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.""