GIA Blog

The MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, announced its 2011 grants today. The Fund will underwrite 40 new projects this year spanning all disciplines of performing arts practices. A panel of peers selected the grantees from more than 800 submissions.

Grantmakers in the Arts is pleased to announce expanded web services to members, including a members-only web portal, launched in January 2011, offering access to an online directory of members and member organizations. Additional features include a simple and effective set of collaborative tools allowing members the ability to create online user groups for managing specific projects, as well as the ongoing activities of GIA member groups.

From her own blog, Beth Kanter reports from this week's Center for Effective Philanthropy conference where she participated in a panel discussion about social media, foundations, and grantees.

For her latest post to GIA's 2011 Talk Back blog, Alexis McGill Johnson addresses anxiety as an outcome of personal racial and cultural bias. She provides a link to web-based set of Implicit Association Tests (IATs) designed to ascertain levels of racial, age, and other bias. I took the race-related test and not only was I intrigued by the results, I had to consider the potential impossibility of a truly bias-free test.

A new report from the Alliance of Artists Communities examines the current landscape of support for dance through residency programs, identifies some of the barriers and challenges to participation, and offers a call to action for residency programs, funders, and others to develop greater resources in support of dancemakers. More than 600 dancemakers contributed to this research, as well as 200 artist residency programs. The Alliance's Dance Project is supported wholly by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Library of Congress has made a vast collection of historical sound recordings available on the Internet. The National Jukebox includes recordings from the Library's Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation as well as other contributing libraries and archives. The online collection already includes more than 10,000 recordings produced between 1901 and 1925. But content will be added regularly.

My current work considers the role that culture – namely visual imagery – has on reinforcing and perpetuating racial stereotypes and biases in our minds.  Our think tank, American Values Institute (AVI) is a consortium of researchers and social change … Continue reading →

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced today that Marc Vogl will leave his position as Program Officer in the Performing Arts Program, effective June 3, 2011. Marc has accepted the job of executive director at a San Francisco arts organization. He's been with the Hewlett Foundation since 2007.

Alexis McGill Johnson has begun her stint with the GIA Talk Back series. Her first post is Living at an Intersection. Alexis is executive director of the American Values Institute, a consortium of researchers, educators, and social justice advocates focused on understanding the role of bias in our society. Join her conversation.

The organization Arizona Town Hall gathers every few months around an important issue and creates a "forum for education and exploration of the topic and fosters leadership development." So it's exciting to see that the town hall held May 1-4 was titled Capitalizing on Arizona's Arts & Culture. And the featured speakers were Rocco Landesman, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts; and Marian Godfrey, Senior Director, Culture Initiatives, Pew Charitable Trusts.