Below you will find an interesting article by the Vice
President of the Ford Foundation.  After reading this
articleI began to wonder what you, as museum
professionals see as a major issue in the art/museum
world.  What solutions have you come up with to solve
these problems or resolve the issues?  Any feedback is
welcomed and appreciated.  You may reply on or off
list.
Thank you
Christian Trabue
[log in to unmask]

Artists Thrive on Freedom and Freedom Thrives on the
Arts
Alison R. Bernstein, Vice President

Around the turn of the 19th century, Marcel Proust
wrote, "thanks to art, instead of seeing one world,
our own, we see it multiplied and as many original
artists as there are, so many worlds are at our
disposal." Now, a century later, artists throughout
the world are producing works that comment on and
reflect the increasing complexity of life and rapidity
of change. They are tackling issues of globalization
and its effects as well as probing how particular
traditions and customs continue to serve as guides to
thought and action. The arts help individuals,
communities and cultures express the human condition
in multiple and fundamental ways. The arts help us
define who we are, where we come from and what we
think.

The Ford Foundation supports the arts because we
believe artistic expression is a crucial aspect of a
healthy, well-functioning society. The arts help to
generate the understanding, hope and courage that
communities need to address their problems and
individuals need to fulfill their potential. In the
past year, the foundation took a bold step by
committing $42.5 million in one-time challenge grants
to 28 U.S.-based arts and cultural institutions. This
initiative nearly quadrupled the foundation's annual
arts appropriation and threw a spotlight on arts
funding as no single event had in the last 30 years of
the foundation's work in this field.

"New Directions/New Donors for the Arts" builds on a
tradition of the Ford Foundation's work with the
nonprofit arts sector that began in the 1960's and
culminated in 1983 with the launching of an
independent National Arts Stabilization Fund. This
fund worked with arts and cultural institutions in
specific cities or regions of the country, helping
them to achieve better financial controls, thereby
creating a more secure environment for high artistic
achievement. The arts stabilization movement is based
on a belief that an arts organization's economic
viability need not come at the expense of artistic
integrity, that arts managers need capital reserves
and technical assistance to keep their financial
houses in order.


Courtesy of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre/Josef
Astor

The "New Directions/New Donors" initiative borrows
much of its approach from arts stabilization but goes
beyond it in three important ways. First, it is both
national and comprehensive in scope. The 28 arts
organizations were chosen after a process that
reviewed more than 250 arts and cultural institutions
across the United States. They include all the major
arts disciplines, from media to poetry to museums to
dance companies and puppet theatre. Second, the
initiative aims to help these institutions identify
and secure funding from new philanthropists,
especially newly wealthy individual donors, rather
than the familiar corporate or philanthropic partners.
Third, and perhaps most important, the initiative has
provided funds to a group of arts institutions that
exemplify extraordinary creativity. These 28
organizations are reshaping their respective fields
and offering opportunities for artists to work in new
directions and play innovative roles in their
communities-literally changing the contours of the
arts in the United States.

The initiative has met and in some cases exceeded its
goals. Several grantees are already close to matching
the funding the foundation provided. Others have
developed new artistic partnerships reflecting the
boundless creative energy that characterizes the
group. Each grantee is encouraged to share "best
practices" with the others, and with the wider
community of arts organizations. Though still in its
first year, this initiative appears to have found a
dramatic way to link prosperity to creativity.

Although the "New Directions/New Donors" initiative is
one of the foundation's most far-reaching arts
efforts, it has limitations. For example, it is
focused only on arts in the United States. Looking
ahead, we intend to find appropriate ways to affirm
the importance of the arts as part of our overseas
field work. The foundation now has program officers
working with vibrant arts communities in Nigeria,
South Africa, Egypt, Palestine, India, Indonesia and
Brazil, where there are resources that can be
effectively tapped to support the arts. Artists in
these countries thrive on freedom, and supporting the
arts-especially artists who challenge the state-is a
sure sign of a society's support for democratic
values.


Courtesy of Brooklyn Academy of Music
The Harvey Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Helping arts organizations maxi-mize their creativity
by developing stabler and more long-term funding
ultimately helps artists. But more immediately, there
is a growing need-some might even call it a crisis-in
the United States to build a pool of funds for the
direct sup-port of individual artists, especially
younger artists. Funding for individ-uals from the
National Endowment for the Arts has dropped by more
than 40 percent over the last decade. And while
consumers are willing to pay phenomenal prices for new
paintings or hundreds of dollars to attend a single
performance of an opera, the art-consuming public has
not shown much interest in underwriting the work of
new independent artists over a period of time.

The foundation is concerned about developing more
pathways for artists who can move into the
organizations that "New Directions/New Donors"
supports. Thus, along with several other donors, the
Education, Media, Arts and Culture program is funding
research and a major feasibility study to examine
whether there is a need for a new national entity
focused on helping individual artists and nurturing
their talent. The results of the study will be
available in the coming year. We are eager to work
collabo-ratively with other foundations to see what
can be done to provide higher levels of support
directly to artists.


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Find a job, post your resume.
http://careers.yahoo.com

=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:

The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).

If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).