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).