FOOD FOR THOUGHT
John McCann proposes consolidating the major arts service organizations for efficiency and a single voice. The efficiency part seems reasonable. The single “influential” voice part seems a bit at odds with the healthy growing trend of hearing and valuing the diversity of American voices and communities. Don’t we already have one very effective and influential national voice in Americans for the Arts?
–Tommer
Why do we have so many free-standing, poorly funded national 501c3 service organizations in the arts field? It seems that as each discipline matured, each created its own support entity. Now as a mature sector, with the arts providing almost $200 billion in financial activity annually, we must become much more strategic and more influential on the national stage than the current structure allows. Having a service organization catering to each discipline and sub-discipline is expensive and redundant, while providing little leverage—the exact opposite of what’s needed.
Let’s consolidate the numerous national discipline-specific arts service organizations into one robust, influential, and vital American Institute for the Arts. Each discipline would have its own division where areas of specific need could be addressed, yet the new Institute would provide substantial economies of scale (no need for many CEO’s, development officers, etc. etc.), and a cohesive, coordinated approach toward three significant outcomes.