Tut made the papers again this week, as The Art Newspaper published its survey of the top museum exhibitions of 2007 (pdf). The lede is about the Tokyo National Museum, and how its exhibition on Leonardo attracted over 10,000 people a day. Philadelphians, however, noted that the paper's coverage fails to highlight a noteworthy detail--that the Franklin Institute's (that's now The Franklin to you, pal) Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs was the most-attended exhibition of 2007. The Inky picked up the slack, though. [Is the Inquirer's art coverage getting better? Or is it just better coverage of the biggest institutions? Or am I imagining things?] [and as long as I'm writing notes in brackets, why isn't the PMA on the list? Their 638,000+ attendance this year (from their '07 Annual Report) should bring them in right around SFMoma and Tate Liverpool.]
The survey has other people asking questions and indulging in the regular practice of ruminating on the pros and cons of the Blockbuster. Here's one from the same Art Newspaper, with the familiar Tut picture. Apparently, London is not as good as Paris at having them.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Orchestra WolfBrownified
Sunday's Inquirer had this interesting article about the Orchestra's new subscription program. It's based closely on work the a number of performing arts & presenting organizations have done with Wolf/Brown , an international consulting firm that's acquired considerable expertise in the last few years on the questions of arts attendance and in particular, the revitalization of orchestras. I wrote recently about their study about measuring the lasting impact of arts experiences, but this work on the changing nature of subscription audiences has been showing up in the offerings of several Philly organizations lately.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Nonprofit vs. For Profit Leadership, Part 2
a good piece from the Stanford Social Innovation review about nonprofit vs. for-profit leadership. It lines up well with the Nonprofit Quarterly study I referred to a few weeks ago as Part 1 of this sure-to-be-ongoing series!
Facebook & Philanthropy
PCMI and GPCA are teaming up to do a session in May on Social Networking sites for arts & culture groups--stay tuned for details. It's being designed as a hands-on session, where you'll be in a computer lab & given step-by-step instructions on how to set up a social networking site, so by the time you leave your organization can have its own MySpace or Facebook page. We're hoping that this will be the first of a series of basic internet skills sessions to follow through the summer & fall.
Until then, here' s an piece from MSNBC about Facebook and some new tools for philanthropic giving on its network. [With thanks to Matt Fisher for the tip.]
Until then, here' s an piece from MSNBC about Facebook and some new tools for philanthropic giving on its network. [With thanks to Matt Fisher for the tip.]
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
The Miracle of Scrabulous
...spending my lunch hour today reading the Knowledge(at)Wharton website (spelled that way b/c using the at symbol confuses blogger), and there's a great article there about Facebook & the role Scrabulous & other software app's have had in its growth. I have not yet succumbed to Facebook, but PCMI & GPCA are teaming up to do a program in May about arts organizations using these & other social networking sites, so stay tuned...
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Nonprofit Capital Markets
On my wish list for "topics for PCMI to rassle with" over the next few years is the idea of new forms of capital markets for nonprofits. My enthusiasm is based only on slight reading and slight familiarity with the capital structures of some for-profit corporations (leftovers from an old paralegal career), but this blog post in the Stanford Social Innovation review awoke the topic for me. Columns or blog posts based on the world of the future often cause my eyes to glaze over (and trigger a memory-loop of Conan O'Brien's old "In the year 2000" sketch), but yes, I do want google finance's experiment with nonprofits to get bigger. See also this Slate article, which specifically calls on Pew to take the lead in this initiative. or even this Slate article. Sounds like I need to call Douglas K. Smith.
Inferiority Complex
Last week we had a meeting of PCMI's new Leadership Project, a group of 14 arts executives who, we hope, will be the next generation of arts leaders in the city. We met to talk about a recent book called Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits. If there's any one basic message to the book it's that the most effective nonprofits are those that are able to galvanize people into a movement. My first response, and the first response of a number of our leadership people, was -- well, that's great for Habitat for Humanity or City Year, (two of the organizations profiled in the book), but how does a museum build a movement? Who marches in a rally for an opera company? Who runs to the barricades for musical theatre?
One of the chronic insecurities that besets those who run (and raise money for) arts non-profits is that it's very difficult to articulate in a compelling way how the arts meet a social need. when their missions are put next to those of groups that help house, feed, shelter, and heal people in need, they can look a little... thin. How do you tell a donor that your program to help seniors write poetry is more important, more worthy, than a program that provides a safety net to abused children?
Well, of course you can't. But it's not a zero-sum game, and in fact, those who raise money for social service organizations will tell you that despite the urgency and tangibility of their need, it's no easier for them to raise money from individuals. In fact, they'll tell you, it's harder for them to get major individual support. They can't raise money from the people who most benefit from their work the way that arts organizations can. They don't have as many opportunities for earned revenue, they usually don't have beautiful facilities or the social cachet that arts organizations have, etc. etc.
I didn't mean to get into all that -- but it was a detour to illustrate the very common, very difficult issue that arts organizations have in making their case about their social worth to the broader field of philanthropy.
Where I did mean to go was this article in today's NYT about Henry Louis Gates's new iteration of African-American Lives . I haven't seen the show yet, but put briefly--if you ever wanted to see an example of an archive changing lives, this is a good one.
And let me save for another day the aesthetic argument -- that arguments about the social good of arts organizations are doomed to fail because the best art, to invoke Oscar Wilde, has no social purpose at all.
PS: saw the first installment of African-American Lives last night--which was about Oprah, of course. It was awesome. I'm especially looking forward to the Chris Rock episode.
PPS: Here's an article from Wharton's Deborah Small about a study she did that shows donors respond better to stories than to statistics. This got some attention in the nonprofit press last summer when it came out, but is worth repeating here.
One of the chronic insecurities that besets those who run (and raise money for) arts non-profits is that it's very difficult to articulate in a compelling way how the arts meet a social need. when their missions are put next to those of groups that help house, feed, shelter, and heal people in need, they can look a little... thin. How do you tell a donor that your program to help seniors write poetry is more important, more worthy, than a program that provides a safety net to abused children?
Well, of course you can't. But it's not a zero-sum game, and in fact, those who raise money for social service organizations will tell you that despite the urgency and tangibility of their need, it's no easier for them to raise money from individuals. In fact, they'll tell you, it's harder for them to get major individual support. They can't raise money from the people who most benefit from their work the way that arts organizations can. They don't have as many opportunities for earned revenue, they usually don't have beautiful facilities or the social cachet that arts organizations have, etc. etc.
I didn't mean to get into all that -- but it was a detour to illustrate the very common, very difficult issue that arts organizations have in making their case about their social worth to the broader field of philanthropy.
Where I did mean to go was this article in today's NYT about Henry Louis Gates's new iteration of African-American Lives . I haven't seen the show yet, but put briefly--if you ever wanted to see an example of an archive changing lives, this is a good one.
And let me save for another day the aesthetic argument -- that arguments about the social good of arts organizations are doomed to fail because the best art, to invoke Oscar Wilde, has no social purpose at all.
PS: saw the first installment of African-American Lives last night--which was about Oprah, of course. It was awesome. I'm especially looking forward to the Chris Rock episode.
PPS: Here's an article from Wharton's Deborah Small about a study she did that shows donors respond better to stories than to statistics. This got some attention in the nonprofit press last summer when it came out, but is worth repeating here.
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