Grantmakers in the Arts

Like a ship heading towards open ocean, progressive art is constantly moving away from us. Culture does not slow down or stop when visual art is cut from school curricula or when art critics are fired from major newspapers. Rather it is the community that suffers, as the public becomes distanced from its own culture. Unaware of the innovations that are going on and why, the community can become alienated from art. The artists can also suffer, though they are still fundamentally connected to culture in ways that the public is not. Without critics, artists can pursue unproductive or backwards paths.

New platforms are allowing museums to break free of the confines of the academic ivory tower and engage with their communities like never before.

Ian Padgham, former social media guru of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art says museums started flocking to social media in 2009. Museums initially used social media just to advertise events and exhibits, but quickly jumped into a world of interactive education and user generated content.

How does the recent report from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities help to inform the public debate on arts education? What other new research data is out there (FRSS, NEA, WESTAF etc).

Burning Man—that once-a-year sojourn to the Nevada desert—is much more than a hedonistic experiment in self-reliance, art, the sharing economy, and psychotropic drugs. It's also an event that has spawned a tight-knit worldwide community that has created a number of Burning Man-related organizations, including Burners Without Borders, Black Rock Solar, and the Black Rock Arts Foundation (a group that brings public art installations to cities). It's only fitting that the Burning Man community's latest do-gooder venture—the Burning Man Project—will work on revitalizing a down-and-out area of San Francisco, Burning Man's home city.