GIA Blog

(12-13-10) The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has taken a strong public position against the Smithsonian's decision to remove a David Wojnarowicz video from "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture" at the National Portrait Gallery (story covered in Janet Brown's December 6 blog post): on Friday, the foundation's board voted unanimously to demand restoration of the work, threatening to otherwise refuse all future Smithsonian grant requests.

Enjoy!

(12-9-10) President Barack Obama today announced his “intent to nominate” Aaron Dworkin to Join National Council on the Arts. Dworkin, Founder and President of the Sphinx Organization, was a keynote speaker at the GIA conference in Chicago this past October. You can see his presentation to the GIA plenary here.

(12-8-10) Today, Metlife Foundation announced grants to eight museums in cities throughout the United States—New York to Texas to California. The awards, ranging from $50,000 to $75,000 and totaling $500,000, recognize "imaginative exhibitions and educational and public programs that extend [the museum's] reach into diverse communities and make art a part of people's lives."

(12-8-10) Responding to criticism of the sale at auction of more than 2,000 items from the Philadelphia History Museum collection—including a Raphaelle Peale still life that sold for almost $850,000—Gregory J. Kleiber, museum treasurer, noted: “We view the entire reconstruction project as preserving and caring for our largest artifact, the building...and making possible the display and conservation under museum-appropriate conditions of the other pieces of our collection.” (The proceeds of the sale will help fund a $5.8 million building renovation.) Kleiber's comment on the still life: “The Peale we felt was very much outside the mission. We’re a history museum, not an art museum. It’s a picture of a fish.”

(12-8-10) United States Artists today announced its 2010 Fellows. Each year, USA honors 50 of America’s finest artists with individual fellowships of $50,000 — unrestricted funds awarded across eight disciplines. We’re proud of our USA Fellows. To become a USA Fellow, one must be nominated. Each year nominations are made by a different anonymous group of arts leaders, critics, scholars, and artists chosen by USA. Nominators do not know one another; their identities remain confidential.

(12-7-10) GIA has added the 2010 Conference Proceedings page to this website. Here you'll find Photography and Video of the Chicago Conference, as well as an archived copy of the conference website. More conference-related materials will be added to this page as they become available.

(12-7-10) Registration is open for the Council on Foundations' 2011 Family Philanthropy Conference. The Conference will be held in New York City on January Sunday, 23 through Tuesday, January 25.

Complete conference details are online.

(12-7-10) On Sunday at around 1 pm, 37-year-old Washingtonian Mike Blasenstein hung an iPad around his neck, held some flyers in his hands -- and promptly got banned, or so he believes, from the Smithsonian Institution. That iPad was playing a video called “A Fire in My Belly,” by the artist David Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992 and Blasenstein was standing at the National Portrait Gallery, just outside the entrance to a gay-themed exhibition called “Hide/Seek.”

(12-6-10) At its November meeting, the GIA Board of Directors elected Regina Smith, the Kresge Foundation, as President and Peter Handler, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, as Vice President. Smith and Handler will serve a two-year term and join Treasurer Rose Ann Cleveland, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, and Secretary Alan Cooper, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, on the executive committee. At large members of the Executive Committee are Justin Laing, Heinz Endowments and John McGuirk, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.