I've been meaning to pass this on to the list for a few
days but it has been a very busy week.  An article in
last Sunday's New York Times reported on the Lannan
Foundation.  "One of the country's most influential
supporters of contemporary art, the Lannan Foundation in
Los Angeles, decided to stop spending $2 million to $3
million annually to buy works of contemporary art and
donate the money to the rural poor instead.
The foundation will continue to spend several million
dollars a year on grants to museums for shows that are
difficult to find money for and will continue to
organize and play host to shows at its own small
galleries, as well as to award literary prizes.  But
its 1,750-work collection will not be expanded.
The shift in emphasis is a poignant example of the
heightened competition for money between the arts and
the social services."
Later on in the article they quote Kathy Halbreich,
director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, as
saying "I hope we don't see this reallocation of
resources to the rural poor as further indication that
the arts will be pitted against social needs" ... Feeding
the hungry and healing the sick are "critical", ... but
art is "also a life and death issue.""