Culturally-specific arts

As a new administration enters our nation’s White House, it is timely to reflect on the way that private philanthropy and public foundations joined forces to step into the gap when federal funding for the arts was dramatically reduced in the early 1990s.

September 2015, 58 pages. DeVos Institute of Arts Management, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Suite 410, Washington, D.C. 20004. (301) 314-0963. www.devosinstitute.net.

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The opportunities to connect communities through culture and to use that cultural engagement to educate one another are simultaneously compelling and challenging to cultural foundations and philanthropists. Recent reports and research provide strong arguments and preliminary insights into ways that culture can advance engagement across boundaries, both geographic and societal. But the most challenging efforts may be those intended to connect the United States to Muslim populations abroad.

2009, 123 pages. Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation, 900 Exposition Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, 90007, 213-763-3466, www.nhm.org

Based on a series of talking circles of tribal leaders and funders, this handsome report reviews the history of Native peoples and the role of art in tribal culture, examines program priorities of funders, and identifies strategies for supporting Native arts and artists. The extensive bibliography is also a valuable tool for Grantmakers.

Download PDF from The Potlatch Fund.

Native America at the new Millennium is a Ford Foundation-funded collaboration by the Harvard Project, Native Nations Institute, and First Nations Development Institute that serves as a primer on contemporary American Indian affairs. NANM addresses topics as wide-ranging as tribal government, non-profit organizations, political activism, economic development, housing, welfare, health, arts, and media.

One day we received a remarkable phone call: Two friends had just discovered an unpublished essay by the late Edna Lewis—one of America's most resonant and evocative food writers—that she had sent to a colleague years ago. A granddaughter of freed slaves, the late Edna Lewis left home when she was just sixteen years old and went on to become a renowned chef at Manhattan's star-studded Café Nicholson. Her books have spread the gospel of genuine southern cuisine and inspired a generation of home cooks.