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April 14, 2010

At Danspace Project Choreographers Are Becoming Curators, Too
by Gia Kourlas
April 8, 2010
The New York Times

The word “platform” may not seem sexy, but Judy Hussie-Taylor, the executive director of Danspace Project, has given it a makeover. Or, more precisely, she’s given dance presentation a makeover with Platforms 2010, a splendid series of artist-as-curator programs shown mainly at the St. Mark’s Church.

Ms. Hussie-Taylor, a youthful 47-year-old with wind-swept blond hair, is inspired by the theorist and critic Okwui Enwezor, who has said that being a curator is not as much about being a tastemaker as providing context, about both the art and the world in which it is made.

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ADF to Award Yang Meiqi with 2010 Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching
April 1, 2010

The American Dance Festival will award the 2010 Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching to the “mother of modern dance in China”, Yang Meiqi. A ceremony will occur on Sunday, July 18th at 7:30pm in Griffith Theater on Duke University’s West Campus. Acclaimed choreographer, Shen Wei, will speak about his former teacher Yang Meiqi at the ceremony.

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Bill T. Jones, Dance Theater Workshop to Merge
by Miriam Kreinin Souccar
April 2, 2010
Crain's New York

A major merger in the New York dance world is in the works.

The 25-year-old Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is in final negotiations to merge with Dance Theater Workshop. The two groups will combine their boards and staff into one entity with a new name and mission, though the final details are still being worked out.

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John Killacky to Head Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, VT
by David Wiegand
April 14, 2010
San Francisco Chronicle

One of the Bay Area's most vigorous champions of the arts will announce today that he is leaving the Bay Area to oversee a respected arts center in Vermont.

For seven years, John Killacky has been the program officer for the San Francisco Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds a variety of community initiatives, including arts and culture projects. On June 1, he will leave that post to become the chief executive officer of the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vt., a multidisciplinary arts organization housed in a 75-year-old, 1,300-seat theater.

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Houston Ballet Center for Dance to Open in Spring 2011
Houston Ballet is currently construction its new home: Houston Ballet Center for Dance. The $53 million building will open in spring 2011 and be the largest professional dance company facility in the U.S. The new building doubles the size of rehearsal space for Houston Ballet's company and academy. Below are links to information on the new Center for Dance.

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Dance Critic for The Washington Post wins Pulitzer
by Howard Kurtz
April 13, 2010
The Washington Post

The Washington Post won four Pulitzer Prizes on Monday for reporting on subjects ranging from war to modern dance...Sarah Kaufman, who writes about dance and movement in venues as wide-ranging as movies and viral videos, took the criticism award.

Kaufman, who studied ballet at a Bethesda academy as a young woman, said her work was first published in college after she called the Washington City Paper and complained that it ran no dance reviews. "To the extent I can capture my experience in the theater and bring the reader there with me, it's a joy to be able to do that," she said.

Part of her job, Kaufman said, is "to say in a beautiful way what's obvious about an art form." But particularly in dance, she said, "there's not enough scholarship, there's not enough rigorous journalism that asks hard questions...I've always viewed myself as a journalist, as a reporter first."

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Ford Foundation Grants Nurture Arts Spaces and Housing
by Stephanie Strom
April 4, 2010
The New York Times

As part of an effort to increase the impact of its giving, the Ford Foundation is to announce a plan on Monday to dedicate $100 million to the development of arts spaces nationwide over the next decade. The plan is by far the largest commitment the foundation has ever made to the construction, maintenance and enhancement of arts facilities.

The plan, called the Supporting Diverse Art Spaces Initiative, is one of several large financing projects that have resulted from a strategic overhaul of the foundation’s operations since its president, Luis A. Ubiñas, took over in 2008. He has moved the foundation in the direction of bundling its hundreds of millions of dollars in grants — which have traditionally varied widely in their focus — into large programs oriented toward specific issues.

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Judy Kinberg's Jerome Robbins documentary wins a Peabody
March 31, 2010
The New York Times

Jerome Robbins -- Something to Dance About, a documentary about the director-choreographer created by Judy Kinberg for Thirteen/WNET's American Masters series" was named one of the recipients of a George Foster Peabody Award, given annually by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication for excellence in electronic media. The Peabodys will be officially presented at a ceremony in New York on May 17.

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NEA Announces Upcoming Education Leaders Institute
April 9, 2010

Through the Education Leaders Institute, the National Endowment for the Arts will convene decisionmakers from several states to develop coordinated state arts education strategies to design public education with arts at the core. The latest Education Leaders Institute will be held in Chicago, Illinois, on July 26-28, 2010. The five state teams are led by the Oregon Arts Commission, Washington State Arts Commission, New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, Arts Alliance Illinois, and Ohio Arts Council.

Launched in 2007, the Education Leaders Institutes bring together policymakers, educators, advocates, and artists to design arts education plans for their respective states. With this upcoming Institute, the NEA will have gathered policy teams from 23 states and the District of Columbia in the past three years.

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Mr. Broadway Storms Capitol Hill
by Sheryl Gay Stolbert
April 7, 2010
The New York Times

Rocco Landesman, the larger-than-life Broadway producer, was digging into a hefty cheese steak and fries in the Philadelphia train station one night last month, waiting to catch the Acela back to his new home in Georgetown. Mr. Landesman, whose culinary tastes are not nearly as sophisticated as his tastes in theater, had a hankering for some Popeyes fried chicken. But, hey, this was Philadelphia, so he figured he’d have the cheese steak.

It had been a grueling day of touring art galleries and talking up local business leaders and city officials, another chapter in the self-education of Mr. Landesman, who last August traded his Broadway career for a government job: chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal grant-making agency. Ever since, he has been giving himself crash courses on the arts in American life and the peculiar customs of the nation’s capital.

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Starving Artists: Landesman Visit to Philadelphia
by Stephan Salisbury
March 30, 2010
Philadelphia Inquirer

When Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, breezed through town early this month ("to learn," as an endowment press official put it), he heard a great deal about "siloing."

The arts can't "be siloed," said Jane Golden, head of the city's Mural Arts Program. It's important "to eliminate all the silos" that constrain thinking about arts funding, said Jeremy Nowak, head of the Reinvestment Fund, the nonprofit development organization that was one of Landesman's hosts.

There was not, however, much talk about art making, or those who make it. Art for art's sake? Not at the moment - a time when public funding for individual artists has virtually vanished from Pennsylvania, for the first time in nearly half a century.

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Assessing the future of modern dance, a fragile American art form
by Sarah Kaufman
April 4, 2010
The Washington Post

A few weeks ago, Paul Taylor did something no other modern-dance choreographer can do: He watched his company perform for 2 1/2 weeks at New York's City Center, seating nearly 2,000 a night. He's been doing that for years -- and has booked it for next season as well, for a run of 15 different works.

Taylor is the only dancemaker who pulls in that kind of audience anymore in the modern-dance world. Look at this indigenous but fragile American art form, and you see fundamental change. There's been a downsizing, a redefining, a splintering into countless small niches. As a result, its very future feels precarious.

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Trustees Find Board Seats Are Still Luxury Items
by Robin Pogrebin
April 2, 2010
The New York Times

Like Prada handbags and Hermès scarves, a spot on one of New York City's most prestigious cultural boards never goes on sale, even in a recession.

Looking to join the power set at the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Be ready with a check for as much as $10 million. The price of admission can reach that high at the Museum of Modern Art, and remains roughly $5 million at the New York Public Library, according to people involved in the process.

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How Cultural Groups Can Use Social Media
April 2, 2010
The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Museums and other cultural institutions are using social media tools to connect with their patrons in novel ways.

Nina K. Simon, author of The Participatory Museum, and Rob Stein, chief information officer at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, join Allison Fine, the host of Social Good, to discuss how arts groups are adopting social media to connect with their supporters.

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How Americans Give Today
April 14, 2010
USA Today

In a special section on philanthropy, USA Today offers a look at the ways in which donors are giving, including how technology has transformed the way we give and the importance of giving wisely and strategically.

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