CEO Report to NASAA Members
Pam Breaux joined NASAA as CEO in July. In this month’s column she shares her first report to the membership, presented in October at the conclusion of the NASAA 2015 Leadership Institute in Salt Lake City, Utah. Each day here with you has been incredibly informative for me and exceedingly important for our association. I […]
2015 Leadership Institute – Salt Lake City, Utah
Partners in Place Making
The 2010 publication of the white paper Creative Placemaking gave voice to today’s nationwide movement around making the arts and culture central to community based planning and development. The paper was commissioned by the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, a leadership initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), in partnership with the U.S. […]
NASAA Is for All of Us
This month, NASAA asked Theresa Colvin to reflect on her experience leading NASAA’s Nominating Committee. I was honored and privileged to serve this year as the chair of NASAA’s Nominating Committee. As anyone knows who has ever served on this committee (affectionately known as NomComm), it is a great deal of work—but it is also […]
Rescue Failing Arts Organizations?
I was intrigued to see a session on the Americans for the Arts annual conference agenda last month entitled “Agree or Disagree: We Should Let Arts Organizations that Don’t Adapt Die.” It was moderated by our own Shannon Daut, executive director of the Alaska State Council on the Arts, and featured Aaron Dworkin of The […]
Do Not Privatize Federal Cultural Agencies
The House Budget Committee, chaired by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), issued its fiscal year 2015 budget resolution entitled “The Path to Prosperity” earlier this April. It contains the following language: Encourage Private Funding for Cultural Agencies. Federal subsidies for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for […]
State of the State Arts Agencies
NASAA is grateful to all who supported and participated in the NASAA 2013 Leadership Institute in Jackson, Wyoming, last month. Proceedings from the meeting are being posted as they become available. Here are my remarks to members at the Leadership Institute’s business meeting. I usually begin my CEO report by trying to clarify the key […]
Mississippi: Toolkit
In addition to incorporating diversity into their own policies and programming, state arts agencies can encourage their grantees and other stakeholders to commit to practices that foster cultural awareness and inclusiveness. A recent example of this can be found in the Mississippi Arts Commission‘s (MAC) Diversity Toolkit, which offers guidance on how grantees can make […]
Member Feedback Informs NASAA Action
This month, NASAA asked Loie Fecteau to reflect on her experience as chair of NASAA’s Nominating Committee. I had the great pleasure and privilege of serving this year as chair of NASAA’s Nominating Committee. As anyone who has ever served on NomCom knows, it is a tremendous amount of work and very challenging. But it […]
The Boston Bombing and Collective Experience
Of the many works of art whose topic is the case for the value of art, one of my very favorites is a poem by A. E. Housman entitled “Terence, this is stupid stuff,” which is the opening line that quotes the opinion of his friends about his writing poetry, and specifically poetry about melancholy […]