Arts and Technology

Sharnita C. Johnson, chair-elect of Grantmakers in the Arts Board, has been chosen as a winner of the 2021 Knight Arts Challenge in Detroit!.

In an essay published by the National Endowment for the Arts, Eleanor Savage discussed how the pandemic "has highlighted and amplified technology’s central place in every aspect of our daily lives" and "the vital role of artists in the development and shaping of social and cultural tools and in world-building through technology."

The Communications Network designed an accessibility resource page to provide information and resources on how to create and maintain an inclusive environment that is accessible to those with disabilities.

The California Arts Council announced its new Innovations + Intersections pilot grant program, which seeks to serve as "a resource for nonprofits statewide to implement creative strategies that take on urgent community needs crossing the technology and health sectors," according to a press release.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a $3.5 million grant to Northwestern University's Center for the Scientific Studies in the Arts, a collaborative partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago to investigate and conserve art. The center has worked to uncover hidden details in paintings by Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Georgia O’Keeffe, and László Moholy-Nagy.

At a roundtable of the National Initiative for Arts & Health in the Military (NIAHM), leaders from the military, veteran, public, and private sectors met to discuss how to bring greater access to the arts and creative arts therapies for military service members, veterans, their families and caregivers. Ahead of the meeting, Americans for the Arts released a briefing summarizing progress that has been made on the recommendations from NIAHM’s seminal 2013 report, Arts, Health, and Well-being Across the Military Continuum.

On May 25, 2016, Grantmakers in the Arts gathered a cross-section of twenty-eight funders from the arts and environmental sectors for the Arts and Environmental Sustainability Thought Leader Forum at the New York Community Trust. Most foundations in attendance were represented by two people: a person from the arts and a person from the environment, each of whom were interested in collaborative work at this intersection. Helicon Collaborative organized and facilitated the session.

Art is not magic; most artists are not all that different from other people. However, many of them developed a skill or asset that most of us haven’t: a fascination for the undercurrent in our society, in our social encounters, in our practices, in our organizations.
 —  Jaap Warmenhoven, Stanford Social Innovation Review

The Cultural Data Project (CDP) was launched in fall 2004 as a statewide, web-based data collection system for arts and cultural organizations by a group of Pennsylvania grantmakers and arts advocates, including the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, the Heinz Endowments, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew), The Pittsburgh Foundation, and the William Penn Foundation.