Arts Intranet

Hoong Yee, about to engage her superpowers in flip charting

It is a good thing to know what you are good at.

According to my wise thirteen-year-old son, I am good at lunch, sewing on buttons, and getting better at playing Action Potato on my phone. Oh, and hugs, lots of them.

My dear friend Barbara Schaffer Bacon who is the Co-Director of Animating Democracy at Americans for the Art thought I would be good as a discussion leader for a conference session at the Americans for the Arts 2011 Annual Convention earlier this month in San Diego.

I was thrilled to be joined by Josie Talamantez, Assistant Chief of Grant Programs for the California Arts Council, and Sioux Trujillo, Associate Director of Community + Public Arts DETROIT.

Actually, I was really very good at writing stuff on flip charts. I am a force to be reckoned with when I have a marker in my hand.

Alison Schwartz

As technology enables artists and arts groups to share video and content of their work to the masses, some artists (and unions) are raising the question of control. As I sat down to hear the session, Technology’s Impact on the Future of Traditional Arts Delivery Systems at the Americans for the Arts Half-Century Summit, I was curious to hear what the panel had to say about control. Should we protect the artistic process? Does art-making need to be mysterious to be magical?

After reading a recent article about Peter Gelb, managing director of the Metropolitan Opera in Vanity Fair, I was looking forward to hearing how the MET had sold its casts and crews and artistic team on the idea of broadcasting its productions via LIVE satellite to audiences in movie theaters across the world. As a marketing professional, this strategy sounds like a smart, creative and bold way to engage new audiences. As a former stage manager, it sounds impossible. How did the MET get everyone on board with cameras on stage, backstage, in the house, in the lobbies? Elena Park, the director of creative content at the Met Opera, shared their story with us yesterday. And Tim Svenonius from SFMOMA, Ferol Vernon of ReverbNation, and Rich Mintz from Blue State Digital all provided supportive commentary.

Graham Dunstan

This is my 13th Americans for the Arts Annual Convention—that’s if you count me crashing the closing reception at the World of Coca Cola Museum in Atlanta in 1999 even though I wasn’t a registered attendee. (That took effort, so I count it).

I spent some time yesterday thinking about what Convention offers me and if I rely on it now for different things than I did earlier in my career. When I was working at the Fulton County Arts Council in Atlanta from 1999 to 2004, Convention for me was all about helping grow the fledgling emerging leaders program and gaining the tools I needed as a new arts administration professional.

And I’ll tell you, I looked forward to Convention all year long. When I arrived on site I’d absorb the information from the program book—circling sessions I wanted to attend and creating a complicated schedule with different colored highlighters so I best take advantage of every session and networking opportunity that interested me. 

Danielle Brazell & Ramona Baker

I like to think I am a better person, smarter, my head filled with new ways of thinking, and ready to rock and roll after being surrounded by people who love and respect the power of the arts to change the world.

The truth is, I am probably heavier after all of the dine-arounds and dinners out. My card case will explode with all of the business cards I collected. My eyes glaze over thinking about where to start first.

My mother, the evolved Buddhist from Bayside, did not achieve her state of grace without believing in some basic universal truths. She would say, "Get over yourself. You are just a speck in the grand scheme of things so relax. Take one step at a time."

Thanks, Mom.

I know she meant to say something like "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," but after living in Queens you start to sound like a local.

Anyway, here are some of my impressions and images from this year's American For the Arts Annual Convention in San Diego:

Sally Gaskill

Yesterday morning I happened to walk down the hall and saw a sign for a “Higher Education Peer Group” session. I am an arts administrator who works in higher education, so I hoped the session would be open to anyone, and I was in luck. I immediately recognized the person in charge: the bow-tied Ron Jones, newly appointed president of the Memphis College of Art.

In Ron’s previous position as Dean of the Arts at the University of South Florida, he had spoken out about the need for data on the people who graduate with arts degrees from our colleges and universities. He had, in fact, become a poster child for the research project I manage at Indiana University – the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project – and is quoted on the SNAAP brochure as follows:  “Accountability is our future, and SNAAP is providing data that heretofore we made up or assumed.”