Tag Archives: #supplydemand
It’s Complicated
Relationships are complicated. Perhaps none are more complicated than the relationship between art and money. What makes the relationship so complicated isn’t “love,” but “value.” Economic theories from Adam Smith to Karl Marx focus on the distinction between value-in-use (a … Continue reading
Avoiding the Begging Cup – redux
Late last week, Richard Dare of the Brooklyn Philharmonic posted a column on the Huffington Post about the unsustainability of a donor-based business model for the arts. A colleague, seeing this, wrote, “I’ve been saying that for years.” To which … Continue reading
Shifting the Level of Analysis
Adrian Ellis wrote a thoughtful and well-reasoned essay for the Grantmakers in the Arts website recently on supply and demand issues in the nonprofit arts sector. His essay provides enough fodder to feed several months of blog posts, and I … Continue reading
Seed funding?
Michael Wilkerson, on the ArtsJournal blog, made an interesting proposal to fund the nonprofit arts sector: tax for-profit cultural products and funnel those restricted funds to the nonprofit sector. A day later, he backpedaled from the proposal, on the advice … Continue reading
Waxing Theoretical Part 6: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!
This is the sixth and final installment in my blog series on the theories that underly arguments against — and in today’s installment for – government funding for the arts. I look today with some skepticism at the creative industries … Continue reading
Waxing Theoretical Part 5: Neoliberalism and the market
This is the fifth post in my series on the theoretical bases for arguments against – and in the next section for – government funding for the arts. In this installment I look at neoliberalism, that branch of market-loving political … Continue reading
Please Don’t Blame (only) the Artists
A tweet from 20Under40 called my attention to an open letter from the “Creative Arts Think Tank,” a “loose collection of [New York-based] contemporary performance stakeholders” about improving the business ecosystem for the contemporary performing arts. There’s a lot to … Continue reading
Measuring Success (first thoughts)
Late last week, the NEA released a re-interpretation of its 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. In the announcement of the new analysis, the agency writes “For nearly three decades, the periodic survey has focused primarily on live … Continue reading
