This week, we shine two spotlights on the Americans for the Arts family: a new entry in our regular Member Spotlight series, and a Q&A with retired Army Brigadier General Nolen C. Bivens, currently serving as our Interim President & CEO. We also continue to bask in the shining glow of last week’s arts-filled Inauguration celebration—and the public’s warm reception to the cultural touches of the day provides a powerful opportunity to remind the country of the pandemic’s impact on creative workers and the need to keep creativity in the national recovery plan. A blog by an attorney specializing in Artificial Intelligence Fairness provides a fascinating entry to a conversation about copyright for AI-generated artworks. And we invite you to join us in celebrating this year’s Johnson Fellowship recipients—three exemplary artists working to transform their communities through public art, theater, and music.

ARTSblog

Member Spotlight: Sasha Dobson by Linda Lombardi
Sasha Dobson has been the outreach coordinator for the Lied Center for Performing Arts since 2012. She serves as the primary project manager for the Master Classes for university students and community members, Pre-Performance Talks, and the Performance Fund program, which offers free tickets to youth in the community and their summer high school programs.

Creativity Drove the Inauguration—It Should Drive the Recovery, Too by Clay Lord
On Inauguration Day, we witnessed an explosion of arts, culture, and creativity in Washington, DC. Soon President Biden will step into complex negotiations to build and then pass the American Rescue Plan, a $2 trillion relief package. There can be no national recovery, no American Rescue, without the creative economy, and the 5.1 million creative workers who make it up.

AI Generated Art: Copyright Critique by Juyoun Han
The artificial intelligence revolution has entered the sphere of art and music, a creative domain. Critics have taken issue with the originality of the AI generated artwork on grounds that the computer codes written to produce the images are borrowed. These concerns have raised questions about how copyright protection would apply in the context of AI-generated art.

Spotlight on Nolen C. Bivens, Interim President and CEO by Linda Lombardi
A Director Emeritus and former Board member of Americans for the Arts, Brigadier General Nolen C. Bivens, U.S. Army Ret., is currently serving as our Interim President and CEO. He serves in leadership roles for the National Initiative for Arts & Health Across the Military and the National Endowment for the Arts Military Healing Arts Network Creative Forces program, among other roles.

News Room

Americans for the Arts Honors Artists Rosten Woo, Laurie Woolery, Eddy Kwon with Annual Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities
Americans for the Arts announced three extraordinary artists as recipients of the 2021 Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities: Rosten Woo of Los Angeles for his work in public art and design, Laurie Woolery of New York for her work in theater, and Eddy Kwon of Brooklyn and Cincinnati for their work in music.

Pictured: “Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy (Belamy Portrait),” a generative adversarial network portrait painting constructed in 2018 by the collective, Obvious. It was the first artwork created using AI to be auctioned at Christie’s. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.