GIA Blog

From Common Field: "The Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA) and Common Field are glad to invite you to join us on the arrival of the Common Field archival collection at LACA. Common Field has worked to support a nation-wide network of independent artists and arts organizations. Following an organizational audit and an internal financial survey process in 2021, Common Field announced its decision to intentionally sunset, or close, as an organization in 2022."

"Common Field believes that their struggles are not novel ones and have generously agreed to share their vulnerabilities and learning with us through their archival collection. The evening's aim is to engage the collection with questions so that we may all better know ourselves."

From CNN: "In the United States, we are now treated to regular announcements about benevolent billionaires pledging to share their wealth. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for instance, recently told CNN that he would be giving away the majority of his $124 billion fortune in his lifetime. Further back in 2015, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced he would give away what he makes from 99% of his Facebook shares."

The Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts was established in 1993 to strengthen the arts by initiating and incubating new ideas within the various constituencies and settings of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA). Regionally and nationally, the Kenan Institute collaborates with artists and partners with cultural organizations to advance the creative community. The Institute has been a GIA member for more than 25 years.

From Upstart Co-Lab: "Impact investors have been missing the 5% of the U.S. economy comprised of creative industries including film & TV, video games and fashion. Museums and cultural institutions are lagging foundations and universities in aligning their endowments with values and mission. This session will highlight strategies to invest in the creative economy that drive financial inclusion and quality jobs, and demonstrate how cultural institutions can align their endowments with their role as community anchor institutions."

"Who will tell the stories that shape our future? These days, in the United States, this is a matter of fierce disagreement. On one side, a multiracial majority of people believe the US is destined to become a flourishing democracy. On the other, a white nationalist movement steadily advances its vision for a white Christian ethno-state," said Bridgit Antoinette Evans and Tracy Van Slyke for Nonprofit Quarterly. "To say that the project of US democracy is at risk is far from hyperbole. White nationalists have amassed a political and narrative infrastructure that churns out a toxic pool of ideas and stories, spreading disinformation ever more widely."

"A lucky group of artists in New York will get guaranteed income as part of an ambitious pilot program," said Jo Lawson-Tancred for artnet news. "The Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY) initiative has announced that it is spending $43.2 million to distribute monthly payments of $1,000 to 2,400 to artists and other creatives living across the state. Lasting for 18 months, these cash payments come with no strings attached."

From Mellon Foundation: "Master carvers are working with the Sealaska Heritage Institute to create the Totem Pole Trail—ten sculptures celebrating Indigenous tribes who had been historically excluded from Juneau's monuments. In a sense, it was a controversial statue of William Seward that kickstarted Kootéeya Deiyí, the Totem Pole Trail in Juneau, Alaska."

"Seward was the United States Secretary of State who brokered the purchase of the Alaska territory in 1867, nearly a century before it became a state. His bronze likeness in the capital city gave Rosita Worl, a member of the Tlingit tribe, a big idea."

"On Oct. 14, unionized employees at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) achieved a monumental contract victory with museum management, ending a 19-day strike," said Vanessa Taylor for Prism. "The tentative agreement, which runs through June 30, 2025, raised the hourly minimum wage, reduced health care plan costs, provided across-the-board wage increases and paid parental leave, and instituted the museum’s first ever longevity raises. Following this victory, union members are hopeful that their efforts may help reshape the museum industry as a whole."

From The Art Newspaper: "In the wake of a global pandemic and concurrent worldwide reckoning with institutional racism, two illuminating studies on the state of cultural heritage at large have just been released. The Mellon Foundation’s latest “Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey” and the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums’ “2022 Art Museum Trustee Survey” both itemise and quantify the experiences of art museum workers and board members, painting a picture of a sector slowly bouncing back from significant Covid-19 job losses with a renewed focus on diversity."

From Filantropía Puerto Rico: Este próximo Giving Tuesday, 29 de noviembre, no te pierdas el primer episodio de nuestro podcast EN VIVO: Somos Filantropía Podcast. En este episodio, Mary Ann Gabino, Vicepresidenta Senior de la Fundación Comunitaria de Puerto Rico, conversará con Glenisse Pagán, Directora Ejecutiva de Filantropía Puerto Rico, para hablar sobre el rol y la importancia del ecosistema filantrópico de nuestra isla.