Carmen Graciela Díaz's Blog

The Orontes Guitar Quartet are the first group to be brought together in a safe country, in this case, Canada, by the Artist Protection Fund (APF), the New York-based program that supports threatened artists around the world, reported The Globe and Mail.

A recent news article by Next City showcases the power of investing in the creative economy, focusing on Manhattan's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and its capital campaign.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts announced the expansion of its Regional Regranting Program to Cleveland and Denver where it will be administered by the non-profit arts organizations SPACES and RedLine respectively. Baltimore’s program, The Grit Fund (TGF), will come back on line after a one-year hiatus under the new administration of Baltimore Arts Realty Corp (BARCO).

Michael Bloom, a Fargo, North Dakota-based police officer and rapper, has partnered with Alabama-based rap artist DPB on two music videos that feature the Fargo community and showcase what community policing and creativity can achieve.

The Kenneth Rainin Foundation announced it awarded $3.775 million in arts grants to ten organizations that support artists and the creative process.

In a recent blog post for the American Alliance of Museums, Elizabeth Merritt cites the US Census Bureau's projection that the US will be “majority minority” sometime in the 2040s to make the case “that museum audiences do a pretty good job of reflecting American society…in the year 1900.”

Philadelphia was recently awarded $4 million by the MacArthur Foundation with the goal of decreasing the city’s jail population by 50 percent by 2020. The plan to cut the prison population comes after the city was able to surpass its original target reduction of 34 percent over three years, reported WHYY.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) announced its Arts Program granted $3.5M in lead funding to South Arts, based in Atlanta, GA, to launch Jazz Road, a national program designed to expand jazz artists’ touring to a wide range of communities.

This year's Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN) conference in Singapore gave prominence to the topic of impact investing. It is no surprise considering that Asia sets an example on its use of capital for social ends, according to an article in Alliance magazine.

Spelman College received recently a $5.4 million grant from the Walton Family Foundation to establish the Atlanta University Center Collective for the Study of Art History and Curatorial Studies.