Arts Research

2001, 80 pages, $7.00. Dance/USA, Washington, DC, 1156 15th Street, N.W., Suite 820, Washington, D.C. 20005-1704, 202-833-1717, danceusa@danceusa.org.

2001-2002, 51 pages. Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, P.O. Box 10169, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504, 505-988-3251.

The Reader rarely reviews foundations' annual reports, but makes exceptions on occasion — in this case for the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry's reaching its 30th year of grantmaking. The handsome 2001 Witter Bynner commemorative report is engaging to read, and presents grant descriptions alongside poems by supported writers, presses, students, and presenting programs.

A Web search for “Poetry,” “Poet,” or “Poem” points to hundreds of sites. I've gathered some sites providing poetry services, projects to engage the public, and opportunities to learn about and locate individual writers. This column does not touch upon the growing numbers of online literary journals or fully represent literary centers.

Building Audiences

Last October I attended my first "Social Theory, Politics and the Arts" conference, speaking on a panel with playwright Brian Freeman, writer Karen Clark, and puppeteer/actor Jonathan Youtt to offer reflections from artists at the conference's culmination. The gathering's international scope was refreshing and eye-opening.

On November 12, 2000, a headline on the front page of the Atlanta Journal/Constitution read, "Study finds Atlanta arts community trailing peers." A full-page story in Section A followed. This one headline challenged the city's cherished self-assessment as "cultural jewel of the South" and quietly affirmed the suspicions of many of its artists and cultural workers.

This is the story about the headline, the study, and the volunteer efforts of an incorporated ad hoc group that calls itself the Atlanta Arts Think Tank and that commissioned the landmark study.

221, 160 pages, $20. RAND Distribution Services, 877-584-8642, fax: 310-451-6915, order[at]rand.org

In The Performing Arts in a New Era, the Rand Corporation takes on the daunting task of mapping the performing arts sector in the United States. The report was released in July 2001, as part of the Pew Charitable Trust's cultural initiative, "Optimizing America's Cultural Resources," which attempts in part to build a research capability for the arts that will inform and shape national and local cultural policy.

At the Fund for Folk Culture (FFC), we have been working with Laurel Jones and Morrie Warshawski of the Bay Consulting Group (BCG) to survey the range of private support for the folk and traditional arts and investigate opportunities for increased private support in this cultural sector.

Allen Ginsberg begins his essay "Meditation and Poetics" with this paragraph: "It's an old tradition in the West among great poets that poetry is rarely thought of as 'just poetry.' Real poetry practitioners are practitioners of mind awareness, or practitioners of reality, expressing their fascination with the phenomenal universe and trying to penetrate to the heart of it. Poetics isn't mere picturesque dilettantism or egotistical expressionism for craven motives grasping for sensation and flattery.

David B. Pankratz, principal investigator and project manager, Celia O'Donnell, research assistant

2001, 80 pages. California Arts Council, 1300 I Street, Suite 930, Sacramento, CA 95814, 916-322-6555.

2001, 120 pages. The Rockefeller Foundation.