CAA News Today
House Approves $160 Million for NEA
posted May 15, 2007
Americans for the Arts President and CEO Robert L. Lynch gave the following statement on the approval of $160 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts:
“This afternoon the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee that provides funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) approved a $35 million increase for the NEA in its FY 2008 spending bill. This increase is a strong step in the right direction, and I commend Subcommittee Chairman Norm Dicks (D-WA) for taking it.
“If this funding level is maintained by the Senate and signed into law by President Bush, it will represent the largest increase ever in NEA history. The agency, currently funded at $124.4 million, has seen increases of under 3 percent for the last several years.
“Earlier this year, Americans for the Arts called on Congress to restore full funding to the NEA at its FY 1992 level of $176 million, which spurred significant economic growth, artistic achievement, and accessibility to cultural organizations across the nation. According to Americans for the Arts’ study, “Arts & Economic Prosperity III,” the nonprofit arts industry generates $166.2 billion in economic activity annually for the US economy, supports 5.7 million full-time jobs, and returns $12.6 billion in income-tax revenue back to the federal government.
“In his first public action on arts issues as chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Rep. Dicks hosted a Congressional hearing, “Role of the Arts in Creativity and Innovation,” in conjunction with Arts Advocacy Day on March 13, 2007. It was the first hearing in more than twelve years held on the importance of investing in the arts.
“Rep. Dicks invited Americans for the Arts to organize witnesses to give official testimony. The six witnesses included: President and CEO of Americans for the Arts Robert Lynch; Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center Wynton Marsalis; entrepreneur and arts philanthropist Sheila C. Johnson; corporate executive and arts patron James Raisbeck; Mayor of Providence David Cicilline; and film actor and arts education advocate Chris Klein.
“Also leading this effort to restore NEA funding in the House are Congressional Arts Caucus Cochairs Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Chris Shays (R-CT) both of whom appeared before the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee at the public-witness hearing to provide testimony supporting a budget increase.”
NEW ART JOURNAL REVIEWS EDITOR
posted May 11, 2007
Liz Kotz Named Art Journal Reviews Editor
Liz Kotz has been appointed reviews editor of Art Journal; she began her term January 1, 2007. Kotz is an assistant professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature and an affiliate member of the Graduate Faculty in Art History at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She succeeds Robin Adèle Greeley, associate professor of art history at the University of Connecticut, in the position.
Kotz received her PhD in comparative literature from Columbia University in 2002, with a dissertation on “Postwar Media Poetics from Cage to Warhol.” Her research investigates cross-disciplinary aesthetic practices that emerged in the post–WWII era, including visual art, film and video, sound art, and poetry. Her teaching and scholarship explore the relationship of these more contemporary practices to earlier twentieth-century avant-gardes and to cultural and aesthetic impacts of new technologies of recording, reproduction, and transmission.
Kotz writes, “Contemporary art has become a vast field of activity, one that is increasingly interdisciplinary and international in scope. Art Journal aims to review important and groundbreaking books that reflect this range—potentially covering not only work from university presses and other scholarly writing, but also the exhibition catalogues, small-press publications, and artist-produced books that animate our field. Perhaps because my background is cross-disciplinary, I would like to see Art Journal address artwork and scholarship in screen-based media, sound art, and the like, as well as the myriad philosophical and theoretical perspectives that inform recent art history and criticism. Because Art Journal reaches artists, art historians, curators, and other art professionals, it plays a vital role in articulating fresh critical perspectives and bringing coherence to this dynamic, constantly changing field.”
Her first book, Words to Be Looked At: Language in 1960s Art (forthcoming from MIT Press), is a critical study of uses of language in midcentury American art. It starts by examining scores and compositions by the experimental composer John Cage and tracing his impact on artists and poets in the sixties, including La Monte Young, George Brecht, Jackson Mac Low, Carl Andre, Vito Acconci, Lawrence Weiner, Douglas Huebler, and Andy Warhol. Her second book, Six Sound Problems, will address projects by Cage, Young, David Tudor, Bruce Nauman, Max Neuhaus, and James Tenney. She is also working on a collection of essays, Aesthetics of the Expanded Screen, that will explore film and video installations and the condition of the durational image.
Kotz’s writing has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, such as October, Cinematograph, Documents, Text zur Kunst, and Artforum, and in edited books and catalogues, including Jack Pierson, Desire/Despair (2006), The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945 (2006), and Dia’s Andy (2005). At the University of Minnesota, she has taught classes on visual culture and media history, documentary cinema, and film history, and seminars on Andy Warhol, film theory, and psychoanalysis.
Academic Freedom Opinion Survey
posted Apr 15, 2007
CAA encourages you to take the Academic Freedom Opinion Survey, created by the Scholars at Risk Network. The survey seeks to collect information on levels of respect for academic freedom and related values from faculty, students, staff, administrators, and alumni at higher-education institutions worldwide.
All responses are confidential. After completing the survey, you will be able to compare responses with those of other respondents around the world. You also are invited to help generate better results by sharing the survey with friends and colleagues.
The Scholars at Risk Network (SAR) is an international network of universities and colleges responding to attacks on scholars because of their words, their ideas, and their place in society, and to the repression of research, publication, teaching, and learning. SAR promotes academic freedom and defends the human rights of scholars and their communities worldwide.
Senators Support NEA and NEH
posted Mar 15, 2007
In September, Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) circulated a “Dear Colleague” memo, asking his fellow senators to cosign a letter in support of increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Senator Coleman urged the chairman and the ranking member of the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee to consider funding increases of $5 to $10 million for each agency during fiscal year 2007. As of November 13, 2006, forty-three senators had signed this letter, including nine Republicans.
Currently, the NEA is funded at $124.4 million, and the NEH receives $141 million–figures significantly lower than their mid-1990s highs of about $167 million and $177 million, respectively. The House of Representatives approved a budget of $129.4 million for the NEA in June 2006.
To read Senator Coleman’s letter, please see www.americanartsalliance.org/img/an2/nonstandard_files/americanartsalliance/
nea-funding-dear-colleague91906.pdf.
NEA Grants for 2007
posted Mar 15, 2007
In December, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced that it will award $19.4 million for 848 grants during fiscal year 2007. This will include more than $18 million in funding for Access to Artistic Excellence grants, supporting 798 projects in disciplines including the visual arts, museums, and media arts, as well as in literature, theater, and opera.
NEH and IMLS Advancing Knowledge Grants
posted Mar 15, 2007
Applications for the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities grant program, “Advancing Knowledge: The IMLS/NEH Digital Partnership” are now available on www.neh.gov. This program “seeks applications for innovative, collaborative humanities projects using the latest digital technologies for the benefit of the American public, humanities scholarship, and the nation’s cultural community.”
South African Researcher Deported
posted Jan 15, 2007
Adam Habib, a researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, was deported upon his arrival in the United States in October. Part of a group en route to meetings with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Columbia University, the National Institutes of Health, and the World Bank, Habib had his visa revoked for suspected ties to terrorism. He directs a program on democracy and governance at the Human Science Research Council and holds an honorary research position at the university.
November Elections Bode Well for Arts
posted Dec 16, 2006
The change in party leadership in Congress brings hope for increased support for the arts. The Congressional Arts Report Card on the Arts, issued by the Americans for the Arts Action Fund PAC, recently gave the grade of “A” to incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD). The Senate and the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittees oversee funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The previous chairs, Representative Charles Taylor (R-NC) and Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) were defeated in their election bids. Neither had proposed an increase in funding while serving on the subcommittee. Representative Norm Dicks (D-WA), the ranking Democrat on the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, has cosponsored amendments to increase NEA funding and has pledged to do so if he were to become chair.
In Louisiana, the statewide Amendment Number 5 passed, which exempts consigned artwork from property taxes. Prior to this amendment, which took effect January 1, 2007, Louisiana was the only state to have such a tax, which significantly affected galleries whose inventories were subject to taxation. This legislation, it is hoped, will markedly improve the ability of Louisiana galleries to attract local, national, and international artists.
In Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, voters approved Issue 18, which will provide stable public funding for the arts for the next ten years. Issue 18 will impose a 1.5 cent tax per cigarette, or 30 cents per pack, sold in the greater Cleveland area. Funds raised by these taxes will provide close to $20 million per year for Cuyahoga County arts and culture organizations such as the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Orchestra. The money will be distributed through grants for operating support, project support, artist education residencies and research support, special initiatives and one-time emergency grants. All grants require matching funds, which will maintain support from the private sector to continue to strengthen Cuyahoga County’s arts funding.
2007 Arts Advocacy Day and Humanities Advocacy Day
posted Dec 15, 2006
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.
2007 Arts Advocacy Day and Humanities Advocacy Day
posted Dec 01, 2006
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.