Grantmakers in the Arts

(9-8-10) MetLife Foundation and Theatre Communications Group (TCG) announce the third round of recipients for the A-ha! Program: Think It, Do It, which encourages TCG member theatres to think and act creatively. Six theatres were awarded grants, totaling $225,000, to either research and develop new production ideas or experiment and implement innovative concepts in the theatre field. The total award amount is a 50 percent increase from last year’s total of $150,000.

(9-8-10) The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced today that Michael Killoren will join the NEA as the director of Local Arts Agencies and Challenge America Fast Track. Mr. Killoren will manage NEA's grantmaking for these two programs as well as develop partnerships to advance the local arts agency field as a whole. He will begin his work on October 12, 2010.

(9-8-10) Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates and Ute Zimmermann of GIA member organization Artadia have completed their meals and, likewise, their stints as GIA guest bloggers. But the table remains set, bottles of wine unopened.

Treating blog posts as meal prep and table talk, Theaster and Ute have crafted an engrossing conversation on the artist-funder relationship.

(9-8-2010) Although I was flattered and my kids wrote they were proud of me on their Facebook pages (this is the greatest accomplishment for parents these days), I had to smile at the irony of Barry’s Blog about the 2010 most influential nonprofit arts administrators. Most of the top ten folks work for national organizations or have national agendas or constituencies.

(9-8-10) Death and the Powers, the opera by MIT composer Tod Machover, that was previewed at GIA's 2006 conference in Boston, opens September 25 al l'Opera de Monte Carlo.

The Nathan Cummings Foundation has named Maurine D. Knighton as Program Director for the foundation's Arts & Culture Program.

For the past 6 years, Ms. Knighton has served as Senior Vice President at the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone where she developed, structured, managed and successfully refined the $40 million Cultural Industry Investment Fund portfolio. She introduced approaches and programs to leverage arts and culture that stimulated local economic revitalization. This appointment is a reflection of our strong commitment to social justice in the arts.

The Pabst Charitable Foundation has published its September 2010 Newsletter. Articles include a feature on the Orlando Symphony's Zora Neale Hurston Legacy Concert and an interview with Cornell Fine Arts Museum Director Scott Habes.

Download the Newsletter.

(9-7-10) "Labor Day has come and gone again with all its incongruities. It is a day when we celebrate laborers and the work ethic... by taking a day off. It's a national day of leisure where we heap well-deserved praise on workers, many of them working all around us, many of them right there working to help us enjoy this very national holiday."

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