Does higher education ensure learning? Years ago, I co-taught a semester-long seminar in a multidisciplinary arts graduate program at San Francisco State University. The subject was the economic and policy environment for artists’ work, and as I’ve discovered many times since, most of the students, despite years of arts practice and study, were learning the …
In my last essay, I wrote about class diversity. From an intensely personal perspective, I questioned the practice—just as prevalent in our national discourse as in the realm of family secrets—of entering into tacit agreements to normalize what should never be considered acceptable. I said that it was time to break the pact upholding the …
We are having a conversation about class in this country, but not everyone knows it. For instance, joblessness means one thing to a person whose unemployment insurance has run out and quite another to, say, a business leader who worships constantly growing profits, repeatedly cutting jobs to expand them. Our national conversation about class is …
This is my sixth and final post about the Grantmakers in the Arts 2010 conference, where I was invited to take part as a live blogger. It was tremendous fun: I got to write morning, noon, and night, which is my preferred type of ecstatic meditation. It was also a perfect antidote to the anxiety …
Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons, was the luncheon speaker at Monday’s GIA meeting. His relaxed and likable presence comes across as realness personified. His low-key style gives me a sort of internal headshake. By the time Ito’s presentation ended, I was buzzing with a frequency of intellectual excitement I’d normally associate with verbal pyrotechnics. …
The first plenary session of this Grantmakers in The Arts’ conference focused on the National Capitalization Project, a GIA initiative launched this past January. It was premised on the plain truth that arts organizations are often under-capitalized. A task force of funders and experts studied the literature, agreed on terms, and has just now published …
Shine on me Let the light shine on me The Black Monks of Mississippi I spent the day at Grantmakers in The Arts’ Support for Individual Artists preconference (entitled Artists and Grantmakers: A Shared Enterprise). Dozens of artists and funders took part in the program, performing, offering panel presentations, Web pages, video clips, and PowerPoints. …
Dear Readers: I’m excited that my talk for The Field in New York—”Why America Needs Artists (It’s Not What You Think)”—will be live-streamed online at 7 pm EDT on Monday, 27 September, 2010. Please click on this link to see it. Taste is a complex process. Tasting entails integrating information from our eyes, noses, and …
Of all the powers in which I have placed my faith, my deepest and most lasting allegiance is to the power of speech. I eat, breathe, and sleep words. When I am lucky enough to happen on it, the delicious taste of le mot juste fills my mouth like melting chocolate. If words had volume, …
“Dinosaurs” was a hilarious and unique TV series that ran for four seasons in the early nineties. (You can get it on Netflix if you missed it the first time around.) It’s a classic family-centered sitcom, very much on the model of the original “Honeymooners,” except that Mom, Dad, the kids and pets are all …