El Greco was visually impaired. For the most part we do not associate them with their disability. We celebrate their lives for the gifts of music and art that they left in our midst.

2002, 127 pages. The Center for an Urban Future, New York, NY, 212-479-3344, www.nycfuture.org.

"Without getting on a soapbox, I would say that dancing is as much a calling as it is anything else. Don't think of it as a career. You're stupid if you do. You've got to have something burning in your gut that you want to express."

When the Council on Foundations meets in Toronto this April, GIA members in attendance will have the chance to meet a fledgling affinity group of Canadian arts funders that is putting together the 1st Canadian Arts Funders Forum.