State Arts Agencies Research Articles

Creative Aging Collaborations: New Directions in Solving Critical Societal Aging and Health Problems

From the grassroots development of creative aging research to broad base community collaborations that address the issues of today and tomorrow, this presentation will illustrate how state departments of aging and state arts agencies can combine to partnership with research universities to demonstrate the efficacy of the arts to mediate problems of loneliness, isolation and caregiver stress. This case study will show how resources can be expanded and effective practices established through community based research to find ways to build healthy and engaging communities that serve to break down the barriers of isolation and promote social networks.

Creativity and Aging

Kathleen Mundell discusses the importance of creativity and creative engagement for older adults and their communi­ties. She describes several projects sponsored by the Creative Aging Program of the Maine Arts Commission, which is one of 14 state arts agencies invited to participate in a national pilot program as part of the National Center for Creative Aging’s Engage Initiative.

The distribution and policy implications of US state government general operating support to the arts and culture: Lessons from the great recession

The prolonged economic downturn has meant tough times for some nonprofit arts and culture organizations in the USA. This state of affairs has brought renewed attention to the importance of general operating support (GOS) to sustaining nonprofit arts and culture organizations. After the Culture Wars of the late 1980s and 1990s, federal GOS programs disappeared and philanthropy turned away from providing such unrestricted funds, which are typically used for salaries and overhead rather than projects. What GOS support remained was provided primarily by state and local governments. Currently, the Great Recession has prompted cuts – sometimes drastic cuts – to state arts agencies. This article uses data from the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) supplemented with new data on line items culled from the budgets of every US state to map state-level GOS support. Enhancing NASAA data with data on line items provides a truer picture of the levels of support state governments are providing to the sector. The new data enable us to see whether states have shifted dollars from agency budgets into line items during the period from 2009 to 2011. Such shifts can bring into focus the organizations that are best politically positioned to maintain support even when agency budgets are being cut. An assessment of the ways in which new competition for GOS resources may create or magnify inequity in the sector is provided.

Public Works: NEH, Congress, and the State Humanities Councils

The National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965 is the most ambitious piece of cultural legislation in American history. The story of its creation and evolution is a tangled one that continues to the present day. This essay looks at NEH and NEA in their early years, their relations with Congress, and the process by which NEH fostered the invention of humanities-based “State Committees,” significantly different in concept from NEA’s innovation of “State Arts Agencies.” The circumstances that led to the creation of these grassroots programs ultimately changed NEH itself while popularizing the novel terminology and concept of “public” humanities work. The essay concludes with reflections about the time-bound quality of NEH and the State Humanities Councils and considers their sustainability in a new century.

Fiscal pressures, institutional context, and constituents: a dynamic model of states’ arts agency appropriations

This report focuses on state government appropriations to state arts agencies (SAA), a primary figure in arts and cultural policy in the United States. A dynamic panel-data estimator can identify the fiscal, institutional, and demographic determinants on SAA appropriations. Agency budgets are particularly sensitive to past appropriations, past state revenues and NEA grants, some demographic variables, party control of state government, and state budgeting rules. Federal funds attract, rather than crowd out, state appropriations. While the influence of some demographic variables may be shifting over time, income growth continues to explain much of SAA appropriations.

Mission Accomplished: Working With State Arts Agencies

A state arts agency leader shows how TAs can help them help everyone succeed.

Folklorists at State Arts Agencies: Cultural Disconnects and ?Fairness?

Over the past twenty years, academically trained folklorists have found employment in government-funded state arts agencies, where, in addition to grants management work, they have been able to carry out a number of ethnography-based projects of lasting value, such as school curricula, radio programming, and contributions to knowledge. However, value gaps between state arts agencies and folklorists cause irritation on both sides. Nusbaum reflects on a number of the reasons why relationships between state arts agencies and folklorists in their employ are not always harmonious and why public folk programs fail to serve the ideals of the folklore field. The essay concludes with recommendations for types of projects that could be funded through arts agencies and that would benefit grassroots folk cultures and professional folk artists.

Folklorists at State Arts Agencies: Cultural Disconnects and "Fairness"

Folklorists at State Arts Agencies: Cultural Disconnects and "Fairness"

The National Government and the Arts: Impressions from the State and Jurisdictional Arts Agencies

The National Government and the Arts: Impressions from the State and Jurisdictional Arts Agencies

Editorial: The Same but Different

I am penning this editorial in an airplane, somewhere high above the Pacific. It's a long flight from Auckland to Vancouver. I've just finished some preparatory reading for a policy-oriented meeting that I will attend at the NAEA conference in Chicago, as well as a Canadian student's doctoral dissertation. Reading about initiatives taken by the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Department of Education, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, the Kennedy Center Education Department, the College Board, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council on Basic Education, and the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities make me feel a little disconnected. I am not an American. By the time that this summer issue appears I expect to be spending some quality time with my immediate and my extended Canadian family at a cottage in Muskoka. In this world of loons, gently paddled canoes, fishing with kids from the dock, and the first signs of Fall, I feel especially Canadian. Time at the cottage provides time for reflection. Despite annual cottage and dock maintenance, few summer activities seem to be as quintessentially Canadian. Family roots and bonds are deep. Brothers and sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews, come and go. Birthdays are celebrated. Picnics, hikes, and canoe trips are taken to the same predictable places. There are corn, wiener, and marshmallow roasts, wild blueberries, fresh field tomatoes, peaches, stories, and memories. I married into this special summer world and, like American art education, it has become more and more mine. Although neither of us were born in Canada, this is the second time that Studies has been edited by a non-American. I wonder if that was an issue for the NAEA Board of Directors who approved our appointments? What is it like to be a Canadian art educator? Is there anything that makes us different from our American cousins? Some of us chose to study in the United States. In myriad ways, through what we read and watch, as much as in person, many of us cross the border freely and frequently. When Walter Smith was dismissed by the Boston School Committee and the Massachusetts Board of Education, and when he failed in his bid to become director of London's South Kensington National Art Training

Book Reviews

Abstract Authentic Leadership: Courage in Action Robert W. Terry San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 275 pages, hardcover $22.95 Presenting, Touring and the State Arts Agencies Jonathan Katz, ed. Washington, D.C.: National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, 1992, 120 pages, paper $17.00

Sorting Out Our Roles: The State Arts Agencies and the National Endowment for the Arts

(1991). Sorting Out Our Roles: The State Arts Agencies and the National Endowment for the Arts. Journal of Arts Management and Law: Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 215-226.

The Arts in Education Program: State Arts Agencies in Assistance to School Arts Programs

The Arts in Education Program: State Arts Agencies in Assistance to School Arts Programs

State Arts Agencies: A Resource for the Arts and Education

State Arts Agencies: A Resource for the Arts and Education

State and Local Arts Agencies: Doing What They Do Best

State and Local Arts Agencies: Doing What They Do Best

The national endowment for the arts and cultural economics: The information partnership

As Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, I am delighted, on behalf of the United States, to have this opportunity to address the Third International Conference on Cultural Economics and Planning. It is fitting for this Conference to meet here in Akron under the auspices of The University of Akron. Our very sitethis stunningly recycled Quaker Oats Mill in Quaker Squaredemonstrates the potential for "adaptive reuse" hospitable to culturad and intellectual life. The partnership which the City and The University of Akron have created has made Akron a splendid regional center for both academic and artistic activity. Akron is home to many outstanding arts organizations. The Ohio Ballet is nationally renowned. Akron is also a base for touring by national and international arts companies. Akron's exceptional cultural life also reflects the outstanding work of the Endowment's public partner, the Ohio Arts Council, ably led by Wayne Lawson, who is also President of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. Those of us who assist the arts are all indebted to the Association for Cultural Economics. Thanks also to The

The Role of the State Arts Agencies

The Role of the State Arts Agencies

State Arts Agencies in Transition: Purpose, Program, Personnel. June Batten Arey

<i>State Arts Agencies in Transition: Purpose, Program, Personnel</i>. June Batten Arey