Art in the News
Read the latest arts news
It's the 16th of October, and also Day 16 of the government shutdown.
The House discharge petition (the Miller/Van Hollen effort mentioned in our last update) that would provide a “clean Continuing Resolution” now has 196 signatures, short of the 218 needed to move to a vote on the House floor. No Republicans have signed.
In September 2013, Governor Martin O’Malley’s P-20 Leadership Council unanimously voted to establish a statewide task force on arts education in Maryland schools. The task force is in place to ensure that all students in Maryland have access to a quality education, which includes the arts.
On October 3rd, top White House economic advisors expressed the seriousness of getting a short term Congressional appropriations resolution passed to re-open the federal government immediately. They also confirmed that October 17th remains the deadline for when the executive branch of the government will have exhausted all of the “extraordinary measures” available to them to secure credit, borrow from various accounts to pay interest on the government&r
The congressional debate has officially led to a government shutdown as of 12:01 a.m. this morning, after the House and the Senate were unable to come to an agreement over legislation for the 2014 Fiscal Year Budget over the weekend.
Yesterday, the National Endowment for the Arts released this year's Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. From 2009 to 2012, musicals faced a 9% participation drop, and straight plays did even worse with a 12% drop.
The Right Brain initiative is a sustainable partnership between public schools, local government, foundations, businesses and the cultural community to teach to children using the arts, creativity innovation, and whole-brain thinking.
Council Members Stephen Levin and Jimmy Van Bramer have introduced legislation at the New York City Council that would require the City to have a cultural plan. The plan calls for the city to go out to neighborhoods in the five boroughs to learn what each community wants and needs in a cultural plan, and incorporate those findings into their plan.
Barry's Blog, a service of the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), posted their Fifty Most Influential People in the Nonprofit Arts (USA) list this Sunday, August 25.
Congratulations to our long-time Board Member Bill Lehr and his wife, Beverlee, who will receive the Patron Award, one of the PA Governer's Award for the Arts at the Whitaker Center in Harrisburg on Oct. 22. The Awards will be presented by First Lady Susan Corbett, who is chairwoman of the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts. The Lehrs established the Americans for the Arts Foundation, as well as the Bill Lehr Fund, which supports our Professional Development Programs. We are lucky to have them on our team of strong supporters, and AFTA CEO Bob Lynch looks forward to celebrating all that they have contributed to the arts at the Awards Banquet.
Agnus Gund from the Huff Post reacts to the U.S. House Appropriations Committee approval of cutting the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities by 49 percent, and contests with a strong argument in defense of the arts. In response to the Chairman's stating that the arts were nice to have but not a critical part of American's everyday lives, she mounts "a more vigorous, vital, real-life defense," stating that the arts are particularly essential to our kids, our servicemen and women, and our communities.
