Hello all, My name is Brian Cavanaugh and I am the New Media & IT Coordinator at the Vilcek Foundation. As an artist and techie, I am always on the lookout for new uses of media and innovative techniques that … Continue reading
GIA Blog
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by Steve
Huffington Post is launching The Recessionary Arts: A HuffPost Culture Series, a series of articles that over the next two months “will explore how the recession is reshaping our nation's cultural state, and what this means for artists, consumers and the future of the arts.”
The first article comes from Lucas Kavner, a Huffington Post Culture and Media Reporter, titled Art In The Recession: In Tough Economy, Artists Act Anew:
Despite dim job prospects and ever-dwindling paychecks, more artists are living and working in America today than ever before. If as sociologist Charles Horton Cooley once said, “an artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one,” then success in America is at an all-time high.
At a time when making and distributing art to the masses is easier and more widely consumed than ever, at least 2.2 million people in the United States can be classified as professional artists, up from 1.9 million in 1996. And as artists have proliferated, arts organizations have followed suit; According to a report from Americans for the Arts, there are over 100,000 non-profit arts groups and 550,000 for-profit arts businesses in the U.S today. Between 2003 and 2009, a new nonprofit arts organization was created in the U.S. every three hours.
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by Steve
Elizabeth Quaglieri examines some recent endeavor at the intersection of art and technology for her post on Technology in the Arts:
Exhibitions like these generate much discussion in both the academic and professional art world, as the issue of the digitization of art remains a hot topic of debate. What is most inspiring about these remastered pieces is the beauty in the medium. As an art history student and Italian Renaissance aficionado, I am neither offended nor resistant to the digital world’s claim it can reproduce or master painterly qualities and techniques in its own medium.
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by Tommer
Artspire.org, New York Foundation for the Arts’ (NYFA) online community for artists and arts organizations, presents The Profitable Artist in paperback, the first complete “how-to” guide to being a professional and profitable working artist. This handbook features techniques in the areas of strategic planning, financial management, marketing, fundraising, and legal issues including contract law and intellectual property.
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by Steve
The Council on Foundations today announced that Mark Bolgiano has joined its senior leadership team as vice president and chief information officer. The announcement came at a board meeting of the Technology Affinity Group (TAG), an organization of foundation technology leaders, which is in Charleston for its annual conference.
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by Abigail
Please join us tomorrow, November 8, at 2:00 EDT/11:00 PDT for How To: An Overview of GIA's New Web Tools, an online presentation by Steve Cline, GIA's Web & Knowledge Manager, on the simple and effective set of collaborative tools developed by GIA to support both new and ongoing activities of GIA member groups.
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by Tommer
American Dance Abroad is pleased to announce the launch of a series of programs to
strengthen the export of American dance. With a two-year grant of $175,000 from the
Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, American Dance Abroad will focus on expanding
global visibility of American dance artists, encouraging relationship building between
American dance artists and their international counterparts, and facilitating opportunities
for international presenters/programmers to see American dance in live performance.
Co-Directors Carolelinda Dickey and Andrea Snyder are spearheading American
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by Steve
Ian David Moss follows his report on the GIA conference with a report on Beyond Dynamic Adaptability:
Beyond Dynamic Adaptability was all about the changing nature of cultural participation, a hot topic on just about everyone’s minds these days. In keeping with the theme, the conference itself was organized in such a way as to invite participation, especially towards the end of the day with two-hour “fishbowl” sessions in which “panelists sit in a circle in the center (the ‘fishbowl’) and discuss the topic, with an empty chair for interested audience members to jump in to the conversation.” In addition, artistic practice was more deeply infused into this conference than just about any other I’ve seen, even the performance-happy GIA conferences.
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by Steve
Greg Hanscom at Grist explores the philosophy of creative placemaking:
Something is stirring in Detroit. Here, in a city that in the past decade alone lost a quarter of its already dwindling population, plans are in the works to revive the manufacturing economy—at least on a small scale. The Detroit FAB Lab taps into the vibe of “maker” labs and hackerspaces around the globe. Its creators envision an incubator for artists, artisans, and entrepreneurs. Members will have access to equipment for woodworking, metalworking, digital fabrication, and media, as well as business coaching and networking.
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by Abigail
The latest installment of GIA's Talk Back blog continues with a second post by Vilcek Foundation staff. Anne Schruth, event and programs assistant, writes about the foundation's alignment of organizational mission and goals with strategies for providing support to individual artists. She writes:
In our efforts to spotlight the contributions of immigrant artists and scientists to U.S. society, we have also found that the work produced by the artists is only a piece of the story. It is, in part, the personal experiences of the featured foreign-born individuals that leave a lasting impression on the audience.