CAA News Today
New National Project to Examine Impact of Arts Training
posted May 15, 2008
Artists often don’t end up working in the exact fields in which they trained. Instead, they may work at the boundaries between disciplines. Artists frequently move between the nonprofit and commercial sectors; some hold multiple jobs. Moreover, there is a growing demand for arts training, both from students and the rising number of employers in the creative economy. Arts-training institutions and civic policy makers need good data to respond and plan effectively.
The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) was launched this month to examine questions about the impact of arts training. The project will provide a first-ever in-depth look at factors that help or hinder the careers of graduates of arts high schools, arts colleges and conservatories, and arts schools and departments within colleges and universities.
Arts alumni who graduated five, ten, fifteen, and twenty years earlier will provide information about their formal arts training. They will report the nature of their current arts involvement, reflect on the relevance of arts training to their work and further education, and describe turning points, obstacles, and key relationships and opportunities that influenced their lives and careers.
The results of the annual online survey and data-analysis system will help schools to strengthen their programs of study by tracking what young artists need to advance in their fields. In addition, the information will allow institutions to compare their performance against other schools in order to identify areas where improvements are needed.
The Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research will administer the annual survey in cooperation with the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University. Steven J. Tepper, Curb Center associate director, says “SNAAP is a milestone for cultural-policy research, because it will go beyond profiles of individual artists and provide a comprehensive look at the creative workforce in America and the critical role of training institutions in preparing artists and creative workers.” The project will be guided by a National Advisory Board comprised of leaders from all types and levels of arts-training institutions, visual and performing artists, and arts and community-development leaders from the nonprofit and commercial sectors.
Over time, SNAAP findings will allow institutions to learn more about the impact of their educational programs to better understand, for example, how students in different majors use their arts training in their careers and other aspects of their lives. Policy makers and community leaders will be able to use SNAAP findings to understand local, regional, and national arts workforce issues and market patterns. The results will also indicate how students who have trained intensively in the arts contribute to their communities and different areas of the economy.
According to George Kuh, Indiana University professor and SNAAP project director, the arts-alumni survey will be extensively field-tested in 2008 and 2009 with as many as one hundred institutions before its first national administration in 2010. “We’ll learn a lot about what matters in arts training from these early results and also be able to fine-tune the survey for future use,” Kuh said. The Curb Center will host a national conference in 2010 to explore the educational and cultural-policy implications of SNAAP findings.
After several years of studying the need for and feasibility of the project, the Surdna Foundation recently awarded a five-year $2,500,000 leadership grant to help launch the project. In addition, support from other funders is anticipated to support the testing phases of the project and insure widespread participation. SNAAP is expected to become self-sustaining through institutional participation fees by 2012.
Further project information is available on the SNAAP website.
CAA at Arts Advocacy Day
posted May 01, 2008
Andrea Kirsh is an independent curator and scholar and an adjunct faculty member at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. She is also a member of the CAA Board of Directors.
I don’t usually hang around with the likes of Robert Redford, John Legend, and Peter Yarrow, but last month I did. With Nia Page, CAA director of membership, development, and marketing, and Sara Hines, CAA marketing and development assistant, I joined these performers and other arts advocates at the House Office Building in Washington, DC, as part of Arts Advocacy Day. Held March 31-April 1, 2008, the event was the twenty-first year that Americans for the Arts has brought together grassroots advocates from across the country to lobby Congress for arts-friendly legislation. CAA has been a longtime cosponsor of these important days for American arts and culture.
More than five-hundred-plus individuals from institutions and locations all over the country descended on Capitol Hill to raise awareness about funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Department of Education, along with specific bills under consideration in the Senate and House of Representatives concerning tax laws, Federal Communications Commission regulations, and foreign exchange policy.
Redford, Legend, Yarrow, and the rest of us were among a coalition of representatives from the NEA and Americas for the Arts who addressed the House Subcommittee on Interior Appropriations in the first congressional hearing in over a decade dedicated to the importance of federal arts funding. We were outside the hearing room with an overflow crowd of more than two hundred that lined an entire third-floor hallway.
Some historical background: after the culture wars that followed the outcry against funding Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, and others, the NEA’s budget was cut from $176 million in 1992 to $99.5 million the following year, with grants to individual artists completely eliminated and the endowment’s other grant programs sorely lacking support. During the past fifteen years, the agency has slowly been recovering, with an encouraging $20 million increase in 2007, bringing the current budget to $144.7 million. Still $30 million shy of the baseline goal to reach 1992 levels, the current presidential administration has now proposed a $16 million cut for 2009.
The United States is unusual among advanced democracies in having no federal department of culture; current arts legislation is spread over more than fourteen congressional committees, which also have responsibility for forest fires, homeland security, and the entire tax system. The current Congress is looking at funding for the NEA, NEH, Institute of Museum and Library Services, arts education, and State Department cultural exchanges; tax legislation allowing artists to take fair-market-value tax deductions for donations to museums; and the inclusion of arts education within No Child Left Behind legislation (as well as several issues affecting the performing arts).
I was among the thirty-four Pennsylvanians who met in Senator Arlen Spector’s office with his staff member, Mary Beth McGowan, to ask for support for arts-friendly bills and to tell stories of how federal funding has benefited the state. Spector is a member of the Senate Cultural Caucus and a long-time friend of the arts, but that doesn’t make such visits any less important. The group included fourteen students in Drexel University’s Arts Administration Program (who had raised their own funds for the trip) and Silagh White of ArtsLehigh, an initiative at Lehigh University to integrate arts throughout the curriculum and educate an enthusiastic audience; two Lehigh undergraduates joined her.
Page and Hines joined seventy-five New York art supporters who lobbied the offices of Representatives Charles Rangel, Carolyn Maloney, and Louise McIntosh Slaughter and Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, to name a few, urging Congress to support increased funding for the NEA and NEH and to cosponsor the Artist-Museum Partnership Act. They also urged Congress to appropriate $53 million for the US Department of Education’s Arts in Education programs in the fiscal year 2009 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill.
During a training session on the first day, we were told, “If you don’t get involved, your opponents will.” I can’t overemphasize the importance of such lobbying. If you can’t make the trip to DC, you can still phone, write, or e-mail your senators and representatives about arts issues. They want to hear from their constituents, and the more personal your stories about the impact of arts policies and federal funding–which includes federal monies channeled through state and local arts councils–the better. Any time an individual or organization receives a federal grant, it is appropriate to thank both senators and congressman. If the grant benefits a number of people, such as funded research, which has an impact on teaching, mention it. You can keep up with current legislation at the Americans for the Arts website; if you sign up for its e-list, the organization can supply boiler letters and e-mails to you when action is needed. The website also holds a wealth of information on voting records and other means of gauging your representative’s stance on cultural policy. Get involved today!
Charges Against Steve Kurtz Dismissed
posted Apr 15, 2008
On April 21, 2008, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara ruled to dismiss the indictment against Steven Kurtz, an artist and professor of visual studies at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
In June 2004, Kurtz was charged with two counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud stemming from an exchange of $256 worth of harmless bacteria with Robert Ferrell, professor of human genetics at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health. Kurtz had planned to use the bacteria in an educational art exhibit about biotechnology with his award-winning art and theater collective, the Critical Art Ensemble.
Kurtz’s lawyer, Paul Cambria, said that his client was “pleased and relieved that this ordeal may be coming to an end.” The prosecution has the right to appeal this dismissal. How the prosecution will proceed is unknown at this time. If an appeal were undertaken the case would move to the New York Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
Lucia Sommer, coordinator of the Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund, which raises funds for Kurtz’s legal defense, said, “We are all grateful that after reviewing this case, Judge Arcara took appropriate action.” She added that “this decision is further testament to our original statements that Dr. Kurtz is completely innocent and never should have been charged in the first place.”
For more information about the case and to download a PDF of the ruling, visit the Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund website.
Background on Kurtz and the Critical Art Ensemble
The Critical Art Ensemble, which Kurtz cofounded in 1987 with Steven Barnes, has won numerous awards for its bio art, including the prestigious 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Grant, honoring more than two decades of distinguished work. The group has been commissioned to exhibit and perform in many of the world’s cultural institutions–including the Natural History Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, both in London; the Whitney Museum of American Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, both in New York; the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, DC; Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt; the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; and many more.
Participate in the 2008 Global Candlelight Vigil
posted Mar 15, 2008
Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) and Donny George, former director of the Iraq Museum and former president of the Iraq State Board of Antiquities, invite you to participate in the 2008 Global Candlelight Vigil to mark the fifth anniversary of the 2003 looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.
In the five years since this terrible event, nearly half the missing works have been recovered. Yet thousands of Iraq Museum artifacts remain at large. Meanwhile, museums around the world are increasingly confronted by security challenges, and rampant looting at archaeological sites continues unabated around the world.
“Now is the time for people and museum professionals to gather together: to remember the events of 2003 and take steps to ensure that no museum in the world suffers a similar fate,” says George, who is now a visiting professor at Stony Brook University.
In a global call to action, George urges museum directors and staff, university faculty and students, and citizens around the world to use the fifth anniversary of the looting of the Iraq Museum as an opportunity to reenergize our efforts to protect the world’s cultural heritage.
Museums are encouraged to treat April 10-12, 2008, every year as a time to conduct security audits and update their internal risk management and due diligence practices. Likewise, universities are invited to use these three days every year for education and public awareness about the academic, ethical, and legal consequences of the destruction of cultural heritage with classroom projects, panel discussions, symposiums, or exhibitions.
The SAFE website offers suggestions for universities, museums, community groups, and others to plan an event of any size. SAFE Candlelight Vigil Kits offer a wealth of resources, including the DVD documentary Robbing the Cradle of Civilization: The Looting of Iraq’s Ancient Treasures (Canadian Broadcasting Company) or the documentary Thieves of Baghdad (Al Jazeera). Other relevant videos, such as a Charlie Rose interview with George from 2007, can be used, and SAFE also provides publicity tools.
Hosting a vigil in your community is easy:
• Choose a location and time on April 10, 11, or 12
• Schedule your event and post it to the Host a Vigil section of the SAFE website so that members of your community can learn of it and attend
• Use e-cards, customizable announcement flyers, buttons, posters, postcards, and the press-release template to help publicize your vigil
• Distribute the Candlelight Vigil brochure for distribution at your event. The brochure is being developed in conjunction with the exhibition Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago
• Gather with friends, family, colleagues, professors, and students. Pause for a moment of silence and light a candle. Discuss the destruction of cultural heritage and looting of ancient sites around the world, fueled by the global trade in illicit antiquities
• Document your vigil with digital photographs or video and send them to SAFE. We will use them in a compilation Video Memorial that includes gatherings from around the world
• You may also choose to light a virtual candle and add your name to the list of other supporters
For more information about the 2008 Global Candlelight Vigil for the Iraq Museum, contact us. Also join our e-mail list to receive periodic newsletters about SAFE activities.
SAFE is a nonprofit organization that creates educational programs and media campaigns to raise public awareness about the importance of preserving cultural heritage worldwide. Having no political affiliations, SAFE is a coalition of professionals in communications, media, and advertising working alongside experts in the academic, legal, and law enforcement communities.
Participate in the 2008 Global Candlelight Vigil
posted Mar 01, 2008
Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) and Donny George, former director of the Iraq Museum and former president of the Iraq State Board of Antiquities, invite you to participate in the 2008 Global Candlelight Vigil to mark the fifth anniversary of the 2003 looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.
In the five years since this terrible event, nearly half the missing works have been recovered. Yet thousands of Iraq Museum artifacts remain at large. Meanwhile, museums around the world are increasingly confronted by security challenges, and rampant looting at archaeological sites continues unabated around the world.
“Now is the time for people and museum professionals to gather together: to remember the events of 2003 and take steps to ensure that no museum in the world suffers a similar fate,” says George, who is now a visiting professor at Stony Brook University.
In a global call to action, George urges museum directors and staff, university faculty and students, and citizens around the world to use the fifth anniversary of the looting of the Iraq Museum as an opportunity to reenergize our efforts to protect the world’s cultural heritage.
Museums are encouraged to treat April 10-12, 2008, every year as a time to conduct security audits and update their internal risk management and due diligence practices. Likewise, universities are invited to use these three days every year for education and public awareness about the academic, ethical, and legal consequences of the destruction of cultural heritage with classroom projects, panel discussions, symposiums, or exhibitions.
The SAFE website offers suggestions for universities, museums, community groups, and others to plan an event of any size. SAFE Candlelight Vigil Kits offer a wealth of resources, including the DVD documentary Robbing the Cradle of Civilization: The Looting of Iraq’s Ancient Treasures (Canadian Broadcasting Company) or the documentary Thieves of Baghdad (Al Jazeera). Other relevant videos, such as a Charlie Rose interview with George from 2007, can be used, and SAFE also provides publicity tools.
Hosting a vigil in your community is easy:
• Choose a location and time on April 10, 11, or 12
• Schedule your event and post it to the Host a Vigil section of the SAFE website so that members of your community can learn of it and attend
• Use e-cards, customizable announcement flyers, buttons, posters, postcards, and the press-release template to help publicize your vigil
• Distribute the Candlelight Vigil brochure for distribution at your event. The brochure is being developed in conjunction with the exhibition Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago
• Gather with friends, family, colleagues, professors, and students. Pause for a moment of silence and light a candle. Discuss the destruction of cultural heritage and looting of ancient sites around the world, fueled by the global trade in illicit antiquities
• Document your vigil with digital photographs or video and send them to SAFE. We will use them in a compilation Video Memorial that includes gatherings from around the world
• You may also choose to light a virtual candle and add your name to the list of other supporters
For more information about the 2008 Global Candlelight Vigil for the Iraq Museum, contact us. Also join our e-mail list to receive periodic newsletters about SAFE activities.
SAFE is a nonprofit organization that creates educational programs and media campaigns to raise public awareness about the importance of preserving cultural heritage worldwide. Having no political affiliations, SAFE is a coalition of professionals in communications, media, and advertising working alongside experts in the academic, legal, and law enforcement communities.
President’s Budget Requests $271,246,000 for IMLS
posted Feb 15, 2008
President George W. Bush’s budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2009 seeks $271,246,000 for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The request, which was released February 4 by the White House, represents an increase of $26,023,000, or 10.6 percent, over the FY 2008 enacted level for the institute’s programs and administration.
Highlights of the IMLS budget request include the following:
$214,432,000 for library grant programs, an increase of $14,469,000 from the FY 2008 appropriation for the same purposes. This includes an increase of $10.6 million for the Grants to States program, bringing it to $171,500,000. This amount will enable the full implementation of a law passed in 2003 to provide a more equitable distribution of state formula grants. The request also includes $26,500,000 for the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program.
$39,897,000 for museum grants, an increase of $8.6 million from the FY 2008 appropriation for the same purposes. The request includes $3.8 million for Conservation Project support, $22.2 million for Museums for America, $2.1 million for 21st Century Museum Professionals, and $1.35 million for Museum Grants for African American History and Culture.
This request includes $2.5 million for collecting public-library and state-library statistics, $500,000 to launch a pilot program on museum data collection, and $1 million to study and report on the state of libraries and museums in the United States.
You can download two PDF documents detailing the institute’s appropriations history and budget information: IMLS Appropriations History 1998-2009 and IMLS Requested and Enacted Budgets 2006-9.
About the Institute of Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The institute’s mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development.
Participants Sought for March Hearings on Museum Funding
posted Jan 15, 2008
Avid museum goers, community leaders, museum professionals, and individuals who have encountered barriers to museum-going are encouraged to make their views known at one of three public hearings on the use of public funds for museums, announced Anne-Imelda Radice, director of the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The institute is the primary source of federal funding for the nation’s museums and libraries.
“In order to fully understand the impact of public funds for museums, we must hear from interested members of the public on the use of taxpayers’ dollars for these cultural institutions,” Radice said.
IMLS is particularly interested in testimony from school coordinators, older people, special-needs groups, and directors of cultural tours. IMLS would also like to hear from leaders who can speak about the use of public funds for cultural purposes based on their understanding of county, state, and federal budgets and their experiences with any and all kinds of museums, including art, history, natural history, and children’s museums, as well as planetariums, science centers, gardens, and zoos.
Hearings will be held at three locations in March:
March 10, 2008: Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio
March 12, 2008: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
March 14, 2008: Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California
Radice and members of the National Museum and Library Services Board will listen to both formal and informal testimony. With the testifiers’ permission, testimony will be recorded and used as part of a report on the public funding of museums that will be released in summer 2008.
The public hearings are the last in a series of IMLS’s information-gathering efforts designed to determine the sources and uses of public funds for museums. Also part of the effort is a rigorous examination by the Urban Institute, which, through a cooperative agreement with IMLS, has gathered information about public funding for museums through a national survey as well as through individual interviews with museum professionals and museum funders in selected states, in order to compare the impact of different funding mechanisms. All the information gathered, including the perspectives from the public, will be part of the IMLS report.
To participate in the public hearings, please contact Mamie Bittner or Celeste Colgan. For more information on the IMLS Museum Study, see www.imls.gov/news/2008/012208_bkg.shtm.
About the Institute of Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The institute’s mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development.
Arts Advocacy Day and Humanities Advocacy Day
posted Jan 15, 2008
As a national cosponsor of Arts Advocacy Day and Humanities Advocacy Day, CAA encourages its members to participate in one or both of these important advocacy events, held annually in Washington, DC.
Arts Advocacy Day, taking place Monday and Tuesday, March 31-April 1, 2008, brings together a broad cross-section of America’s national cultural organizations to underscore the importance of developing strong public policies and appropriating increased public funding for the arts, the humanities, and arts education, as well as for other programs within the federal government that have an impact on the visual and performing arts.
Humanities Advocacy Day, administered by the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), takes place Monday and Tuesday, March 3-4, 2008. This event provides a unique opportunity for concerned citizens to communicate to Congress the vital importance of federal support for research and education in the humanities. The NHA’s annual conference also takes place during this time.
Supreme Court Declines to Hear Copyright Case
posted Jan 15, 2008
The United States Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of Kahle v. Ashcroft, brought by Internet Archive and Open Content Alliance founders Brewster Kahle and Rick Prelinger in 2003, which challenged the constitutionality of the current copyright regime. Although not unexpected, the Supreme Court’s refusal comes after a recent ruling by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals raised hopes of a review and lets stand the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ rejection, effectively ending the case.
Read the full article in the Library Journal.
2007 Arts Advocacy Day and Humanities Advocacy Day
posted Dec 01, 2007
As a national cosponsor of Arts Advocacy Day and Humanities Advocacy Day, CAA encourages its members to participate in both of these important advocacy events, held annually in Washington, DC.
Arts Advocacy Day, occurring Monday and Tuesday, March 12-13, 2007, brings together a broad cross-section of America’s national cultural organizations to underscore the importance of developing strong public policies and appropriating increased public funding for the arts, the humanities, and arts education, as well as for other programs within the federal government that have an impact on the visual and performing arts.
Humanities Advocacy Day, administered by the National Humanities Alliance, takes place Monday and Tuesday, March 26-27, 2007. This event provides a unique opportunity for concerned citizens to communicate to Congress the vital importance of federal support for research and education in the humanities.
If you are interested in joining other CAA members at either of these events, please e-mail Laurel Peterson.