Americans for the Arts

Patricia Martin

Open talk about new business models in the arts is a cultural signal. It’s a watermark that tells us the tides are shifting. Digital culture is eroding some of art’s traditional value proposition.

That’s not what worries me.

This does: Even if the arts can come to occupy a new role in people’s lives, will they will be able to communicate this role to attract new users—especially younger audiences?

Cultivating younger audiences will be important. They are the future. But using marketing messages and tactics from the past to reach them might mean that your organization—no matter what its business model, will not be around to see them join your ranks. 

Margy Waller

Before we start developing the public policy campaign to maintain status quo for charitable status and deductions, let’s make sure we know why we are doing it – and that it’s really a good fit for us.

Reviewing all the blog posts in this Salon in one read, I’m struck by the number of writers pointing out limitations of the special status that makes donors to nonprofit arts organizations eligible for a tax deduction.

Patricia Martin encourages us to rethink the slavish devotion to 501(c)(3) status if we want our organizational structure to keep up with the “rising generation [that] has already changed how it consumes culture and interacts with institutions." 

Claudia Bach

The nonprofit arts organization. An ungainly set of modifiers. But in the pre-professionalized mid-1970s, when I had to create my own bachelors degree in arts administration, I felt like I was part of an exciting evolutionary force, helping to grow the structural integrity and value of the arts within the conceptual and legal arts nonprofit corporate framework.

At that time it appeared to be a boundless horizon: a corporate structure where artists could gather force to develop and publicly share their work, communities could access entertainment and elucidation, and where we could rest assured that cultural legacies would inspire us and be preserved for future generations. I don’t think I, or my fellow travelers, questioned this as a common good. It was the chosen path and our work was to use it to good advantage in service of the arts. 

Paul Miller

Circus as an industry has been incredibly exploitative.

When I joined the circus as a college drop-out in the late 1990s, the Soviet Union fell and with it, went their highest art form—the circus. Their amazing artists had no support from the government, so American circuses enticed these talented individuals to come to the United States. They were paid thousands of rubles which seemed like a lot of money but was, in fact, only about $50 per week. This is not unusual.

I’ve worked with many Russian and Asian circus teachers who can barely read or write. In 2000, I had a six-month gig in Japan with a fellow performer who could speak seven languages but his agent stole half his fee because he could not read the contract. 

Adam Huttler

The L3C (low-profit limited liability company) construct has been getting a ton of virtual ink lately. As a way of establishing my dubious credentials, I’ll note that I was among the first in our field to note the arrival of the L3C, and I’ve written and debated about it quite a bit since then. Fractured Atlas formed an L3C subsidiary for our insurance program back in 2008.

All of that is just to establish why I’m having trouble thinking of something new and inspiring to say about the L3C. I suppose it also explains why I’m interviewed on the subject frequently enough that I can confidently lump the questioners into two categories: (1) big thinkers – often grad students or consultants - who see tremendous potential in the L3C but have only a vague concept of its real legal and financial contours, and (2) jaded skeptics – often professors or attorneys – who know just enough about the L3C to have serious doubts about its applicability to the arts.