Cultural Policy

The bus-stop was outside the cathedral. I had been looking at the Mappa Mundi, with its rivers out of Paradise, and at the chained library, where a party of clergymen had gotten in easily, but where I had waited an hour and cajoled a verger before I even saw the chains. Now, across the street, a cinema advertised the Six-Five Special and a cartoon version of Gulliver's Travels. The bus arrived, with a driver and conductress deeply absorbed in each other. We went out of the city, over the old bridge, and on through the orchards and the green meadows and the fields red under the plough.

I would like to begin with a passage from the book Ceremony by the American Indian author Leslie Silko:

2000 reprint edition, first published in 1992, 296 pages, paper. Arts Extension Service Press, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, ISBN 0-275-94054-3

2000, 122 pages; Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), Denver Colorado, 303-629-1166.

A Report on the Ford Foundation Initiative
Edited by Mindy Levine

1999, 64 pages. Developed by New England Foundation for the Arts, edited and published by Arts International, ISBN 0-9676467-0-7, 212-674-9744

Policy Perspectives for Individuals, Institutions, and Communities
Edited by Gigi Bradford, Michael Gary, and Glenn Wallach
2000, 364 pages, $18.95 paper. The New Press, New York.

1995, 14 pages. Roadside Theater, 306 Madison Street, Whitesburg, Kentucky, 41858, 606-633-0108.

The majority of foundation and corporate giving executives value hotels and airlines that implement socially and environmentally responsible practices, according to a new study from The Conference Board, a membership and research organization for business. GIA members were included in the study.

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.

The theme of GIA's 2000 annual conference is The Source which refers literally to the beginnings of the Mississippi River and figuratively to the tributaries that together make art happen: the creativity of individual artists, the desire to come together in community, and the impulse to give. Author Paul Gruchow lives in Two Harbors, Minnesota, and writes of the Mississippi from first-hand experience. He is a participant in a GIA preconference, "Artists and the Natural World: Art-Making and Environmental Advocacy." This essay is published with his permission.