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- Merce Cunningham’s Trustees Are Named
- Princess Grace Foundation-USA Announces 2009 Awards Winners in Theater, Dance, & Film
- MetLife Foundation and National Guild Award $215,000 in Grants to 14 Arts Education Partnerships
- Arlene Shuler to Receive Capezio Award 9/22 At New York City Center
- John McGuirk Joins Hewlett Foundation as Director of Performing Arts Program
- Taking the Long View of Participation-Building: A Prescription for Hard Times
- Arts Chief to See What Plays in Peoria
- It’s Broadway Gone Viral, With a Musical Meted Out via Twitter
- The arts, the recession, and O.C.’s cultural identity: a story too hot for some
- TwitCause Is Yes, A Causes For Twitter
- More Arts Companies Face Financial Straits
- The Obamas: An Opening in the Arts
- One Approach to Reducing Health Care Costs: The Discipline of Dance
Merce Cunningham’s Trustees Are Named
by Daniel J. Wakin
August 5, 2009
The New York Times
The tenders of Merce Cunningham’s flame are now known. The dance foundation devoted to the choreographer, who died at 90 on July 26, named on Wednesday the four individuals Mr. Cunningham, had selected as trustees of his life’s work. They are Laura Kuhn, a friend and executive director of the John Cage Trust (Cage was Mr. Cunningham’s companion); Patricia Lent, licensing director for the foundation, which runs the Merce Cunningham Dance Company; Allan G. Sperling, a Cunningham lawyer, foundation board member and the architect of the trust; and Robert Swinston, who joined the dance company in 1980 and was Mr. Cunningham’s longtime assistant.
Princess Grace Foundation-USA Announces 2009 Awards Winners in Theater, Dance, & Film
Congratulations to the Awardees in Dance and Choreography!
The Board of Trustees of the Princess Grace Foundation-USA and its Chairman, Hon. John F. Lehman, announce the winners of the 2009 Princess Grace Awards. The Awards for theater, dance and choreography, and film continue the legacy of Princess Grace (Kelly) of Monaco, who anonymously helped emerging artists pursue their goals during Her lifetime. This year’s winners represent 17 states around the country and six organizations that are new to partnering with the Foundation. All of this year’s Awards winners will travel to New York City as guests of the Princess Grace Foundation-USA, where they will receive their Awards at the annual black-tie Princess Grace Awards Gala, held in the presence of HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco, on October 21, 2009 at Cipriani 42nd Street.
MetLife Foundation and National Guild Award $215,000 in Grants to 14 Arts Education Partnerships
MetLife Foundation and the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts announced the winners of the MetLife Foundation Partners in Arts Education Program. The program grants, totaling $215,000, were awarded to 14 community arts organizations that will work with large public schools to provide high-quality arts instruction during the 2009-2010 school year. This national initiative aims to improve teaching and learning in the arts by promoting best practices for creating sustainable partnerships. Thanks to this year's program, more than 11,500 public school students in eight cities will receive year-long arts instruction.
The winning community arts education organizations are:
- Arts Council for Long Beach, Long Beach, Calif. (Public Art)
- Brooklyn-Queens Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Music)
- Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education, Bronx, N.Y. (Printmaking, Digital Arts and Photography)
- City Lore, Queens, N.Y. (Dance, Literary Arts, Theater, and Visual Arts)
- The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, Pa. (Ceramic Arts)
- COCA: Center for Creative Arts, St. Louis, Mo. (Dance, Literary Arts, Music, Theater, and Visual Arts)
- Community Music Center of Boston, Boston, Mass. (Music)
- Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Chicago, Ill. (Dance)
- Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Dance, Literary Arts, Music, Theater, and Visual Arts)
- Living Arts, Detroit, Mich. (Media Arts, Mime, Music, and Performance Poetry)
- Luna Kids Dance, Oakland, Calif. (Dance)
- Progressive Arts Alliance, Cleveland, Ohio (Literary Arts, Media Arts, Music, Printmaking, Theater)
- Young Audiences New York, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Dance, Digital Photography, Media Arts, Music, and Spoken Word Poetry)
- Zephyr Dance, Chicago, Ill. (Dance)
Arlene Shuler to Receive Capezio Award 9/22 At New York City Center
The Capezio Ballet Makers Dance Foundation is pleased to announce the selection of Arlene Shuler as the recipient of the 58th annual Capezio Dance Award. The Foundation is a philanthropic organization funded by the world’s premier dance footwear and apparel manufacturer, Capezio Ballet Makers.
Awarded annually since 1952, the Capezio Dance Award celebrates significant contributions to American dance by an individual, company, or institution. It recognizes those who bring respect, stature, and distinction to dance and who exhibit qualities such as innovation, creativity, and imagination. Arlene Shuler has exemplified these qualities in unique combination throughout her career as a dancer, foundation executive, and arts administrator. As an award recipient, Ms. Shuler joins dance luminaries Alvin Ailey, Suzanne Farrell, Savion Glover, Michael Kaiser, Charles Reinhart, Paul Taylor, and last year’s honoree, Chuck Davis.
John McGuirk Joins Hewlett Foundation as Director of Performing Arts Program
John McGuirk, a veteran Bay Area grantmaker and a former officer in The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's Performing Arts Program, will rejoin the Foundation as director of that program, officials announced today.
For the past three years, McGuirk has served as director of the Arts Program of The James Irvine Foundation. He served as an officer at the Hewlett Foundation – the largest funder of performing arts organizations in the Bay Area – from July 2002 until October 2006.
"It's great to have John return," said Hewlett Foundation President Paul Brest. "He comes with an even broader and deeper knowledge of the performing arts in California. In these difficult economic times for the arts, someone with John's intimate knowledge of the terrain is invaluable."
Taking the Long View of Participation-Building: A Prescription for Hard Times
Report from the Wallace Foundation Arts Grantee Conference
Philadelphia, PA, April 1-3, 2009
“In the midst of hard economic times, it is clearly more challenging for arts organizations to take the long view and continue to devote time and effort to building new audiences. But this report on a recent gathering of representatives from more than 50 Wallace-funded arts organizations in six cities concludes that participation-building efforts and the resulting lessons are more vital than ever to the long-term health of arts organizations and the entire arts sector. Especially in hard times, the report says, it’s essential for leaders of arts organization to take careful stock of the long-term influences and challenges affecting the arts sector such as demographic shifts and new technologies that are creating entire new “spaces” for people to come together and experience the arts. The report describes how organizations are responding creatively to those challenges using such means as market research, re-branding, and drawing audience-building lessons from other sectors such as professional sports.”
Arts Chief to See What Plays in Peoria
by Robin Pogrebin
August 17, 2009
The New York Times
Rocco Landesman, who was confirmed this month as the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, has accepted an invitation to visit Peoria, Ill., an offer proffered in response to public comments he made about the city.
In an article published in The New York Times on Aug. 8, Mr. Landesman talked about his inclination to support art on the basis of quality, not geography, in implied contrast to his predecessor’s policy of directing agency funds to every Congressional district. “I don’t know if there’s a theater in Peoria, but I would bet that it’s not as good as Steppenwolf or the Goodman,” Mr. Landesman said in the article, making reference to two acclaimed Chicago theater companies. “There is going to be some push back from me about democratizing arts grants to the point where you really have to answer some questions about artistic merit.”
It’s Broadway Gone Viral, With a Musical Meted Out via Twitter
by Andrew Adam Newman
August 16, 2009
The New York Times
At a recent performance of “Next to Normal,” the Broadway musical at the Booth Theater on West 45th Street, Alice Ripley, who won a Tony for her portrayal of Diana, a suburban mother with bipolar disorder, was reaching to answer a cordless telephone when she knocked it off the stage. Fourth wall broken, Ms. Ripley asked, with a smile, “Could you hand that to me?”
Audience members were suddenly on all fours, but when they could not find the prop, a woman in the front row held up her cellphone, which Ms. Ripley accepted and spoke her lines into before tossing it back, to laughter and applause.
It is, it turns out, strangely fitting that a theatergoer’s cellphone should play a role in a “Next to Normal” performance, since many people have been introduced to the musical by the devices. In early May, six weeks after opening, the production began what is by all accounts a Broadway first: over Twitter, the social networking site, an adapted version of the show began to be published in the form of short text messages, or tweets — just a line from a character at a time. Several times daily over 35 days, followers of N2NBroadway eagerly awaited the arrival of the tweets on their cellphones and computers.
The arts, the recession, and O.C.’s cultural identity: a story too hot for some
by Paul Hodgins
August 11, 2009
OC Register
Ambition and self-regard are two qualities that have never been hard to come by in Orange County. But these are times that drain men’s souls, not to mention their bank accounts.
Buoyed by its diversified economy and wealth, O.C. has powered through past recessions relatively damage-free.
Not this time. We’re in an unaccustomed position: economic underdog. Forbes Magazine lists the county as the seventh-worst in the nation for job losses in the upper echelons over the last 12 months. The collapse of real estate and its attendant industries has hurt the county deeply.
This pain is being felt acutely in Orange County’s temples of culture, where cutbacks, programming changes and sharply curtailed expansion plans were the order of the 2008-09 season.
TwitCause Is Yes, A Causes For Twitter
by MG Siegler
August 6, 2009
The Washington Post
Since the early days of the Facebook Platform, Causes has been one of the most popular apps. It's also big on MySpace, and the company behind it recently announced that they had raised some $10,000,000 for various causes in two years. It makes sense; it's using the social aspect of these platforms to spread the word on good initiatives. A new startup, TwitCause, wants to extend that idea to Twitter.
More Arts Companies Face Financial Straits
by Melena Ryzik
August 5, 2009
The New York Times - Arts Briefly
The classical music and dance worlds continue to face difficulties mounting new work, or in some cases even paying their artists. The administrative offices of the Houston Symphony are closed this week as part of a furlough deal the company announced last week, The Houston Chronicle reported. The symphony’s 86 musicians will also take two unpaid weeks off in the coming months — up from one week in previous years — and its conductors will accept reduced salaries in a move that is expected to save nearly $900,000, part of an overall budget reduction of $1.5 million for the 2009-10 season.
The Obamas: An Opening in the Arts
by Agnes Gund
July 30, 2009
The Huffington Post
In Act One of their administration - the well-lit, heavily reviewed and widely watched opening months - Barack and Michelle Obama have positioned themselves actively in the arts. For the country, and especially for those of us interested in culture, it has been remarkable to see how quickly and how seriously the President and the First Lady have incorporated the arts into their national presence.
The Obama commitment to the arts began even before his election. During his campaign, Obama released an unprecedented arts policy document advocating an "artist corps" of young creators to work in low income communities (a new WPA, as it were), increased activity at the NEA and in cultural diplomacy, renewed attention to arts education, amid other proposals. Now the President and First Lady are engaging directly with artists - featuring jazz and poetry at the White House, filling its walls with recent work by diverse artists, attending dance and theater performances in the Capital and beyond. The selection of Rocco Landesman, a seasoned theater producer, for the NEA chairmanship demonstrates a similiarly direct commitment to the arts at work.
One Approach to Reducing Health Care Costs: The Discipline of Dance
by Michael Kaiser
July 27, 2009
The Huffington Post
Those of us who work in the arts are convinced of the importance of art for art's sake. We believe that the beauty, inspiration and knowledge one gains from attending performances, exhibitions and workshops have intrinsic value.
But it is undeniable that the arts play other important roles in our society: the arts help to encourage tourism, the arts teach children to be creative thinkers, the arts contribute substantially to the economy, and on and on.
Perhaps because I have spent so much of my career running dance companies, I am particularly interested in the impact of dance education on young people. My work at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (through its remarkable AileyCamp program now in eleven cities), American Ballet Theater (in a program, Make A Ballet, we inaugurated at the Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem), Royal Ballet (in the Chance to Dance program offered throughout the greater London area) and in the numerous dance programs sponsored by the Kennedy Center, I have learned that dance is a powerful educational tool for several reasons.
