Darren Walker: “Unfortunately, some people have framed having a diverse board as oppositional to having a wealthy board. These are one-dimensional ideas. I’m simply saying that you can have both, and you should have both. It would be a grave error to demonize wealthy people. That is something that I find regrettable about the discourse around the Whitney board, around this whole controversy.” – artnet
Tag: sj1
It’s Time To Insist That Arts Orgs Follow Wage And Hour Laws
Alan Harrison (who has run a few arts outfits in his time): “If a revenue budget cannot survive the number of paid hours required to reach the goals, then the organization itself is not viable, at least not for that budget year. No longer should artists — performing, visual, administrative — tolerate the lack of compensation.” – The Clyde Fitch Report
Can Arts Organizations Become Engines For Economic Justice In Their Communities?
The “anchor institution approach” for nonprofits — using their purchasing decisions, hiring, and other business practices to actively affect their communities’ economic well-being, especially that of historically marginalized groups — is usually thought of as applying to large universities and health-care institutions. But, argues a new report, arts and culture organizations can also serve as such “anchor institutions” — and many do, from Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center and the Cleveland Museum of Art down to smaller groups such as Houston’s Project Row Houses and the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio. – Nonprofit Quarterly
How Kristi Edmunds Disrupts The Arts World
“In my late twenties (living in Portland, Oregon as an artist and emerging curator), I recognized that the art institutions at the time had settled on mission-priorities that would follow the conventions of art-historical successes which were long proven and regionally familiar. This left a rather large gulf between the ideas and work of living artists, and the towering significance of the established canon.” – Authority Magazine
Latinos Aren’t Visible Enough In American Popular Culture. Trump And El Paso Show Why That Matters
Carolina Miranda: “If ever there were an urgent moment for the various culture industries — film studios, theater companies, art museums and TV production companies — to act on issues of diversity and inclusion, that moment is now. And not because diversity is some feel-good thing that makes for a nice talking point during Hispanic Heritage Month, but because rendering an entire segment of the population invisible makes the cultural arena complicit in a marginalization that is entering increasingly dangerous” — literally dangerous — “territory.” – Los Angeles Times
Five Years On, How Artists, Writers, Musicians, And Theatermakers Have Responded To Ferguson, Missouri
“Their art was not only a response to Brown’s death. It was also a way to bring understanding to issues that had angered and oppressed African Americans for generations.” A package looking at responses to Michael Brown’s death and its aftermath in visual art, classical music, theatre, literature, popular music, and cinema. – St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Watching A Play, In Black And White: Two Critics Discuss How Who You Are Affects The Way You See African-American Theater
“In a cultural medium whose producers, audiences and critics are still predominantly white, [Jackie Sibblies Drury’s] Fairview challenges playgoers to think about how the different backgrounds and assumptions they bring to the theater may produce vastly different results once inside.” Jesse Green and Salamishah Tillet talk about that issue with respect to Fairview and African-American plays more generally. – The New York Times
New York City Told Its Museums To Get More Diverse Or Lose Funding. Here Are What Museums Are Doing And How The City Will Enforce The Mandate.
“Directions on how institutions should incorporate these objectives were left intentionally vague. Rather than issuing blanket checklists, the city wanted individual institutions to formulate plans that made sense for their respective audiences and agendas.” Reporters Taylor Dafoe and Brian Boucher talk to leaders at the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA PS1, Queens Museum, and Brooklyn Children’s Museum about how they’re responding to the city’s directive. – Artnet
New York City To Arts Orgs: We Both Know You Have A Diversity Problem — How Are You Going To Fix It?
“After years spent measuring and analyzing the problem, the city is now asking organizations to work on fixing it. In recent months, 33 cultural institutions on city-owned property submitted plans to boost diversity and inclusion among their staff and visitors; if they failed to do so, the city warned, their funding could be cut.” – The New York Times
‘Radical Hospitality’ — Why Seattle’s Intiman Theatre Has Made All Its Tickets Free
“The initiative, artistic director Jen Zeyl explained, is about more than the standard theater problem of getting ‘butts in seats.’ (Though, of course, there’s that.) It’s about getting the butts one wants in seats — not just the people who can afford to take the $25+ crap shoot known as a theater ticket, but the people who can’t: the woman at the corner store, high-school sophomore, the guy asking for spare change on the sidewalk.” – The Seattle Times