Private Foundation

When we initiated an artist award program at The Durfee Foundation a few years ago, we decided to use financial need as one of several criteria for support. Durfee is a relatively small family foundation, and the trustees feel strongly that the foundation's modest resources should be applied where they will make the most difference. This is true across the board at the foundation, not only in the arts, but in our other programs as well.

In recent months, debate has been renewed over whether learning in the arts causes a "spill-over" effect on children's learning in other fields, directly or by transfer, and whether that "spill-over" is what should be measured. The discussion was heightened by the publication of a special issue of The Journal of Aesthetic Education titled "The Arts and Academic Improvement: What the Evidence Shows," with guest editors Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland.1

I have been an artist and arts administrator for over thirty years. Now that I'm on the other side of what painter Chuck Close calls "temporarily abled," I find my own profession not very accommodating. Unexpectedly,five years ago I was partially paralyzed from complications of surgery.

Museums seem to be the most problematic. My gallery visits are based on stamina, not driven by content. Are comfortable benches so contrary to the enjoyment of art? Group tours leave me behind: I often catch up just as the docent is leading the group on to the next room.

This piece was first published in the newsletter of the Grantmaker's Evaluation Network, Volume 9/Number 1, Winter 2001. It is published here with permission from Doug Easterling.

2000, 218 pages; Northeastern University Press, (Boston, Massachusetts).

The following article is based on notes for a talk presented in June 2000 at Dance/USA's bi-annual conference, "New Directions in Moving Ground." Marda Kirn participated on a panel subtitled "Nurturing the Art of Creation" that invited panelists to talk about inventive ways that artists find time, space, and support to create new work.

Many years ago, I wanted to write a grant application to the NEA — as a kind of joke, and a kind of plea. I'd call it the Rip Van Winkle project.

October 2000, 100 pages, $16. National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC), 346 Ninth Street, San Francisco, California 94103, (415) 431-1391.

This paper was originally given at the 1987 Conference on Private Philanthropy and the Social Good. It was brought to our attention by a GIA member, and is reprinted here with permission from Cambridge University Press and the estate of Michael Hooker. © 1987 Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation.

2000, 52 pages, New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA).

Working paper writer, Mindy Levine; convening curator, Heather Hitchens

August 2000, 24 pages, Arts International.