Mile-High Musings on Arts, Culture, Creativity and Philanthropy

There was a story in yesterday's Crain's New York Business called Artists Fleeing the City about the fact that the economic downturn, combined with the high cost of living in NYC, was beginning to drive artists out of the City.  Here is a key quote from the article: Though there are no official numbers, a survey of 1,000 artists conducted in 2009 by the New York Foundation for the Arts found that more than 43% expected their annual income to drop by 26% to 50% over the next six months, and 11% believed they would have to leave New York within six months. Even more troubling, cultural boosters say, is that for the first time, artists fresh out of art schools around the country are choosing to live in nascent artist communities in regional cities like Detroit and Cleveland—which are dangling incentives to attract this group—and bypassing New York altogether.   Of course, many arts advocates and policy folks in NY are trying to figure out how to prevent this from happe...

Yesterday was a jam-packed day, with NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman's whirlwind visit to the City of Brotherly Live and Sisterly Affection. The visit was documented in an article in today's Philadelphia Inquirer. It was great to be cited as "a model arts city."  After a morning meeting with the staff of The Reinvestment Fund, Rocco and the rest of the NEA visitors, which also included Deputy Chair Joan Shigekawa, our little band went on a quick tour of the City's cultural sites, but with a special emphasis on the role of the arts in neighborhood transformation. Rocco has been a big fan of the work done by Jeremy Nowak and the Reinvestment Fund in partnership with Mark Stern and his Social Impact of the Arts groip at University of Pennsylvania. In fact that work was funded by The Rockefeller Foundation when Joan was there before moving to NEA. We drove by Painted Bride and had a stop at Asian Arts Initiative before ending up at Crane Arts for a tour and a group conv...