On-line social network systems and user-curated music services have created a new way for individuals to share their thoughts, their favorite music, their random travels. But they’ve also created something else — a trail of evidence about what people actually choose, not just what they say they like. And any respectable market researcher will tell […]

Scott Lilly at the Center for American Progress floats a timely reminder to the good folks in Congress currently bristling about the stimulus package: arts jobs are jobs, regardless of your opinion of what they produce. He quotes Rep. Jack Kingston’s (R-GA) remarks when complaining about the NEA funding (now removed) from the bill: “We […]

Many bloggers are spinning out the story of Brandeis University and its imperiled Rose Art Museum (see the chatter via Google’s Blog Search, or just read CultureGrrl here, or more recently here…Tyler Green has a great interview with the Rose’s director). In a nutshell, the university is desperately strapped for cash, and inelegantly floated the […]

IMAGE: An extreme close-up of Rogier van der Weyden’s painting, ”Descent from the Cross” (ca. 1435), as seen through Google Earth. Google unveiled two new layers for their Google Earth system, which allows anyone with a reasonably good computer and broadband connection to fly around and explore the globe. The core of Google Earth is […]

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced their Arts in Crisis initiative this week (covered here in the Washington Post), designed to provide emergency planning assistance to cultural organizations in trouble during tough economic times. Through the system, any nonprofit arts organization can request advice and counsel — both from the leadership and staff […]

If you’re not watching the current debate about the proposed Federal economic stimulus package, especially as it relates to arts and culture, you’re missing an important bit of theater. Most will know that the initial proposal includes a $50 million allocation to the National Endowment for the Arts, which has brought arts and culture into […]

I’ll admit to a strange fascination with lists — best books, best habits, best anything — not because I believe them to be true, but because they offer such fascinating evidence of how a person or a group of people think about the world. Although, this particular list (at the very end of the article) […]

The current turbulence in the arts (and every other) industry has driven me back to reading about complex ecosystems, how they work, and how they evolve over time. My current inroad is Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World, which Robyn Archer mentioned during her brilliant remarks at the Arts Presenters conference […]

With the convergence of several social networking systems — like Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, and the like — the on-line expression of self is taking on new wrinkles and new opportunities. One interesting example that seems to be bubbling up is the bio or personal introduction via slideshow. Rather than a text bio, a downloaded […]

My new favorite phrase of the week is ”perverse incentive,” a concept and a construct that seems to suit the arts and culture world in so many ways. The term describes a policy that is intended to promote one outcome, but that instead creates the opposite, or fosters a countervailing negative effect. Some examples from […]