GIA Blog

Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel today named his Cultural Affairs Leadership Team, announcing that Michelle T. Boone will be the Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and David McDermott will serve as her Chief of Staff. The Mayor-elect also named the leaders of a reinvigorated Chicago Cultural Affairs Advisory Committee. Nora Daley will serve as the Committee’s Chair and Marj Halperin as the Vice Chair.

Twenty-one arts journalists from 13 states have been chosen to participate as fellows in USC Annenberg's seventh National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater. Fellows include theater critics, reporters, editors and general arts & entertainment journalists. The Institute will be held in Los Angeles from June 13 to 22, with the generous support of the NEA.

NYFA Source has updated its Disaster Resources page with local resources for tornado victims in Alabama. Inquiries can be forwarded to their hotline number: 1-800-232-2789.

CERF+ is also asking for information on artists who were affected by the massive tornado outbreak last week.

Artists, leaders, and advocates will gather in Chicago on Saturday, May 7, for a TEDx event to talk about the paths ahead of us and what the arts need to do to remain relevant, active, and thriving into a new age. The long list of participants includes David Dombrosky, executive director of the Center for Arts Management and Technology; Lisa Canning, founder of The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship; and Ian David Moss, research director for Fractured Atlas. The event was organized by David Zoltan, director of ArtsAppeal.

In May, the photo banner at the top of the website features a rotating series of performance and artwork photographs provided by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, a GIA member. The photographs document projects funded through the Creative Work Fund, a program of the Haas Fund supported by two additional GIA members, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The James Irvine Foundation. Our gratitude to Frances Phillips, Program Director for the Arts and The Creative Work Fund at the Haas Fund, for curating this first-class selection of images.

Video from last week's Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media webinar, a funder briefing co-sponsored by GIA, is now available on the GFEM website, here. Titled Sustaining and Growing Community Media Centers: A Funder Briefing, the excellent presentation—I participated and walked away with a great deal—covers the following:

Chris Langston, program director at the John A. Hartford Foundation, participated in the April 6th Thought Leader Forum on Arts and Aging, which was co-sponsored by GIA, Grantmakers in Aging, and the National Center for Creative Aging. He reflects on the days proceedings on the Hartford Foundation blog, outlining several potential strategies for a collaboration between arts, aging, and health funders.

A new Research Note from the National Endowment for the Arts, Time and Money: Using Federal Data to Measure the Value of Performing Arts Activities, analyzes the value of arts and culture through concrete monetary measures, through ‘revealed preferences’ as seen through consumer spending, and through time use, which is a ‘quality of life’ measure.

I have Tyler Green's daily 3rd of May (titled after Goya's painting of the same name) post supplied to my iGoogle home page, also daily. Green's description of his undertaking follows below. My two cents: By pairing current events (or opinions or quips) with art, the gravity of the moment and the resonance of the artwork, they both grow.

Rick Moyers, from The Chronicle of Philanthropy:

The general aversion of many boards to talking about finances in any detail creates an initial roadblock to conversations about reserves. And the lack of a widely understood and commonly used definition of operating reserves doesn’t help. It’s hard to talk about something if you don’t know what it is.