Family Foundation

Recently, while sitting in a coffee shop in Chicago, I overheard a language that sounded familiar. Being a folklorist I'm sensitive to occupational language. You can blindfold me in front of conversations of cowboys or farmers and I will be able to pick out a number of things that distinguish their talk. And having a private language is not bad, it's a reality.

2002, 100 pages. The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation and the Judith Rothschild Foundation, 830 North Tejon St., Suite 120, Colorado Springs, CO 80903, (719) 635-3220, www.sharpeartfdn.org

2004, 38 pages. New York State Artist Workspace Consortium, kerry@mccarthyartsconsulting.com, www.nysawc.org

2003, 232 pages, $20.00. Cultural Policy Center, The Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago, 1155 East 60th St., #157, Chicago, IL 60637-2745, (773) 702-4407

Following up on Stan Hutton's introduction to arts blogs in the last Reader, in this issue we're looking at the beginnings of the philanthropic blogosphere. As with many blogs covering a specific field, philanthropic blogs tend to offer either personal journals of opinion and ideas or periodic news round-ups, brief abstracts of articles or publications and links to the original. Some, of course, provide both.

The Broad Art Foundation, based in Santa Monica, California, was founded by philanthropists Edythe and Eli Broad in 1984 to encourage and strengthen a greater public appreciation of contemporary visual art. Under the leadership of director and curator Joanne Heyler, the foundation operates as an educational and lending source for the nearly 800 art works in its collection, rather than as a standard grantmaking program.

One effect of attacks on the leading agencies supporting cultural pluralism in the not-for-profit sector, which began with the Reagan administration and continued through the Clinton presidency to the present day, has been to elevate the U.S. commercial arts at the expense of the not-for-profit arts.

"Without getting on a soapbox, I would say that dancing is as much a calling as it is anything else. Don't think of it as a career. You're stupid if you do. You've got to have something burning in your gut that you want to express."

Ensembles are marked by a sustained commitment to collaboration..... The ensemble process allows for the development of a distinctive artistic vision and language unique to all artists involved.

— excerpt from the Flintridge Foundation theater mission

When the Council on Foundations meets in Toronto this April, GIA members in attendance will have the chance to meet a fledgling affinity group of Canadian arts funders that is putting together the 1st Canadian Arts Funders Forum.