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

Jeanne Jaffe - Little Red Riding Hood as a Crime Scene (Schuylkill Center) I was able to spend the day earlier this week at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education and spend some time taking in Facts and Fables: Stories of the Natural World , their new art installation. The installation explores how stories - narrative - affect our understanding of nature. The artists are Jeremy Beaudrey, David Dempewolf, Brian Collier, Chad Curtis, Susan Hagen, Blane De St-Croix, and Jeanne Jaffe. The environmental art department at the Schuylkill Center is a truly important and unique component of Philadelphia's cultural scene - bringing together artists with the resources of naturalists and environmental educators to use art to raise awareness of the environment. Kudo's to Mary Salvante for founding this program, to Jenny Laden for leading it now, and to the Center itself for sustaining this commitment to the role the art can play in fulfilling its mission. The art is ...

First off, must apologize for dropping off the face of the earth on my blog for a month or more. It's just been unbelievably busy and I have not found the time to write. The "New Posting" box has been open on my computer for weeks, as has the similar page for Huffington Post. I had intended to dive in on the debate provoked by NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman on the supply/demand issue (New York Times article is here ; Rocco's blog is here ; sample blog response from Linda Essig's Creative Infrastructure here ). But now it seems rather anticlimactic. I will say, in brief (OK, I am not so brief), that I think the debate sparked by Rocco is a very healthy one. It is crystal clear if you look at the Americans for the Arts National Arts Index and other research that the number of nonprofit arts groups has been rising dramatically for the past decade or more, while at the same time the "market share" of philanthropy going to the arts has been declining, and th...