Grantmakers in the Arts

By Janet Brown from her blog Better Together

Peter Singer’s Sunday, August 11 New York Times opinion piece entitled “Good Charity, Bad Charity” was a shocker. One would expect something a bit more far-reaching and not quite so simplistic from a bioethicist.

From the August 21 National Endowment for the Arts press release:

It is with great sadness that the National Endowment for the Arts acknowledges the passing of 2000 NEA Jazz Master Marian McPartland. As host of the renowned public radio show Piano Jazz, McPartland played a key role in helping to popularize jazz through her intricate knowledge of the art form and her prowess on the piano. NEA Senior Deputy Chairman Joan Shigekawa said, "Marian McPartland faced many challenges playing jazz as a woman in the 1940s. She was one of the first women to lead her own band, landing an eight-year residency at the historic Hickory House in New York City before going on to a career as the host of Piano Jazz where she was integral to raising the profile of jazz nationwide."

In a Huffpost Arts & Culture post titled "The Private Sector's Secret Weapon," Americans for the Arts' president and CEO Robert Lynch responds to The Conference Board's list of the top five global challenges for CEOs by linking the challenges–human capital, operational excellence, innovation, customer relationships, and global political economic risk–to arts-related practices, skills, and outcomes.

Writing for Huffington Post, Agnes Gund responds to the U.S. House Appropriations Committee's recent vote to cut the budgets of the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities by 49% in 2014, including arguments made for and against the cuts by House members:

I want to suggest that we must mount a braver defense of the arts, a more vigorous, vital, real-life defense. I have thought a lot about the true, deep and telling, urgent importance of the arts to Americans. In this time of financial trouble and international turmoil, the arts and the humanities provide more than 'enhancement,' more than 'benefit.' They provide insight; they provide incentive; they inspire. They give us answers.

In partnership with the Office of the Governor, the Arizona Commission on the Arts is pleased to announce that celebrated poet and Arizona State University Regents’ Professor Alberto Ríos has been named the inaugural Poet Laureate for the State of Arizona.

John R. Killacky, writing for the Burlington Free Press:

This report, whose theme is “working together to keep artists working,” takes a look at CERF+’s expanded program offerings and  increased numbers of artists served during a period of great economic uncertainty. With natural disasters occurring more frequently and often with greater force, CERF+ has taken a lead role in preparedness, which is key to building resilient arts communities around the country.

From Katrina Schwartz, for the blog Mind/Shift: