Grantmakers in the Arts

(6-21-10) Arena Stage in Washington DC, is hiring playwrights as employees, with salaries and health benefits -- and even access to office supplies. The venture is part of a major change at Arena, which is preparing to open a $125 million three-theater campus in the fall and to try to rebrand itself as a national center for American theater.

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(6-18-10) Should BP's arts and other philanthropic programs be reconsidered in light of its post-Deepwater Horizon drop in market value (45 percent) and the $20 billion fund the company is establishing to pay damages to spill victims? For now, the answer is no.

(6-18-10) Warren Buffett and Bill Gates called Wednesday on their billionaire peers to give away half of their wealth.

The pronouncement by Messrs. Buffett and Gates stems from a series of dinners the two men held over the past year to discuss the effects of the recession on philanthropy with some of the nation's richest people, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, investor Ronald O. Perelman and David Rockefeller, his family's patriarch.

(6-17-10) What questions should performing arts leaders be asking themselves right now? Economic shifts, global and individual reach in technologies, the pursuit of strong and delineated national identities and the appetite for a voice from younger people are all changing how the performing arts are viewed, created and consumed. Fifty performing arts leaders from around the world gathered in February 2010 for a Salzburg Global Seminar focused on opportunities for reinventing the performing arts at a time when many factors are contributing towards a large-scale disruption of the arts.

(6-17-10) James N. Wood, the J. Paul Getty Trust President and Chief Executive, was found dead of natural causes in his Los Angeles home last Friday. Wood, who is credited with increasing the trust's stability and credibility in the art world after taking the helm in early 2007, was an art historian with nearly 30-years experience in curatorial and executive positions at prominent art institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum, the St. Louis Art Museum, and, from 1980-2004, the Art Institute of Chicago.

(6-15-10) Agnes Gund for the Huffington Post:

Where do the arts fit in relation to other important parts of our society? Where are they situated in the consciousness of our time? I find myself thinking about this a lot, worrying that the fit is, in a word, bad. All too often in our society, the arts are shut out; they are left to stand alone, at an uncomfortable angle away from the experiences and events we otherwise share as citizens, as thinkers, as advocates and as agents of change.

(6-14-10) I’ve been executive director of Grantmakers in the Arts for 18 months. During that time I’ve learned so much about the dedication, courage and passion of our members for improving the state of artists and arts organizations. Our members believe strongly in their work and actively advocate for the arts within their own institutions, which represent state and local government, private and community foundation presidents and boards and corporate decision-makers. It’s a big and sometimes stressful job these days.

(6-14-10) The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has awarded a two-year, $3.3 million grant to the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) to support NEFA's National Dance Project. The grant increases the foundation's total support of the National Dance Project, over a thirteen-year period, to $21 million.