I thought that I would pass this along from one of the museum
groups. Apparently the College Art Association is moving to try to push for
funding for NEA, NEH, and IMLS. Libraries have also been supported by at least
NEH and IMLS and I don’t think that CAA is powerful enough to do much on
its own, but perhaps with the participation of other larger organizations,
something might happen, although I think that the scope needs to be broadened a
bit and not just focus on artist support.
-Doug
Douglas Nishimura
Image Permanence Institute
Rochester Institute of Technology
From:
ACUMG-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ACUMG-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Fred
Lonidier
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 1:37 PM
To: ACUMG-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ACUMG-L] re: Major Staff Cuts at UA Museum of Art
ACUMG,
There are a number of initiatives to support
increased public funding for the arts including
"stimulus" money.
Perhaps ACUMG should pass resolutions in support
and gear up for a likely long push to get more
support. We need coalitions and plans.
Below is what has been done and I up for the CAA
meeting in L.A. in a couple of weeks.
Fred
ps
Americans For The Arts is ahead of most arts organizations so far.
http://www.AmericansForTheArts.org/CulturalPolicy
Date: January 15, 2009 1:15:22 PM EST
======================================
Subject: CAA Letter to Barack Obama
Source: College Art Association News | CAA News
Author: Christopher Howard
On January 14, 2009, CAA President Paul
Jaskot and CAA Executive Director Linda Downs
sent a letter to Bill Ivey of President-elect
Barack Obama's transition team, discussing the
needs of artists and scholars in the coming years.
CAA has signed onto letters with many
other nonprofit organizations urging full funding
for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA),
the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH),
and the Institute for Library and Museum Services
(IMLS). However, CAA felt that it was necessary
to have a separate voice on issues of importance
to its members.
CAA will have a presence in Washington,
DC, in March 2009 at the Humanities Advocacy Day
<http://www.nhalliance.org/conference/2009/>
and
Arts Advocacy Day
<http://www.artsusa.org/events/2009/aad/default.asp>
. Jaskot and Downs will be making separate
appointments to visit the new chairs of the NEA,
NEH and IMLS once they have been appointed.
-------------------------------------------------
CAA Letter to President-elect Barack Obama
January 14, 2009
President-elect Barack Obama
President-elect Transition Team
Dear President-elect Barack Obama:
College Art Association, representing
over 16,000 artists, art historians, scholars,
curators, collectors, art publishers,
universities, and libraries, looks forward to
working with you and your administration to
ensure the revitalization of support for
professional artists and art historians in
America.
College Art Association:
* Promotes excellence in
scholarship and teaching in the history and
criticism of the visual arts and in creativity
and technical skill in the teaching and practices
of art;
* Facilitates the exchange of ideas
and information among all people interested in
art and the history of art;
* Advocates comprehensive and
inclusive education in the visual arts;
* Speaks for its membership on
issues affecting the visual arts and humanities;
* Publishes scholarly journals, art
criticism, and artists' writings;
* Fosters career development and professional advancement;
* Identifies and develops sources
of funding for the practice of art and for
scholarship in the arts and humanities;
* Supports and honors the
accomplishments of artists, art historians, and
critics; and
* Articulates and affirms the
highest ethical standards in the conduct of the
profession.
As the leading association in the world
that represents professional visual-arts
practitioners, CAA endorses your campaign
platform's support of the arts. We strongly agree
that in order to remain competitive in the global
economy America must reinvigorate the creativity
and innovation that has made this country great.
CAA would like your Administration to
include not only community arts organizations in
its arts program of support but, also, to give
greater focus to professional artists and art
historians in academia, art museums, and
independent professional visual-arts
practitioners. Visual art must be reinstated as a
respected and esteemed profession in America.
CAA advocates that professionally
educated artists and art historians teach K-16
students. To meet this end we must offer all
students, K-16, equal access to visual-arts
education taught by professionally trained
instructors in studio art and art history.
We also believe that public/private
partnerships should expand not only between
schools and communities but also among the
academic community within colleges, universities,
and art schools.
We endorse the creation of an art corps
comprised of professionally educated artists and
art historians who will work with students in
urban schools on community-based projects that
raise the awareness of the importance of
creativity and professional artists. CAA would
also like to see an emphasis on visual arts in
government-sponsored projects such as AmeriCorps,
in both urban and rural areas that address job
preparation as well as environmental issues.
Professional artists are eager to work on
environmental programs that involve
community-organized design projects.
CAA would like to emphasize that, in
order to publicly champion the importance of arts
education, America needs to support the proper
preparation and training of artists and art
historians who teach at the primary, secondary,
and college/university levels. Visual arts need
to become part of the core curriculum in each
grade and at every stage of education.
CAA fully supports increased funding for
the National Endowment for the Arts, the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute
for Library and Museum Services. Specifically,
professional artists need to be supported on an
individual basis, and we strongly recommend
reinstatement of the Individual Artist Fellowship
program to enable our best artists to pursue and
develop their work. We have found that grants to
other areas of the arts and humanities far exceed
federal and private foundation grants to
professional visual artists. It would be an
outstanding legacy of this administration to
again make federal support of the arts a priority
in defending the promotion of our nation's
cultural heritage.
CAA supports legislation that will allow
scholars to publish so-called orphan works, which
are copyrighted works-such as books, pictures,
music, recordings, or films-whose copyright
owners cannot be identified or located. This
legislation has been introduced in prior
Congresses, and we hope it will be passed during
the new Congress. Due to the risks of publishing
copyrighted material without obtaining
permission, many art historians and scholars are
unable to publish orphan works, thereby causing
great detriment to scholarly publishing, research
and public access to these works. At the same
time, orphan works legislation must be carefully
crafted in respect to the legitimate interests
and concerns of visual artists, including
photographers.
CAA supports your platform for cultural
diplomacy by enhancing international
opportunities offered through agencies, such as
the United States Information Agency, for
exhibitions, teaching, research, and lecture
tours by professional visual artists and art
historians. CAA's international membership
testifies to the promotion of cultural
understanding that occurs through international
cultural exchange. Every year CAA seeks funding
to support travel of international artists and
art historians to its Annual Conference. Current
Homeland Security laws and a lack of government
funding make it difficult for foreign artists and
scholars to present their work and research at
conferences of their peers. CAA endorses
streamlining the visa process and providing
government support for international exchanges of
graduate students and professional artists and
art historians.
CAA supports providing health care to
professional artists and art historians. This is
a major concern for professional artists and art
historians who are not associated with a college,
university, or art museum and attempt to work
independently to support themselves. As you are
aware, each state has its own laws on insurance.
Professional organizations such as CAA would like
to offer national healthcare coverage for artists
but are prohibited from offering insurance to its
members due to differences in state laws. CAA
endorses the creation of a National Health
Insurance Exchange as one step in the direction
of coverage for artists. In the meantime, we
encourage you to press for government reforms of
insurance laws so that professional organizations
such as CAA will be in a position to assist its
members to obtain universal coverage.
CAA endorses tax fairness for artists. We
have worked hard-and will continue to work
hard-to support the Artist-Museum Partnership
Act, which was introduced in the prior Congress
by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The Act amends
the Internal Revenue Code to allow artists to
deduct the fair market value of their work,
rather than just the costs of the materials, when
they make charitable contributions of that work.
Not only has the current tax law been harmful to
artists, the creative legacy of a whole
generation of professional visual artists has not
been donated to our great public institutions
because of disincentives to donate created by the
current tax laws.
CAA realizes that change takes the
support and involvement of every member of
society. CAA is committed to promoting the
support of professional visual artists and art
historians in all areas of American society. We
stand ready to help provide information on visual
arts professionals, suggestions for specific
programs, or any other aid that you may find
helpful in promoting a better world for artists
and art historians in America.
With your leadership and the groundswell
of support for activism, we can reestablish the
professional visual-arts practitioner as a
contributor to positive cultural change in
America.
Sincerely yours,
Paul Jaskot, President, CAA, and
Professor of Art and Art History, DePaul
University; and Linda Downs, Executive Director,
CAA
Read moreS?
<http://www.collegeart.org/news/2009/01/15/caa-letter-to-barack-obama/>
=====================================
This CAA Resolution is now at the Services to the
Members Committee and it, or some version of it,
will likely go to the CAA Board for approval:
Public arts funding is a long accepted practice
in this and most countries in the world.
However, in the U.S.A. and in the states the
levels of government support has been and is
rather small per capita. In the last few years,
most pubic art support has declined like many
allocations such as support for higher education
as a response to political initiatives to reduce
or divert revenues to other priorities. With the
onset of the current economic crises and a
commitment by the new federal government to a
large-scale effort to stimulate the economy by a
number of infrastructure investments and job
programs, there clearly is a need to address a
number of other areas of the economy to the same
ends. Already there are calls for federal
education support. Those of us in the arts see
that real economic and social benefits can come
from the federal government if allocations are
increased to existing programs as well as new
initiatives. Since we are an association of arts
professionals in colleges and universities,
support for our institutions can work towards the
same ends.
Whereas, public arts funding is crucial to
continue to help bring organized support for a
wide range of cultural practices to all citizens
of the United States and that
Whereas these practices need to be of many kinds
from folk and ethnic culture to the fine arts and
Whereas a number of public and private
institutions such as schools and colleges,
nonprofit organizations and museums are some the
places and spaces for cultural activities and
Whereas, expanded public arts funding would be of
great benefit to the field of arts embodied in
educational and research institutions, museums,
publications, exhibitions and
Whereas all forms of cultural practices need
public support and some of them are the visual
arts, theater, music, dance, literature and
poetry, mixed media and skilled crafts and
Whereas the National Endowment for the Arts has
been the primary source of such funding, that it
broaden its scope to once again provide grants to
individual artists, historical and critical
research in the arts and
Whereas the contracting economy is decreasing
employment in many public and private sectors of
the arts and
Whereas, support is needed in institutions as
well as individual practices, the NEA needs to
revive areas of funding it abandoned such as
individual artist and critics grants,
Therefore be it resolved that the College Art
Association be on record in support of a many
fold increase in arts funding by the federal
government and particularly the NEA.
__._,_.___
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