Steve's Blog

From Michael Cooper, at The New York Times:

The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts announces its 2014 Grants to Individuals, which will award over $520,000 to 68 projects that demonstrate innovative and thought-provoking ideas in architecture. The grants will provide direct support to individuals for the research, development, and presentation of publications, exhibitions, films, new media initiatives, and other programs.

NEA Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa and Blue Star Families CEO Kathy Roth-Douquet announced the fifth annual launch of Blue Star Museums, a collaboration among the National Endowment for the Arts, Blue Star Families, the Department of Defense, and more than 2,000 museums across America to offer free admission to the nation’s service members, including National Guard and Reserve, and their families from Memorial Day through Labor Day 2014.

For distinguished arts education advocates Frank Gehry and Malissa Feruzzi Shriver, their arrival this week in Washington, D.C. signals a new day, and renewed hope, for ten California elementary schools among the lowest performing in the state. Gehry and Feruzzi Shriver are headed to the White House to take part in the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH) launch being hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama. The First Lady will welcome state affiliates to the Turnaround Arts program of which a handful of states were accepted, with California having the largest statewide affiliate program to date.

The Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST) has announced the appointment of Moy Eng as executive director, effective June 1. Ms. Eng has worked for over three decades in the philanthropic sector as a grantmaker, consultant and senior manager in areas as diverse as arts, education, renewable energy, lesbian and gay rights, and international human rights. As executive director, she will champion CAST’s mission to create stable physical spaces for arts and cultural organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area to facilitate equitable urban transformation.

Vision and Voice: The Role of Leadership and Dialogue in Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion was produced in partnership with the D5 Coalition and the Seattle University Nonprofit Leadership Program. The report is the product of a year-long process of research and dialogue with northwest foundation leaders about issues of diversity, equity and inclusion in philanthropy.

The Reva and David Logan Foundation has announced the appointment of Peter Handler as Executive Director. He comes to the Foundation from his position as Program Director of The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. The Logan Foundation supports the arts, investigative reporting, scholarship and social justice.

South Arts has released the results of multi-year research investigating arts education in the South. The reports, Arts Education in the South Phase I: Public School Data and Principals’ Perspectives and Arts Education in the South Phase II: Profiles of Quality, look at access to and quality of arts education in K-12 public schools in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee through a set of quantitative and qualitative research. The reports were commissioned by South Arts with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and nine participating state arts agencies. The first phase of the research was compiled with data collected from 4,400 principals (29.3% of those in the region). The second phase of the research includes nine case studies of model programs conducted by the Southeast Center for Education in the Arts at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

From Isaac Brown, Legislative Counsel to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies:

From Charles Segars, CEO for Ovation, writing for Capitol Weekly: