Corporate Philanthropy

1997, 98 pages, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and
Association of Performing Arts Presenters, 1112 16th Street N.W., Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20036-4823, 202-833-2787

On March 7, 1997, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, in conjunction with Community Partners, ARTS Inc., and the California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, convened a workshop titled "Arts Incubators: Building Healthy Arts Organizations and Healthy Economies." The seventy-plus participants included representatives of arts organizations, local arts agencies, municipalities, and foundations.

Is it possible for money to be a conduit for love? The word philanthropy carries the meaning "love of humanity." Modern philanthropy brings together two seemingly irreconcilable concepts: love and money. But if we read through all the annual reports of all the foundations for the last ten years, I'd wager we would be hard-pressed to find the word "love" mentioned more than ten times.

1997, 75 pages, ARTS Action Research, P.O. Box 401082, Brooklyn, New York 11240, 718-797-3661

What is the financial health of the nonprofit sector and how do arts organizations compare with other nonprofits? A year-long study of the financial health of Illinois state's nonprofit sector — including the arts — provides a tool to begin answering such questions.

Entrepreneurship is a concept that receives considerably favorable attention in the nonprofit press. Whether referring to mission-related income ventures, non-traditional partnerships, or a redefinition of organizational culture, the word "entrepreneur" has an undeniably positive, even buoyant, connotation in today's nonprofit parlance.

February 1998, appx. 40 pages, Arts International, 809 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017, 212-984-5370, fax 212-984-5574, ainternational[at]iie.org

This past April, physicians, hospital administrators, therapists, artists, and healthcare designers from all over the country arrived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the ninth annual meeting of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, being held this year at Spectrum Health. This year's conference, The Art of Becoming, drew 124 participants, including twenty-seven speakers.

New resources and forums inspired this effort to digest significant readings in cultural participation. Researchers at the Rand Corporation, for example, have been compiling a comprehensive literature review of readings in cultural participation and audience development for the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund. The review will soon be available on the World Wide Web and will expand on the helpful bibliography previously created by Becky Pettit and Paul DiMaggio.

What often is lost in cultural policy conversations or research reports about the visual arts world is an examination of how ethnic-specific cultural practices and the dynamics of non-collecting museums and artist-centered organizations keep the art world from be-ing static and dull, from being victimized by the hierarchies of taste or the technocratic aims of cultural managers. Any analysis of the sociology of the visual arts field needs to speak about the relationship between the aesthetic content of a work and the contexts in which different aesthetic inquiries are supported.