Arts Funding Trends

Following are a few excerpts from a lunchtime plenary forum at GIA's 2003 conference in Seattle. Melanie Beene led the discussion and encouraged conference participants to share their personal connections to the arts and the arguments they use for funding arts and culture. "There's no unified field theory on why we should fund the arts," she said. "One person's old stale argument might be fresh for somebody else."

John Kreidler

In the six years I have served at the Center, this past season has been the most dramatic. The dot.com collapse, declining economy, terrorist threats and subsequent drop in tourism, tempered the wild-eyed entrepreneurship that had invigorated our city.

Postmodernist irony may have collapsed along with the World Trade Center, but the role artists play in creating metaphor, defining space (real and imagined), commemorating losses and victories, and articulating the unconscious can never be underestimated.

The magnitude and distribution of foundation arts and culture grants in 2003 are the most significant findings of this report. Key findings of the report, based on arts grants of $10,000 or more reported to the Foundation Center by 1,010 of the larger U.S. foundations, are highlighted here.

This report also includes a brief examiniation of the growth of foundation giving from 1992 to 2005 and a summary of government funding for the arts from 1992 to 2005 by Kelly Barsdate of NASAA.

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The magnitude and distribution of foundation arts and culture grants in 2002 are the most significant findings of this report. Key findings of the report, based on arts grants of $10,000 or more reported to the Foundation Center by 1,005 of the larger U.S. foundations, are highlighted here.

This report also includes a special secion "Awards and Grants for Artists" by Maria Rosario Jackson and Daniel Swenson of the Urban Institute, and a summary of government funding for the arts from 1992 to 2004 by Kelly Barsdate of NASAA.

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Two streams of thought come together here. On the one hand, we want the Reader to reflect the continuing impact on our lives of the events of September 11, 2001. On the other, we want to follow an emphasis in GIA's current plan on the organization's second purpose — to increase the presence of arts philanthropy within philanthropy in order to strengthen support for arts and culture.

The magnitude and distribution of foundation arts and culture grants in 2000 are the most significant findings of this report. Key findings of the report, based on arts grants of $10,000 or more reported to the Foundation Center by 1,010 of the larger U.S. foundations, are highlighted here.

This report also includes a brief examiniation of the growth of foundation giving from 1996 to 2000.

Download:

 Arts Funding Snapshot 2000 (1.7Mb)

The magnitude and distribution of foundation arts and culture grants in 2001 are the most significant findings of this report. Key findings of the report, based on arts grants of $10,000 or more reported to the Foundation Center by 1,007 of the larger U.S. foundations, are highlighted here.

The magnitude and distribution of foundation arts and culture grants in 2001 are the most significant findings of this report. Key findings of the report, based on arts grants of $10,000 or more reported to the Foundation Center by 1,007 of the larger U.S. foundations, are highlighted here.

The magnitude and distribution of foundation arts and culture grants in 1999 are the most significant findings of this report. Key findings of the report, based on arts grants of $10,000 or more reported to the Foundation Center by 1,016 of the larger U.S. foundations, are highlighted here.

Download:

 Arts Funding Snapshot 1999 (250Kb)

Why are you engaged in your current field of work? What significant lessons have you learned along the way? These are questions we ask of applicants to the Durfee Foundation's Sabbatical program, an initiative that provides "time off" to leaders in the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles. Sadly, arts applicants to the program have had difficulty providing compelling answers. By and large, their attempts to explain their commitment to their chosen field have been weak, particularly in comparison to their peers in the social services.