Per today's NY Times, 40 percent of $50 billion for Arts Funding in the stimulus bill will be distributed to state and regional arts agencies.
California sits at the bottom of the state list for arts funding, behind Oklahoma and everywhere else.
In the early eighties, this state organization required every arts group applying for funding to make a tape of their best work in the uber-expensive Beta format because the Arts Council couldn't afford the few hundred dollars for a VHS format player. Because the council had an old donated Beta tape player every applicant had to spend mega-money to apply for their laughable grant pittances.
That my friends, is when I decided to throw in the French terrycloth and stop applying for any government funding.
25 years later our sad California Arts Council will finally get some skrill to distribute and who would you guess in Ahnold's Woild is charge of distributing that money to actual artists?
Tour jete over the fold to read...
...from the LA Times.
Eye-rolling at the California Arts Council
4:10 PM, February 13, 2009
Newly elected chairwoman Malissa Feruzzi Shriver, owner of Feruzzi Fine Art, was elevated to the leadership post by her colleagues a few weeks ago. Having an art dealer chair the state arts council is sort of like having a slot machine manufacturer run the California Gambling Control Commission. On one hand, who would be better informed about gambling than a business that profits from it? On the other, surely you jest.
Shriver is married to the brother-in-law of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who first appointed her to the arts council in 2005. Adding nepotism to conflict of interest nicely underscores just how hapless the California Arts Council is.
— Christopher Knight
If someone (say me!) would want to take on the system about this conflict of interest and nepotism issue, how would my fellow Kossacks advise going sideways politically with the California Arts Council?
A petition? A looksee at the bylaws for the California Arts Council and a visit to a pro bono attorney? Other ideas?
In working with people from around the world and concluding the U.S. is sunk in every area but one, creativity and the alive, "can do" spirit that the comes from tapping into the creative juice, its my humble o, that if we don't fund that juice, we will sink as a nation and a culture.
The arts are the best way I know of to teach and promote the creative, independent, out-of-the-box thinking that we need for a 21st economy.
Thanks for any suggestions.
AndiePandie