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 classboth in history and in the presentraising questions about patronage and access, and the differences across classes in the kinds of art that are supported and accepted.
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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 Festivalcreating 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.
As conference co-chairs, neither of whom has lived in New Mexico, we were told that the story of art in New Mexico is a story of place, that the regionits landscape, its convergence of cultures, its sacred spacesdefines what and how art is made. We turned to a number of New Mexico artists and writers to give us their inside views of this remarkable region. Among them is Chrissie Orr, a transplant from Scotland, who makes work informed and formed by New Mexico's physical environment.
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 workwork 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.
Re-imagining Orchestras: A forthright report on the mixed results of one foundation's efforts
Stan Hutton
Evaluations of arts education programs raise some of the greatest challenges I face in reviewing proposals. Even in a secular age, when people are pressed to describe the nature of art, they come to words like "essence." How do we get to a point where we know that children have learned to make and to encounter that kind of knowing?
At the 1997-98 New York Grantmakers in the Arts' program meetings, members agreed to focus on one discipline for a more in-depth look. Dance, perhaps the most beleaguered of all disciplines, was selected as the first test.
It was agreed that the goal was to raise the level of understanding of the needs and issues facing New York City's dance community. NYGIA commissioned Mindy Levine, a respected consultant who is well versed in dance and has completed studies for Dance/USA, to prepare a briefing paper: "New York City's Dance Community: Current Status and Needs."