Grantmakers in the Arts

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced today that Marc Vogl will leave his position as Program Officer in the Performing Arts Program, effective June 3, 2011. Marc has accepted the job of executive director at a San Francisco arts organization. He's been with the Hewlett Foundation since 2007.

Alexis McGill Johnson has begun her stint with the GIA Talk Back series. Her first post is Living at an Intersection. Alexis is executive director of the American Values Institute, a consortium of researchers, educators, and social justice advocates focused on understanding the role of bias in our society. Join her conversation.

The organization Arizona Town Hall gathers every few months around an important issue and creates a "forum for education and exploration of the topic and fosters leadership development." So it's exciting to see that the town hall held May 1-4 was titled Capitalizing on Arizona's Arts & Culture. And the featured speakers were Rocco Landesman, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts; and Marian Godfrey, Senior Director, Culture Initiatives, Pew Charitable Trusts.

The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH) has published its report Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America's Future Through Creative Schools. The report was produced with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and represents the culmination of 18 months of research, meetings with stakeholders, and site visits all over the country. It represents an in-depth review of the current condition of arts education, including an update of the current research base about arts education outcomes. Cited in the report is the GIA Thought Leader Forum on Arts and Education

From Tyler Green at Artinfo.com:

Although you’d hardly know it from Americans’ comparative silence... decreases in U.S. government funding to arts groups are almost certainly going to be deeper than the ones that have provoked such a strong reaction in the U.K. At the federal level, President Barack Obama proposed 13 percent cuts for both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities

The issue of new business models is a topic with which I am losing patience. To me it’s a “red herring” actually, when we should be discussing new product delivery models that engage more audiences, both young and old, utilize technologies and update the organizational structures and attitudes that may have worked forty years ago but are not working today. These are huge issues of leadership, boards of directors, management, community relevance and understanding audience trends.

From Graydon Royce, writing for the Minneapolis StarTribune, an inspiring report on four Minnesota arts leaders who have turned their organizations around, through innovation and elbow grease. One featured leader, Laura Zabel, executive director of Springboard for the Arts, made a notable appearance at the 2010 GIA Conference in Chicago as a presenter at the Support for Individual Artists Preconference.

Many organizations are joining the effort to aid the thousands of people who were affected by the enormous outbreak of tornados in late April. The Actors Fund has recently compiled a list of resources for artists who need help.