Private Foundation

The Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art is a biennial program honoring five Native American fine artists with unrestricted awards of $20,000. The fellowship program was launched in 1999 by the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. Museum staff implements the program under the direction of Jennifer Complo McNutt, curator of contemporary art.

2003, 13 pages. Saint Paul Foundation, 651-224-5463, www.saintpaulfoundation.org

Arts LAB reports on a three-year pilot program developed by a collaborative of six Twin Cities foundations, convened by the Saint Paul Foundation, to strengthen small and mid-sized arts organizations in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Recently, several studies of arts funding have been conducted in specific cities and regions. We report on a few of these here. In the winter 2002 issue of the GIA Reader Vol. 13, No. 1, Lisa Cremin and Kathie de Nobriga reported on a comparative study of arts funding in Atlanta and nineteen other cities. The report was both an inspiring and a cautionary tale for Ann McQueen and others in Boston as they planned the study that Cindy Gehrig reviews below.

Booms and Busts

From the depths of our economic trough it is hard to look ahead, clear-eyed, and to see where U.S. foundations are headed. But consider, for a moment, where we have been. We have experienced an era in which: :

• New scientific and technological advances captured the popular imagination.
• These innovations promised a huge jump in economic productivity.
• There was talk about a new economy replacing an old economy.
• Many business corporations were consolidated and reorganized.

Arts Funding IV examines recent changes in arts grantmaking by one segment of private institutional donors — private and community foundations. While the larger, more fragmented arena of government and private support lies outside this investigation, it is nonetheless useful to place foundation support within this larger context. The following overview outlines the basic framework of private and public arts funding in the U.S. and discusses funding in relation to the overall financing of nonprofit arts groups.

Economic language and ideas have increasingly found their way into discussions of artistic value and cultural benefit. For better or for worse, the discipline of economics has been the lingua franca of public policy discourse for at least the past fifty years. Sometimes the terms resonate harshly on our ears. How do people in the world of arts and culture answer those who speak this language, who try to value cultural activity in terms of economic multipliers, cost-benefit analysis, quantitative outcome measures and, a current favorite, contingent valuation methodology?

In a crowded auditorium at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, funders, community activists, and artists gathered in March to listen to a panel discussion on hip-hop activism in the Bay Area. The goal of Constant Elevation: The Rise of Bay Area Hip-Hop Activism was twofold: to inform and educate funders about hip-hop activism and how it fits into foundation support, and to highlight local best practices that use Hip Hop as a framework.

At the GIA conference in fall, 2002, we hosted a round table discussion with the euphemistic title "Adapting in a Time of Constraints." Essentially its burden was to ask: what should we, as funders, be doing for the cultural institutions with whom we work in the context of these extraordinarily difficult times?

Editors of the Reader invited GIA's research advisors to reflect on challenges facing arts grantmakers in light of current research findings on arts funding trends.

What do recent research findings suggest about the prospect for the support of arts and culture in the years ahead?

Ed Pauly: After a decade of dramatic growth in foundations' support for the arts, the funding news is now somber. Yet the meaning we make from the most recent study of foundation funding for the arts depends, as always, on the perspective we choose.

November 2002, 72 pages. Human Interaction Research Institute, 5435 Balboa Boulevard, Suite 115, Encino, CA 91316, 818-386-9137, HIRILA@aol.com

Partnership as an Art Form: What Works and What Doesn't in Nonprofit Arts Partnerships should be required reading for funders who are encouraging their grantees to work more closely together in these difficult economic times.