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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.

The Risk of Hopelessness

On June 2, 2015, Alternate ROOTS Executive Director, Carlton Turner, presented the following as a keynote address at the Grantmakers in the Arts Racial Equity Forum in Atlanta, Georgia.

Introduction: Georgia Men

“Black people did not come back from Georgia.”

“A man or woman that had learned that they might be taken south might do anything.”

“A man who had to see his son stand naked before buyers might do anything.”

Kenny Leon's Speech to Grantmakers in the Arts

On June 2, 2015, Kenny Leon presented the following as a keynote address at the Grantmakers in the Arts Racial Equity Forum in Atlanta, Georgia.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed —

I, too, am America.

Future Aesthetics 2.0

In January I had the privilege to attend the Future Aesthetics 2.0 retreat, co-organized by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, director of Performing Arts of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and James Kass, executive director of Youth Speaks. Participating were twenty-three performance-based artists, Helicon Collaborative partners Holly Sidford and Alexis Frasz, and Cheryl Ikemiya from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which funded the project through its Fund for National Projects.

The Social Nature of Offense and Public Protest over Art and Culture

The following is an excerpt from the introduction to the book Not Here, Not Now, Not That! Protest over Art and Culture in America.

Structural Racism

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Strength to Love, 1963

Integrating Nature: The Role of Poetry in Reorienting Environmental Politics

Some things are very dear to me —
Such thing as flowers bathed by rain
Or patterns traced upon the sea
Or crocuses where snow has lain . . . .
The iridescence of a gem,
The moon's cool opalescent light,
Azaleas and the scent of them,
And honeysuckles in the night.

— African American poet Gwendolyn Bennett, “Sonnet II” 1