Family Foundation

2000, 46 pages. The McKnight Foundation, 600 TCF Tower, 121 South Eighth Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55402, (612) 333-4220.

This monograph celebrates poet Robert Bly with photographs, essays by friends and colleagues, and Bly's own poems. The Distinguished Artist Award, now in its third year, recognizes and celebrates Minnesota artists who have founded and/or strengthened Minnesota's arts organizations, mentored and inspired younger artists, and attracted audiences and patrons who enable art to survive.

November 2000. Benton Foundation, 950 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006, (202) 638-5770.

"Creativity takes time; it doesn't need time. Plants take time; they don't need time." In a panel discussion on artists at the ninth biennial DanceUSA Roundtable, Marda Kirn, former director of the Colorado Dance Festival, delivered a thoughtful, well-prepared presentation. The focus of her talk was artistic process — how we think about it and the language we use to describe it. Process has become mechanical, she said, as compared to something that is organic. “We tend to think about experimental labs as opposed to planting a garden. We say we need things — like time, space, money.

The so-called new economy, driven by an explosion in technological innovation and new communication tools, has especially affected California's San Francisco Bay Area, where web-based start-ups are overabundant and everything seems to be preceded by an "e". Perhaps because of their innovative nature, technology firms often locate offices in marginalized neighborhoods or abandoned industrial zones. At first this trend seemed to revitalize former nadirs of economic activity with new neighborhood restaurants, cafés, and other service-oriented businesses.

National Arts Stabilization (NAS) offered the first course in its executive education program in 1997. Originally called Strategic Leadership in a Changing Environment, Strategy is a three-day seminar that, according to the NAS website, provides arts leaders with "a framework for understanding how to:

- analyze the competitive environment,
- identify alternative strategies, and
- integrate mission and strategy."

GIA is pleased to announce the publication of Creative Family Giving in the Arts, the second volume in its series of Field Resource Books. The book portrays a variety of innovative programs of support for the arts and artists, and emphasizes giving by small family foundations and programs that make grants under $10,000. The project was co-chaired by Kathleen O'Grady of the O'Grady Foundation and Mercy Pavelic' of the Heathcote Art Foundation.

The remarkable growth of the online sector in recent years can be assessed in many ways — from the rapidly expanding number of wired households (over half are now connected to the Internet) to the sheer explosion of content on the World Wide Web (which now encompasses over a billion pages). Data traffic exceeds voice traffic on the nation's phone lines now, and far more email messages than postal letters are sent every day.

2000 reprint edition, first published in 1992, 296 pages, paper. Arts Extension Service Press, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, ISBN 0-275-94054-3

In each issue of the Reader we intend to include at least one piece in the voice of an artist. Here we've chosen to reprint writer Irene Borger's interview with choreographer Joanna Haigood, from Force of Curiosity, Borger's interviews with past recipients of the CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts. It is published here with Borger's permission.

2000, 122 pages; Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), Denver Colorado, 303-629-1166.