Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on July 26, 2021
Philadelphia’s arts and cultural organizations response to the pandemic and what’s next is at the center of a recent article at The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on July 23, 2021
A recent article in Alliance magazine discusses how “unrestricted funding has been more talked about than practiced by foundations.”
The current Covid-19 crisis has led over 600 US foundations to sign a pledge promising to ease or eliminate restrictions on existing grants, and make new grants as unrestricted as possible. A similar statement was released and signed by foundations and umbrella organizations across Europe, calling for more flexible grantmaking. Despite these developments, the majority of funders appear to be operating in a paradigm where the default is to provide restricted project funding.
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on July 22, 2021
The Latinx Artist Fellowship, a new program, will award $50,000 each to a multigenerational cohort of 15 Latinx visual artists each year for an initial commitment of five years, according to the recent announcement.
Administered by the US Latinx Art Forum in collaboration with the New York Foundation for the Arts and supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation, “this award is the first significant prize of its kind and celebrates the plurality and diversity of Latinx artists and aesthetics,” states the fact sheet.
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on July 26, 2021
In a recent opinion piece, Misty Copeland, Wynton Marsalis, Jody Gottfried Arnhold, and Russell Granet make a case for the transformational power of arts education.
Happy days will not return to New York, however, until we finally address the health, economic and educational inequities that the pandemic exposed. One proven way to promote equity and excellence in education is to give every public-school student in New York City access to high-quality instruction in dance, music, theater and the visual arts.
The need for space is always keenly felt in artistic communities, no matter what the current socio-political climate is. With real estate prices still on an ever-bloating trajectory and both the pandemic and apathetic developers causing countless businesses to shutter their doors, the sheer volume of wasted space is staggering. But non-profit organization Art Souterrain is doing what it can to remedy this issue in an inspiring way in the city of Montréal with their new initiative—Créer des ponts.
Running across three months from July 15th to October 15th, Créer des ponts (translating to “building bridge”) is partnering with the city of Montréal to inject liveliness and culture into the slabs of commercial ghost town that have emerged throughout the city. In an effort to combine the efforts of the real estate business and fostering creators, thirty vacant businesses are being transformed into spaces for artistic presentation.
“This large summer deployment is part of a willingness to support young emerging artists,” Art Souterrain explains on the initiative’s mission statement. “To encourage local businesses and revitalize our city center.” It’s a valuable connection to be forged, without a doubt. Those in the arts are more often than not at odds with those who hold deeds and keys, so any form of collaboration that results in an amicable understanding of the value artists bring to urban spaces is a positive.
Cut Pollinators, Our Hosts by Maude Poirier Felx; courtesy of Art Souterrain.
Créer des ponts has laid out a “pathway” across a map of Montréal to guide potential viewers through the refurbished locales. Besides the once vacant businesses, there will also be ten glass display cubes posted along the route which will display contemporary works for the public. The vast majority of the locations are concentrated in the downtown core, unsurprisingly. This puts these pop-ups in high-traffic pedestrian areas where the average person can easily feel the effect of these rejuvenated storefronts—which coincides with Art Souterrain’s modus operandi of making fine arts accessible and understood.
The less spaces to show art, the less art is seen. Even if the internet has made the arts more available than ever, there’s still a distinct difference between the consumption of digital content and having art woven into our environments. An endless march of properties being purchased only to be left gutted and bleak serves nobody in any community. Through Créer des ponts, Art Souterrain is pushing for an endlessly valuable aspect of both city development and art exhibition that one would hope would be a given by now. To let art be in the world, to be with the people, and to have somewhere to be seen.
Western museums are, rightfully, facing increasing pressure to return art and artefacts looted during colonial times. Artefact theft is not merely a disgraceful part of the past, however, but is an ongoing problem which is occurring right now in dozens of places across the world.
Political instability has always created opportunities for looters and thieves, but the reprehensible practice has particularly flourished in the Middle East and North Africa during the chaos that followed the Arab Spring. The last decade saw a “gold rush” of artefact smuggling in countries like Syria, Libya, Iraq, Tunisia and Egypt, with looted valuables removed from museums and archaeological sites and sold abroad, often ending up on the European market.
Blood Antiquities
The past few years have shone a spotlight on the long history of the plundering of priceless art and artefacts. Earlier this year a number of Berlin museums decided to return hundreds of objects that were looted from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, now part of Nigeria. The restitution of the so called “Benin Bronzes”, which carried deep cultural significance in their country of origin, was hailed in the media as a turning point in Europe’s post-colonial attitudes.
Even as hopes rose that other Western institutions might make similar moves, thousands of artefacts from African and Middle Eastern countries continued to find their way into European private collections. Indeed, the conflicts that arose in the wake of the Arab Spring have been a disaster for efforts to preserve antiquities and keep them out of smugglers’ hands.
Syria and Iraq are among his hardest hit countries in this regard. The two nations sit at the centre of several ancient empires and are among the world’s densest repositories of antiquities. Years of war compounded by the brief but ruinous rule of ISIS, however, have wrought immeasurable damage to their ancient sites. Under ISIS, the ransacking of ancient sites was done on such a scale that hundreds of illegal excavations were clearly visible on satellite images.
According to media reports, at the peak of the Islamic State’s power the sale of artefacts constituted the second largest source of income for the terrorist organisation after oil. The extremist group looted with impunity, fencing their ill-gotten gains through a network of middlemen that stretched all the way from Raqqa and Aleppo to London and New York; the looters eventually became so brazen as to sell the stolen objects openly on Facebook. Nor are terrorist groups the only ones profiting from conflict—in Syria, the Assad regime is known to have confiscated stolen artefacts from militias, only to put them up for sale later through similarly shady channels.
The Ongoing Looting of Libya
While Iraq and Syria have received much of the media attention surrounding the international traffic of looted artefacts, Libya has also become a smuggler’s free-for-all in the wake of Muammar Gaddafi’s 2011 ouster. Not only were hundreds of priceless artefacts, including the famed “Benghazi Treasure”, looted from museums during the initial chaos, but the civil war that followed also gave “artefact poachers” the opportunity to ransack ancient ruins and other archaeological sites and steal objects that have laid buried since ancient times. Estimates put the number of artefacts smuggled out of the country since 2011 at around 8000.
In May of this year, an extremely rare Greek-era sculpture illegally excavated in 2012 from the ruins of Cyrene in Libya was recovered by British customs agents at Heathrow Airport. While dozens of other such valuables have been seized by authorities after popping up in European auction houses over the last decade, experts fear that they represent only a small portion of the total number of looted treasures and that many may have been lost forever.
The situation in Libya was further complicated by the influx of extremist groups to the country, including ISIS extremists which are as likely to destroy the “idolatrous” treasures of antiquity as they are to sell them on the black market. The threat of looting and destruction of cultural property receded somewhat after Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA) carried out a highly effective campaign to push extremists out of their Libyan strongholds, but has returned with a vengeance after Turkey sent various mercenary groups, including fighters fresh out of the Syria conflict, to prop up the ineffective Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. The Turkish irregulars quickly built a reputation as looters, both of antiques and of mundane valuables taken from Libyan citizens.
These Turkish troops and mercenaries’ continued presence in Libya also casts doubt over the chances for fair and free elections to take place in December. If elections are not held on time, this means that the current situation favouring looters and smugglers is unlikely to end any time soon. Turkey’s continual refusal to remove its troops from Libya only means that valuable artefacts will continue to be looted with impunity. The only difference is that they will be most likely smuggled not to London, but to Ankara and Istanbul.
Repeating History
For many of the countries in question, the return of looted treasures is not only a moral issue, but an economic one as well. Egypt, for example, is heavily reliant on tourism and, now that the country has become stable again, the government is eager to restart the ever-so-important flux of visitors. The task, which became even more daunting within the post-pandemic world, is dependent on the rebuilding of the country’s network of museums and attractions that has been seriously damaged in the last decade.
To that end, the Cairo government has ramped up its efforts to retrieve stolen antiquities, whether they were removed from the country in the 19th century or in the last decade. Thousands of objects were retrieved, but millions more remain in European museums or private hands.
Western countries must do more to stop the influx of stolen artefacts, both by returning artefacts stolen long ago and by addressing the conflicts and neo-colonial posturing that is allowing the looting to continue.
Libyan ruins. Image from Flickr (David Stanley), Creative Commons 2.0 License
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on July 19, 2021
“More than a year after the police killing of George Floyd and the avalanche of donations toward racial-equity initiatives that followed, the actual gift amounts and their destinations remain largely unknown, complicating efforts to gauge the effectiveness of the donations and their recipients,” reads an article published by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on July 19, 2021
Tattered Cover and Philanthropy Colorado hosted a panel with five of Colorado’s foundation executives, including GIA Board of Directors alumni Gary Steuer, for a discussion about the state of philanthropy and the increased priority of equity and opportunity in their organizations’ grantmaking partnerships.
This past week saw the fifth anniversary of World Fringe Day. Beginning in 2017 on July 11th, it’s a celebration of the worldwide phenomenon that is fringe theatre, as well as the countless moving parts that make up each individual Fringe Festival- artists, volunteers, techs, venues, and so much more constantly whirr in the creation of these iconic events. The world at large didn’t see a Fringe in 2020, so this year’s World Fringe Day is especially bright as audiences are once again able to attend live performances across a great deal of the globe.
For the uninitiated, fringe theatre at large is the theatrical content and productions that exist outside of mainstream, high-profile productions and theatre companies. Often daring, odd, rough around the edges, and driven to accessibility, fringe can be likened to a punk form of theatre. Fringe Festivals are annual events produced around the globe that see scores of independent artists staging their works for hungry audiences for a fraction of the usual production cost. It’s the place where most budding theatre artists test their mettle and veteran indie and international touring artists are able to make a vibrant living.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which is both the original Fringe Festival and still the mecca of all Fringes, put tickets on sale at the start of the month. While it will be decidedly reduced in number compared to previous years’ 3000+ shows, the fact that it is going up at all is a beacon of light after a dark 365 days. The importance of the Edinburgh Fringe can’t be understated, having been home to truly resonant works—including Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s beloved Fleabag. Her catapult into worldwide recognition and President of the Fringe Society also has her releasing a Fleabag-inspired gin to help raise funds for the festival and its artists.
Courtesy of Edinburgh Gin.
Elsewhere is seeing much the same, with late-game announcements of Fringes intending to go up within the next several months. From Edmonton to Hollywood, Prague to Milan, festivals are coming back into the lives of theatre lovers around the world. Some are maintaining isolation practices through recorded theatre, while others are seeing a genuine return to lives performances. Adelaide Fringe in particular was able to gross a whopping $56.39AUD, an impressive feat in the still-recovering context.
With Fringe Festivals serving as a decent barometer for the general theatre climate, it is relieving to see these returns to form, as diminished as they may be, as a sign of better times ahead for the performing arts. Many of the qualities we have come to cherish and miss over the past year—community, connection, intimacy, live artistry, shared experience—are encapsulated by the Fringe. So with World Fringe Day flying a proud flag of this unique theatrical forum’s return across the globe, what it truly signals is us once again being able to step into that unparalleled joy found between a stage, an artist, and an audience.
Submitted by Eddie on July 14, 2021
In dialogue with “Backlash: A Sharp Right Turn by a Philanthropy Member Organization,” an excellent piece from Phil Buchanan, president of Center for Effective Philanthropy, I offer this continuation of my more recent President’s Blog post.
In his piece, Buchanan calls out the current conservative critique of pro-BIPOC philanthropy as divisive and disingenuous. In part one of this piece, I wrote of how the current “backlash” against pro-BIPOC practices and policies is a culture war that is meant to obfuscate an economic war on low-income White and BIPOC folks by a small number of economic elites who have a loud platform and the resources to buy influence. Culture wars help to illuminate why GIA and our members support culture – because culture matters more than anything else. This culture war includes philanthropy as a tool and what we can all learn from it.
I don’t use the use of the term “backlash,” as it implies that each chapter in the conservative culture war against BIPOC, women, and LGBTQIA+ folks is a unique response to a discrete moment in time. Instead of backlash, I agree with those who argue that these are new developments in a planned long-term strategy – including a cultural strategy – that has been ongoing throughout our nation’s history. This long-term strategy is what Ian Haney López calls strategic racism – a calculated decision to seek advantage, such as money, status, or power, by activating and manipulating the racialized beliefs, assumptions, and fears that we have inherited.
An example of Haney López’s strategic racism in practice that I find quite compelling is offered in Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Meyers. Meyers shares John M. Olin’s version of the origins of his spend-down foundation’s strategies. In his telling, Olin was activated to fund right-wing academic programs, scholars, and media figures by images of Black student protestors storming the student union of his alma matter, Cornell University, in the late 1960s. Meyers explains that, according to the actual timeline of events, Olin actually began shifting his giving to fuel right-wing policy change when he got into legal trouble over his company’s environmental violations.
The strategy of concealing the pursuit of economic self-interest under the pretense of defending American identity and values against Black student protestors has evolved into our current corporate-media opposition to critical race theory being taught in schools. This is only the most recent chapter in a decades-long, deliberate strategy to dehumanize Black and Indigenous folks and other people of color and create false and harmful narratives of fear mongering in order to turn voters against a government that may tax the economic elite more than they would like. And it has worked for decades.
Conservative use of philanthropy to influence public policy and media narratives has been the picture of effectiveness, as revealed by National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP)’s strong reporting, which includes Moving A Public Policy Agenda: The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations and Axis of Ideology: Conservative Foundations and Public Policy. NCRP outlines how conservative foundations grant multi-year general operating support intended to influence local and national government toward conservative economic policy through changing the public dialogue and building power. The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s recent report, Policy Influence: What Foundations are Doing and Why, reinforces the finding that policy influence stems from long-term funding and commitment. More over, the report also uncovers that community foundations supporting this work have not alienated donors, but in fact have attracted more donors.
Our national grantmaking field has come through a period of increased general operating support and trust-based philanthropy in the funding community in general and in cultural funding specifically. We must not turn back.
Unfortunately, those of us who are centrist or even progressive remain far too skittish about building power and supporting advocacy. In one of my earliest President’s Blog posts, I explain that grant support for advocacy and lobbying is perfectly legal, and GIA continues to echo this message time and again. Building cultural power and cultural advocacy are interdependent; grantmakers have a unique opportunity to make this happen. The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s recent report on policy influence shares one leader’s explanation that being engaged in policy changes does not require that we be partisan. Nonetheless, the same report reveals that most foundations reported that influencing public policy was a very small part of their grantmaking, and that over half expressly forbid grantees from using their funds to influence public policy.
We must recognize and position ourselves as part of a large economic ecosystem. Conservative philanthropy has revealed the effectiveness of using trust-based funding toward cultural shift and policy change toward their political interests. GIA shares examples of how those of us who are pro-BIPOC, pro-worker, and pro-justice must and can build power and support advocacy toward policy change. Just some of GIA’s programs that discuss this include “Reimagining the Economy With Innovative Support,” a webinar from 2020, “Beyond the Grant: Supporting Communities Through Alternative Economies,” a webinar from 2019, our most recently released report, Solidarity Not Charity: Arts & Culture Grantmaking in the Solidarity Economy, and our latest episode in the GIA Podcast series, “A Just Transition for Investing in Arts & Culture.” GIA also shares how we must and can change the narratives about one another in a manner that is joyous rather than fearful.
We can make all these changes in the world. Within the GIA community, we have colleagues to look to and learn from who are making these changes. The future we want is ours to make. It only requires action.