This past summer, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission began a program that assigns artists-in-residence to work in county government agencies (to start with, the Registrar-Recorder’s Office and the county library system). Pauline Kanako Kamiyama writes about what she and LACAC learned from the programs’s preparation and launch. (For example, “‘Trust the artist-driven process’ does not easily translate to non-arts staff nor governmental management styles.”) — Americans for the Arts
Tag: sj
What Happened When A Maasai Delegation Visited An Oxford Museum To See Where Their Sacred Belongings Ended Up?
“The Pitt Rivers has more than 300,000 objects in its collection, many of which were ‘acquired’ by colonial functionaries, missionaries and anthropologists in the heyday of the British empire. … Keenly aware of its problematic origins, the Pitt Rivers, like many museums, engages ‘originating communities’ – in the museum-world lingo – to allow them to reclaim the narrative around their objects. Last month, [elder Samwell] Nangiria, with four other Maasai from Tanzania and Kenya, and help from the Oxford-based NGO InsightShare, returned to do so.” — The Guardian
Harlem’s Apollo Theater To Build Two Additional Performance Spaces
“[The] two new spaces — one with 99 seats, another with 199 — [are] part of the redevelopment of the Victoria Theater, a few doors away, on West 125th Street. The resulting Apollo Performing Arts Center … will be used to incubate works by up-and-coming artists, particularly performers of color, who might not be ready for the main theater’s 1,500-seat auditorium, Apollo executives said.” — New York Times
New Book Vending Machine For Kids Installed At Urban Grade School
The principal of Arthur O. Eve School 61 in Buffalo got together with Scholastic Books and a vending machine company to adapt and stock a machine for the school’s library. The kids are not charged: each kid gets one token a month to use at the machine. (Yes, they get to keep the books.) — Buffalo News
90 UK Theatres Announce Plan To Increase Diversity In Non-Stage Staff
“Rather than putting the onus on employers to address this issue alone, we decided to assist them by using the best knowledge we had available – our members’ experiences. We asked reps about the reality of theatre recruitment to establish how it really works.” – The Stage
‘We Are A Country That Has Lost Our Narrative’: What Lynn Nottage Learned In Reading, Pa. When She Was Researching ‘Sweat’
“One of the first questions we asked was, how do you describe your city? People would respond by saying: ‘Reading was … ‘ They were incredibly nostalgic for this glorious imagined past. It nearly broke my heart. I thought this is a city that cannot conceive of itself in the present or future tense. It is a microcosm of what is happening in America today. We are a country that has lost our narrative. We can’t project our future because we don’t know where we are going.” — The Guardian
Bloomberg Public Art Challenge Awards $1M To Jackson, Miss. For Art About Nutrition
“The funds will support the project ‘Fertile Ground: Inspiring Dialogue About Food Access,’ which aims to inform policy related to nutrition by using art as a medium to communicate the complexities of the issue in the city. Local and national artists, landscape architects, filmmakers, farmers, chefs, nutritionists, and community members will be invited to collaborate on a citywide exhibition featuring installations and performances, as well as other programming.” — Artforum
The Fraught Role(s) Of Native American Arts And Artists In Modern-Day America
“Native people frequently note that the word ‘art’ is virtually unknown in indigenous languages. Today, making a living as an artist is mediated by market forces with demands of its own. At stake are complex dynamics that weave together identity and culture with non-Native expectations about value based on authenticity. This inevitably involves stubborn stereotypes born from lack of knowledge. It also means that the Native artist, no matter the genre or medium, wittingly or unwittingly is cast in the role of educator.” — Los Angeles Times
Changing Museums’ Wall Texts To Acknowledge The, Well, Problems With Certain Artists
“While museum wall labels were once used to explain the ‘title, artist, date’ status of an artwork, they’re quickly becoming a place to spark debate, rewrite history and acknowledge untold stories. In light of the #MeToo movement, wall labels are finally starting to include the controversial information that surrounds an artwork or artist. It could soon become the expectation.”
Manchester Is Using The Arts To Address Its Homelessness Crisis
“The city council’s homelessness strategy for the next five years explicitly includes a commitment to increasing access to arts … [as part of] what is described as a jigsaw of homelessness support approaches.” Says one arts executive involved, “Funding to local government to help tackle homelessness was reduced, so for the first time the city council said they couldn’t solve it on their own – and we were there to offer a solution.”