Americans for the Arts is pleased to offer a number of full ride and partial reimbursement scholarships to members interested in attending the 2020 Annual Convention and Public Art & Civic Design Conference in Washington, D.C. Deadline to apply is February 24, 2020.
This year Americans for the Arts will both celebrate the work of the public art field through a review of the over 800 PAN Year in Review projects, and take a moment to pause and reflect on the PAN Year in Review program in order to relaunch a more equitable program in 2021.
A $200,000 grant to the Columbus Museum of Art will oversee the restoration project of the home of Columbus-native artist Aminah Robinson, part of a greater effort to preserve Robinson’s home as the future site for artist residencies.
Artist director Patricia Barker embarked on planning this season to challenge the narrative that an all-women-choreographer year was rare. Barker wants to normalize this, showcasing that it is “just as easy to hire a woman as a man.”
This week: We announced our 2020 Johnson Fellowship recipient, opened nominations for our Arts + Business Partnership Awards, discussed the importance of copyright for artists, and explored the connection between the arts and your health. Here's what else you may have missed!
Welcome to our newest web feature! Our Weekly Web Roundups will be released each Friday and are designed to help you catch up on all you may have missed across AmericansfortheArts.org and our sister sites, as well as ARTSblog. This week, we're also featuring bonus December content that you might have missed over the holiday season.
Written to inform public and private funders who are addressing equity in their grantmaking, the case study can provide guidance to re-envision who reviews proposals and how they are chosen, orient and guide reviewers and panelists to be aware of bias, and consider alternative designs for application review that are more equitable.
Implicit bias and other structural impediments mean that we open fewer doors to girls, students of color and kids from low-income and rural communities. When they don’t engage deeply in STEM, we all lose. But the arts have always been a haven for the otherwise marginalized, and arts education connected to STEM can open many possible doors.
Art museums are open to visitors, but are they welcome and accessible to all? To answer this, museums are becoming more aware of solutions to make artwork available to patrons with disabilities.
Earlier this year, we gathered marketing leaders from top cultural institutions in New York City to talk about conflict. It comes as no surprise that on the way to delivering on the mission, there can be disagreements, clashes, and maybe all-out battles. We set out to create a brave space to have this conversation and brought in an expert to show us the way.
As arts marketers, we’re always working to deliver the best experiences. Creating the perfect message and reaching out to interested followers at just the right time is our mission. But you could be missing out on connecting with a large segment of your fans by not optimizing your emails for accessibility.
As a hearing person in the Deaf world, I can’t begin to understand and represent that experience, but what I can do is advocate, assist, help, and be an ally. In the world of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, as a disabled person, I can understand and represent that experience as well as be an ally.
Many of us in the arts administration world have experienced ticket sales panic when it comes to new or unusual works. How do we get people to take a chance on something they’ve never heard of, when we’re literally scientifically conditioned to resist change?
So often, as marketers and communicators, we are focused on the immediate future of our organization and can’t get the perspective we need to see the bigger story that we are not telling, the one that informs every aspect of the arts ecosystem: how the broader public views the arts.
Music teachers in Milwaukee argue that music is a core subject on par with history and social studies, and that every student should have access to high-quality, sequential instruction — including the opportunity to read music and play an instrument — as part of a well-rounded education.
What if nonprofit organizations considered their funders as customers in the classical business sense—with problems that needed solving? How would they relate to them then? Would it not change interactions, communications, and messaging?
It is our opportunity to make the performing arts a memorable experience by making connections at every customer touchpoint. We work hard to connect with subscribers online all year, but also to reach them in person at least twice per year when they are at our venue.
Why don’t more arts entities prioritize social media? Too many arts entities that could benefit from the strategic use of paid social media resources hesitate to avail themselves of the powerful tools offered by Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms.
Gaps in perception. Limitations of perspective. Failings of imagination. We can call them many things, but we all have them. And when it comes to building audiences for our arts organizations, they can really cause us trouble.
If you’ve read part 1 of this blog (the why of rebranding) and have decided your motives are pure and your rationale for rebranding is solid, now the real work begins. Here are some things to think about.
Whether you’re looking at a major overhaul or a minor refresh, setting about to rebrand your organization is not an easy task, nor one to be entered into lightly. Here are some things to think about first.
Who are you thinking about when you’re activating audiences? Who are you inviting to the conversation with your marketing campaign? Who are you missing? Who are you leaving out, intentionally or not?
Drawing on 589 responses from female-identifying designers and production personnel, the study found two key obstacles faced by these groups: gender discrimination and lack of support for working parents.
Located in the Inwood neighborhood, the Immigrants Research and Performing Arts Center will “deliver state-of-the-art cultural space in Northern Manhattan, providing a permanent home to honor the vibrancy and history of immigrant contributions to our cultural fabric.”
For the past 23 years, Sphinx has helped increase the number of Black and Latinx classical musicians in U.S. orchestras from 1.5 percent in 1996, to 5 percent in 2019. The Detroit based organization supports musicians of all levels through education and access, artist development, performing artist programs, and arts leadership.
How are we in the performing arts responding to new cultural awareness in our audiences, especially as we revive classic works from the Western canon that include outdated representations of race?
A survey conducted in New York City revealed that the city’s arts and cultural nonprofits are still failing to reflect its surrounding community’s diversity. The report finds that while people of color make up two thirds of New York’s population, two thirds of its arts administrators are white. The study examined institutions large and small throughout the city’s five boroughs.
A new report identifies that the work of female artists is greatly outperforming the work of male artists in repeat auction sales, indicating a shift in women’s share of the art auction market in the next decade.
Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and other cultural institutions hope to preserve and recognize these publications and rich stories by making content accessible to the public and future generations.
In a bold resolution on June 20, the Board of Trustees of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) urged art museums to end their longstanding practice of employing unpaid interns.
