GIA Blog

CHRISTMAS SEALS, first sold 104 years ago in a Delaware post office, transformed the treatment and control of tuberculosis, one of the most feared killers of the age.

Just as important, they produced a revolution in philanthropy. At that time, the 1 percent of the late Gilded Age, men with names like Carnegie and Rockefeller, were creating major new philanthropic institutions. Christmas Seals, in a way, was the response from the other 99 percent: by marketing something as inexpensive as a stamp and using the proceeds to attack a major disease, the founders of the Christmas Seals program demonstrated the collective power of the American public.

Let’s have a national El Sistema in all art forms, a new WPA, a teaching artists corps, an infusion of artists’ work in every social and educational system! What are your ideas?

But before the makeovers start flying, its really important to look at first principles. The current system is astoundingly inequitable in sharing resources with rich and poor, rural and urban, genders, races, practices, ethnicities, and so on: however you slice it. But that’s not all that’s wrong. The system fails because it is built on faulty wiring, with significant tangles where there should be flow. Below, I single out three big ones: the private-public toggle, the means-and-ends muddle, and the public-interest pickle.

This week at City Hall, a Special Meeting of the Full Arts Commission was convened to provide further discussion of a recent report from the Office of the Controller. It was the second hearing the SFAC convened on the matter, and was as much an opportunity for concerned citizens and stakeholders to share their thoughts with commissioners as it was a chance to hear more about the report, what it is, and what it isn’t.

There's never been a golden age of arts education in American schools. Back in 1930, less than a quarter of 18-year olds had taken classes or lessons in any art form. There was much progress after that, but by the early 1980s more than a third still had none. And for the last thirty years, arts education for American children has declined sharply again. By 2008, fewer than half of 18-year olds had any arts classes or lessons, about the level of the 1960s. Most of the decline has been concentrated in schools that serve low-income black and Latino students. Many of their schools have become veritable arts deserts. Why have the arts been so marginalized in education? There are three big reasons. We might think of them as the three horsemen of arts education, just one short of an arts education Armageddon.

The categories of inequity are multiple: class, culture, ethnicity, gender, race, etc., etc. Awareness of and response to each varies hugely depending on which side of the have/have-not divide one finds oneself. The have-not side always has a far greater awareness and understanding of inequity than is ever possible on the have side. As an over-educated white male of a certain age, it’s astonishing that I can ever see clearly enough to get out of bed in the morning. (And for all my effort to “see,” in the few short months I’ve been blogging here, Roberto Bedoya has already had to call me out, justifiably, once here.) The have side predictably sees all the good it is doing (in its own eyes). The have-nots see much more clearly how far there is to go.

Proponents of small foundations say smaller donors often have closer relationships with the nonprofit organizations they fund, which allows them to see firsthand how donations are being used. (Suzanne) Skees, for example, says she visits her foundation's partners in California and beyond, getting to know everyone at the organization from the executive director on down, and familiarizing herself with the programs the organizations run.