Arts Research

Texas is much in the news today. Its environmental record and education reforms are bandied around as political hot potatoes in this year's presidential race. So what has George W. Bush, governor of the state, done for the arts in Texas? Basically, he has kept arts funding stable in the state budget. On a more personal level, the Bushes received the first two state arts affinity license plates (Texas's arts license plates are the most popular affinity plates in the state) and have agreed to serve as co-hosts of the Texas Medal of Arts event in spring 2000.

1999, 316 pages, $22.50 (softcover); New York University Press, New York and London

1999, 40 pages, $15; National Performance Network, San Francisco, California, 415-666-1870, info@npnweb.org

1999, 36 pages. A report on meetings of The American Assembly on November 13, 1998 at The Getty Center, California and on April 8-9, 1999 at Arden House, New York.

1998, 80 pages; Association of Performing Arts Presenters, 1112 16th Street N.W., Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20036.

This attractive handbook presents a study of documentation methods from The Arts Partners Program, an audience development initiative sponsored by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. The initiative funded performing artists' residencies during which presenting organizations used a variety of strategies to engage audiences with the resident artists' work.

1999, 128 pages; National Arts Journalism Program, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, 2950 Broadway, MC 7200, New York, New York 10027.

There is both good news and bad news in Reporting the Arts, the first comprehensive study of journalistic arts coverage in the United States, recently completed by the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University with funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts.

1998, 344 pages, $18; Critical Press, Gunk Foundation, New York.

How can the arts promote positive social change? That's what the staff and board of the Kentucky Foundation for Women wanted to find out. We thought we knew. Or at least we thought we had a pretty good idea. After all, our mission is to promote positive social change through varied feminist expression in the arts, and we have been around for fifteen years.

A diverse group of grantmakers from Oregon and Western Washington who support arts and culture gathered in Seattle on February 25, hosted by the Pacific Northwest Grantmakers Forum and GIA. Participants represented large and small grantmakers and reflected the giving of families and corporations, as well as nonprofit and public grantmakers.

The need to better understand and articulate the broad societal value of arts and culture is at the heart of a discussion among a growing circle of arts grantmakers and scholars in the U.S.