NASAA News and Current Information

Help Us Start the New Year Strong!

We’re deeply grateful for everyone who made 2018 another great year—your support helped accomplish so much! Looking ahead, we’ve got exciting and challenging opportunities on tap for 2019 and we need your help to start the year off right. Your personal support will help NASAA:

connect with members of Congress—new and returning—to protect and advocate for the National Endowment for the Arts;
provide fresh advocacy resources to appeal to your legislators;
inform and inspire you with lots of new ideas, updates and tools;
and so much more!

Please give to NASAA today to empower your agency with the tools, knowledge and resources you need to succeed in the year ahead. Thank you!

Data Infrastructure Project for Arts Education

The Statewide Data Infrastructure Project for Arts Education is a collaborative effort of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Education Commission of the States to help states collect, analyze and report on data about school based arts instruction. To that end, the project has published a paper offering guidance on developing arts education metrics based on data many states already collect. The paper, Using State Data Systems to Report Information on Arts Education, also discusses additional ways state leaders can support efforts to understand the reach and impact of arts learning.

The Role of Arts in Addressing Climate Change

Stockholm University has published an article summarizing academic work investigating the role of arts and culture in addressing climate change issues. The authors of the journal article—Raising the Temperature: The Arts on a Warming Planet—conclude that in recent years the arts have increasingly focused on climate concerns and climate change mitigation. Furthermore, they find that many such projects “are moving beyond raising awareness and entering the terrain of interdisciplinarity and knowledge co-creation.” Given this, “climate-arts can contribute positively in fostering the imagination and emotional predisposition” necessary for the development and implementation of what needs to be done to stall climate change.

Teaching Artists Asset Map

The Teaching Artists Asset Map is a new on-line tool for teaching artists seeking work and for organizations looking for them. The interactive map, which was created by the Teaching Artists Guild, can be filtered by arts discipline, teaching artist attributes, project type and organizational focus. The free map will be updated as additional teaching artists and organizations upload their contact information to it. Arts advocates, policymakers, researchers and others who want to better understand the geography of the teaching artist field also may find the resource useful.

Strategies for Increasing Support of Rural Communities

Eight Ways Funders Can Engage in Rural Philanthropy is a new GrantCraft article that addresses how grant makers can do more to serve rural communities. Rural communities receive only 7% of total grant making in the United States, even though about 20% of the country’s population lives in one. The article outlines strategies funders can use to address this disparity and to benefit rural America.

Terrie Rouse-Rosario Is Acting ED in DC

Terrie Rouse-Rosario has been appointed acting executive director of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Most recently, she served as president of Rouse Consulting, where she worked to strengthen organizations and institutions during periods of change. While in this role, Rouse also served as chief operating officer for the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, in Atlanta, Georgia. From 2007-2011, she was the founding CEO for the Capitol Visitor Center at the U.S. Capitol. Rouse previously served as executive vice president/director of museums for Kansas City’s 900,000 square-foot Union Station, which encompasses Science City, the Kansas City Museum at Corinthian Hall, The City Extreme Screen, Planetarium, exhibitions and permanent collections. Rouse has provided consultant services to a number of cultural nonprofits across the United States, including The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in Making a New Nation, a joint project among the City of Philadelphia, the National Park Service and Independence National Historic Park; and has worked with the City of Charleston on the development of the International African American Museum. She served as a consultant for the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, in Daharan, Saudi Arabia. Prior to her position in Kansas City, Rouse served as executive director of the Atlanta Ballet, president and CEO of the African American Museum in Philadelphia, director of the New York Transit Museum, and executive director at the Children’s Museum of Maine. She has served on a number of professional associations and boards, including the American Alliance of Museums, has published extensively in many academic and art publications, and has conducted presentations and lectures on subjects ranging from cultural tourism to the management of art collections in the United States and abroad.

Loie Fecteau Departs New Mexico Arts

Says Loie: “This is 20-year-old me atop Mount Holyoke overlooking the Connecticut River in Western Massachusetts where I grew up. That is the first mountain I would climb—both literally and figuratively.”

Loie Fecteau has stepped down as executive director of New Mexico Arts and its advisory New Mexico Arts Commission. Fecteau focused much of her tenure on arts based economic development and cultural tourism, including the development of Arts Trails designed to put New Mexico artists on the map and bring the market to them, as well as the creation of state-designated Arts and Cultural Districts in partnership with the New Mexico Economic Development Department’s MainStreet program. Fecteau served on the NASAA board of directors as secretary and as treasurer on the Executive Committee. She also served on the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) board of trustees, on WESTAF’s Multicultural Advisory Committee, and as the New Mexico state captain for Americans for the Arts. Prior to becoming an arts administrator, Fecteau was a journalist for more than 20 years, covering politics in New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. She received an M.A. in journalism from the University of Missouri and a B.A. in English from Marietta College. She has long believed in the transformative power of the arts.