Community Foundation

First of all, it's a delight to be here this morning because I meet so many old friends, and I knew that you would be here related in some way or other to this gathering of foundations. The foundations you represent are doing what in an ideal situation, all governments would, should do. What you do with your contributions, with your interest, is help keep this world relatively sane. I say relatively for obvious reasons. What you do is feed a hunger for all the people of the world. Not simply food, clothing, shelter of course, but there is in everybody a hunger for beauty.

Last year when RAND released The Performing Arts in a New Era, (Performing Arts) the prediction that times were going to be particularly difficult for mid-sized performing arts organizations was widely quoted. It was prominent in press coverage of the report and quickly embraced as a fact by grantseekers and foundation colleagues. I was curious to return to Performing Arts and the conditions it cites for organizations in the middle, to see how they apply to readings of recent field reports for different performing arts disciplines.

We just returned from yet another community gathering where arts leaders sought the support of their business and civic counterparts by documenting the "economic impact" of arts spending and employment in their region.

2001, 76 pages. New York Foundation for the Arts, 155 Avenue of the Americas, 14th floor, New York, NY, 10013, 212-366-6900.

Culture Counts, published by the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), is the final report on a special initiative entitled, "A Cultural Blueprint for New York City." The document represents the first comprehensive study of cultural life in New York City in nearly thirty years.

2000, 77 pages. NEA, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C., 20506-0001, 202-682-5400.

In 1999, Bill Ivey, as a part of his reevaluation of the NEA's funding strategies, convened a series of ten colloquia to discuss how arts institutions can more effectively serve their communities. Forty-one speakers participated; about half are well-known to GIA members and the other half included experts from intersecting fields such as advertising, entertainment, Internet services, and charitable gift funds.

2002, 64 pages. Museum Loan Network, MIT, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, N52-401, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, 617-252-1888, fax: 617-252-1899, loanet@mit-edu.

April 28-30, 2002, Asheville, North Carolina

March 6-8, 2002, Washington, D.C.

April 17-21, 2002, Lexington, Kentucky

• A bilingual play brings together migrant workers and immigrant rights activists in a pointed comedy portraying communications and miscommunications among Anglos and Spanish-speaking peoples living in and working in one community today.

• An African American theater company performs a rollicking — but serious — romp through the cultural changes from Motown to hip-hop, from soul food to vegan, from post-60s to post-modern America.