Private Foundation

When we initiated an artist award program at The Durfee Foundation a few years ago, we decided to use financial need as one of several criteria for support. Durfee is a relatively small family foundation, and the trustees feel strongly that the foundation's modest resources should be applied where they will make the most difference. This is true across the board at the foundation, not only in the arts, but in our other programs as well.

In recent months, debate has been renewed over whether learning in the arts causes a "spill-over" effect on children's learning in other fields, directly or by transfer, and whether that "spill-over" is what should be measured. The discussion was heightened by the publication of a special issue of The Journal of Aesthetic Education titled "The Arts and Academic Improvement: What the Evidence Shows," with guest editors Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland.1

I have been an artist and arts administrator for over thirty years. Now that I'm on the other side of what painter Chuck Close calls "temporarily abled," I find my own profession not very accommodating. Unexpectedly,five years ago I was partially paralyzed from complications of surgery.

Museums seem to be the most problematic. My gallery visits are based on stamina, not driven by content. Are comfortable benches so contrary to the enjoyment of art? Group tours leave me behind: I often catch up just as the docent is leading the group on to the next room.

This piece was first published in the newsletter of the Grantmaker's Evaluation Network, Volume 9/Number 1, Winter 2001. It is published here with permission from Doug Easterling.

2000, 218 pages, $19.95, Jossey-Bass

Don't let the medical bag with the big Red Cross on the cover of Alvin Reiss' CPR for Nonprofits fool you, the book is not about rescuing dying nonprofits. Instead it offers self-help for those willing to follow Reiss' prescription for breathing new life into organizations by identifying Challenges, developing a Plan and achieving Results.

Filmmaker, painter, and composer Jerome Hill established the Jerome Foundation in 1964, and was active in its operation until his death in 1972. The Foundation makes grants to support the creation and production of new artistic works by emerging artists, and contributes to these artists' professional advancement. The Foundation states its "belief in the vigorous and distinctive voices of artists whose works challenge our thinking and add meaning to our lives.

March 2000, 29 pages, executive summary; 126 pages, narrative report. ArtsMarket. Copies are available from Walter and Elise Haas Fund, One Lombard Street, Suite 305, San Francisco, California 94111, (415) 398-4474.

Sitting around tables at a conference center last May, we each joined five other participants in imagining and illustrating possibilities for artists who work in community arts programs for youth. We were part of a group of around thirty people convened as a working group first in San Jose, California in May 2000 and again in October in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Our aim was to explore how to build understanding and action toward the sustainable involvement of artists and arts professionals in youth and community development.

2000, CD-ROM, The McKnight Foundation, 600 TCF Tower, 121 South Eighth Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55402, (612) 333-4220.

This CD-ROM contains the results of The McKnight Foundation's recent study, the Cost of Culture, which polled 405 Minnesota artists about their economic and creative well-being. In 1996 the Foundation reported on the state of the arts in Minnesota, and now, as board chair Noa Staryk stated, "we felt it was time to take a closer look at the condition of individual artists."

Co-sponsored by the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS and the National Association of Artists Organizations, Friday, October 13, 2000, the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, California