Music

Overhaul of Elementary and Secondary Education

The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture by John Seabrook
2000, 215 pages, Alfred A. Knopf

American Culture, American Tastes Social Change and the Twentieth Century by Michael Kammen
1999, 320 pages, Basic Books

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.

The cultural landscape of Maine is as rich and diverse as its natural landscape, although it is less well known. Recent initiatives have brought attention to the arts and culture of this rural state that is home to 1.4 million residents and covers two million acres, 2,000 miles of rugged (and increasingly developed) shoreline, and a vast area of working forest, farms, and urban settings not unlike its northern NewEngland neighbors.

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.

Although most grantmakers get involved in program development, it is rare to have the chance to build an entire foundation giving program from the ground up. However, that was exactly the challenge Olga Garay encountered three years ago as the first program director for the arts hired by the newly established Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF). The New York-based foundation was created in 1996 as part of Ms. Duke's estate, whose family wealth came from her father's tobacco company and Duke Power.

The Minnesota Regional Arts Councils (RACs) system is one of a kind. Established in 1977 by the Minnesota State Legislature, the Regional Arts Councils work in partnership with the Minnesota State Arts Board to share responsibility for equitably distributing legislative arts funding throughout the state. The result of this system is decentralized decision- making for providing arts grants, establishing programs, and providing services.

In a past report on challenges facing San Francisco Bay Area arts nonprofits (Reader, Vol. 11, No. 2), I wrote at length about space. Many nonprofits had been forced to seek new office, rehearsal, and storage space due to a steep rise in Bay Area real estate costs fueled by demand from a dot-com economy for start-up locations. The situation seems to have eased somewhat, in part due to funder- and municipally-driven programs as well as to a general downturn in the economy.

We are at a new turning point in the field of aging. The past twenty-five years have witnessed two major conceptual shifts that have fundamentally influenced the course of research, practice, and policy deliberations.

When we initiated an artist award program at The Durfee Foundation a few years ago, we decided to use financial need as one of several criteria for support. Durfee is a relatively small family foundation, and the trustees feel strongly that the foundation's modest resources should be applied where they will make the most difference. This is true across the board at the foundation, not only in the arts, but in our other programs as well.