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2021 Projects, Publications & Meetings of the Ƶ

The Humanities, Arts, and Culture

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Humanities

While the Ƶ focused most of its early efforts on the natural and physical sciences, in recent years the organization has taken a more active role in studying and promoting humanities, arts, and culture in American society. Through its commissions, publications, and projects, the Ƶ conducts research and develops policy recommendations to advance the arts and humanities in American life, and seeks opportunities to enrich the nation’s cultural life. The unique convening power of the Ƶ brings together scholars, artists, and leaders from the public and private sectors to demonstrate their vital role in the life of the nation, and to articulate how the country might better support activities in this area.

Program Advisory Committee
 

CHAIR

Johanna Drucker

University of California, Los Angeles


MEMBERS

Richard Brodhead

Duke University

Colin Dayan
Vanderbilt University

Thomas Gunning
University of Chicago

Maria Hummer-Tuttle
The J. Paul Getty Trust

Jacqueline Jones
University of Texas at Austin

Mary C. Kelley
University of Michigan

Jane Dammen McAuliffe
Library of Congress

Jahan Ramazani
University of Virginia

Oscar Tang
New York, New York

Pauline Yu
American Council of Learned Societies

 


 

Project

Commission on the Arts

Arts Commission

The Commission on the Arts seeks to reframe the national conversation about the role the arts can play in a diverse twenty-first-century democracy. The national focus of the project is reflected in the composition of its membership, which spans the cultural field and the geography of the United States; its members represent over a dozen states and more than forty organizations and disciplines.

This group of artists, scholars, institutional leaders, and community advocates is guided by the common belief that the arts are essential to well-being. With this variety of perspectives, the Commission has been examining the funding mechanisms, policies, and narratives that currently govern the vast creative field.

Arts and culture are essential for their ability to bridge divides and foster community. The Commission seeks both to strengthen the impact and reach of creative work and encourage better support mechanisms for the artists and creatives whose labor and vision make that work possible.

Through reports, recommendations, and public engagement initiatives the Commission is offering a framework for how the arts can be better integrated and appreciated in public life. The first report, Art for Life’s Sake: The Case for Arts Education, examines existing inequities and presents recommendations to make arts a core part of every student’s education. A second report on the creative workforce will identify the needs of artists as workers and outline a series of recommendations for federal and state policies that can provide long-term workforce development and job opportunities for cultural workers. In addition to these policy-oriented reports, the Commission is developing public engagement activities that include a crowd-sourced poem curated by Commission cochair Natasha Trethewey called “Remix: For My People,” which was co-produced as part of PBS’s American Portrait initiative. Each element of the Commission seeks, within its given topic area, to uplift the necessity of art in daily life, both personally and collectively.
 

Commission Chairs
 

John Lithgow
Actor and Author

Deborah F. Rutter
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Natasha Trethewey
Northwestern University

 

Commission Members
 

Diane Ackerman
Author, Poet, and Naturalist

Elizabeth Alexander
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Maribel Alvarez
The University of Arizona

Rod Bigelow
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Terence Blanchard
Jazz Trumpeter and Composer

Mary Bordeaux
First Peoples Fund

Pam Breaux
National Assembly of State Arts Agencies

Jeffrey Brown
PBS NewsHour

Louise H. Bryson
The J. Paul Getty Trust

Francis Collins
National Institutes of Health

James Cuno
The J. Paul Getty Trust

Paul DiMaggio
New York University

Oskar Eustis
The Public Theater

Katherine Farley
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Theaster Gates Jr.
Rebuild Foundation

Paula Giddings
Smith College

Olivia Gude
School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Vijay Gupta
Street Symphony

Nora Halpern
Americans for the Arts

Vicky Holt Takamine
Pua Ali‘i ‘Ilim

Maria Hummer-Tuttle
Hummer-Tuttle Foundation

Gish Jen
Novelist

Brian Kisida
University of Missouri

Angela La Porte
University of Arkansas

Tania León
Composer and Conductor

Sonia Manzano
Actress and Author

Michael O’Bryan
The Village of Arts and Humanities

Felix Padrón
Arts Management Professional and Artist

Annise Parker
LGBTQ Victory Fund

Mwalim (Morgan James Peters)
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Victoria Rogers
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Jacqueline Stewart
The University of Chicago

Yancey Strickler
Kickstarter

Steven Tepper
Arizona State University

Roberta Uno
Arts in a Changing America

Zannie Voss
Southern Methodist University National Center for Arts Research

Carrie Mae Weems
Photographer

Damian Woetzel
The Juilliard School

Jay Xu
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

Kevin Young
The National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution

Laura Zabel
Springboard for the Arts

 

Project Staff
 

Susy Bielak
Consultant

Mary Lyons
Program Coordinator

Allentza Michel
Program Officer

Tania Munz
Chief Program Officer

Jessica Taylor
Louis W. Cabot Fellow

Robert B. Townsend
Program Director

 

Funders
 

The Barr Foundation

Ford Foundation

The Getty Foundation

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

The Kresge Foundation

Roger W. and Victoria P. Sant
 

Deceased

 

Commission Publications
 

Art for Life's Sake

Art for Life’s Sake: The Case for Arts Education (American Ƶ of Arts and Sciences, 2021)






 

Art is Work: Policies to Support Creative Workers

Art Is Work: Policies to Support Creative Workers (American Ƶ of Arts and Sciences, 2021)







 

Commission Meetings
 

Arts Education Listening Sessions

June 25 and September 23, 2020
Virtual Meetings

Two listening sessions that convened educators, artists, administrators, parents, and students were central elements of the information gathering stage of the Commission’s report on arts education. In each of these sessions, participants spoke in small groups about the impact of arts education and the various challenges that prevent schools and communities from delivering equitable, quality arts opportunities to students across the U.S. public school system.

Meeting Chairs
 

Olivia Gude
School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Brian Kisida
University of Missouri

Angela La Porte
University of Arkansas

 

Arts in Community and Economic Development Listening Session

August 12, 2020
Virtual Meeting

To gather insights into pressing challenges related to the arts’ role in community and economic development, the Commission convened experts and practitioners involved in relevant efforts. Participants spoke about the long-standing challenges affecting artists and the ways in which the pandemic has exacerbated those issues and unveiled systemic inequities in the cultural sector. In each of the small groups that comprised this meeting, a need to focus on sustainable models for the creative workforce emerged as a clear priority for the Commission.

Meeting Chairs
 

Michael O’Bryan
The Village of Arts and Humanities

Allentza Michel
American Ƶ of Arts and Sciences

 

Meeting of the Commission

December 3, 2020
Virtual Meeting

The fourth meeting of the Commission on the Arts convened its members to discuss the development of the Commission’s reports and public engagement activities. During the meeting, Commission members shared updates and strategies for moving the project into its final stage in 2021. Much of the discussion focused on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on artists and the arts and culture sector more broadly, as well as how the Commission can address the needs unveiled by the crisis through its reports, policy recommendations, and other activities.

Meeting Chairs
 

John Lithgow
Actor and Author

Deborah F. Rutter
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Natasha Trethewey
Northwestern University

 

Arts Education Report Roundtables

February 2–3, 2021
Virtual Meeting

To ensure the relevance of the Arts Commission’s report on arts education, experts in the field came together to discuss a draft of the report and strategies for advancing its priorities. The participants included scholars, advocacy and policy experts, philanthropic leaders, educators, and other organizational and community leaders.

 

Creative Workforce Development Report Roundtables

April 19–20, 2021
Virtual Meeting

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed and exacerbated deep vulnerabilities for artists and creative workers. Individuals and groups around the country are discussing potential policies and strategies to build a better support system for the creative workforce. This meeting built on the Arts Commission’s long-standing efforts to uplift the value of artists’ and creatives’ work by bringing together these experts and practitioners to discuss the Commission’s forthcoming report and policy recommendations on creative workforce development.

 


 

Project

The Humanities Indicators

humanities indicators

The Humanities Indicators provide nonpartisan statistical information about all aspects of the humanities: ranging from early childhood reading, through undergraduate and graduate education in the humanities, and on to employment and humanities experiences in daily life, such as book reading and visits to museums. Now in its twelfth year as a publicly available website, the project tracks the condition of the humanities enterprise via its own rigorous survey research and analyses of data gathered by the federal government.

Recent work has included a survey of five thousand Americans about their engagement with and attitudes toward the humanities, as well as updates to the project’s widely cited analyses on the employment status, earnings, and occupations of humanities majors. The Humanities Indicators are accessible at /humanities-indicators.
 

Project Directors
 

Norman M. Bradburn
NORC at the University of Chicago

Robert B. Townsend
American Ƶ of Arts and Sciences

 

Project Staff
 

Carolyn Fuqua
Senior Research Associate

John Garnett
Research Assistant

Tania Munz
Chief Program Officer

 

Advisory Committee
 

Edward Ayers
University of Richmond

Jack Buckley
Research at the College Board

Jonathan R. Cole
Columbia University

Joy Connolly
American Council of Learned Societies

John Dichtl
American Association of State and Local History

Michael Hout
New York University

Felice J. Levine
American Educational Research Association

Phoebe Stein
Federation of State Humanities Councils

Judith Tanur
Stony Brook University

 

Funders
 

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The project was developed with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities; Elihu Rose and the Madison Charitable Fund; John P. Birkelund; Peck Stackpoole Foundation; Rockefeller Foundation; Sara Lee Foundation; Teagle Foundation; Walter B. Hewlett and the William R. Hewlett Trust; and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
 

Project Publications
 

The Indicators staff publishes regular online updates to the content. Over the past year, these updates included new findings on the occupations and earnings of college graduates, charitable giving to the humanities, and public libraries. The project also produced the following research reports:

The Humanities in American Life.jpg

The Humanities in American Life: Insights from a 2019 Survey of the Public’s Attitudes & Engagement (2020)






 

Humanities American Life At A Glance

The Humanities in American Life: At a Glance: Insights from a Survey of the Public’s Attitudes & Engagement (2020)







 

Home with the Humanities: American Engagement During the Pandemic (2020)

The State of the Humanities in Four-Year Colleges and Universities: A Summary of Findings (2020)
 

Project Meetings and Presentations
 

Reflections on the State of the Humanities in Colleges and Universities

July 16, 2020
Ƶ members joined Jonathan Holloway, incoming President of Rutgers University, and Melissa Nobles, MIT’s Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, for a discussion of current trends in the humanities and how they might change as a result of our current crisis. The discussion began with a brief overview of findings from a recent national survey of humanities departments in the United States by Robert Townsend, Co-Director of the Humanities Indicators, followed by remarks by Holloway and Nobles and Q&A moderated by Ƶ President David Oxtoby.

 

Humanities Research Institute at University of Illinois

October 6, 2020
Project Co-Director Robert Townsend shared recent findings on the health of the humanities.

 

National Humanities Conference

November 11, 2020
Project Co-Director Robert Townsend presented on the Indicators recent survey of the general public and hosted a “virtual exhibit booth” at the conference.

 

Exploring the Humanities in American Life

November 18, 2020
Marking the publication of the Indicators study on the public’s engagement with the humanities, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns joined in conversation with Brenda Thomson (Arizona Humanities) and Kevin Young (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) to discuss the publication’s findings. The event included opening remarks from Ƶ President David Oxtoby and Jon Parrish Peede, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

Q&A about the Humanities in American Life

November 23, 2020
Humanities Indicators Principal Investigator Norman Bradburn, along with staff members Carolyn Fuqua and Robert Townsend, answered questions and heard feedback and suggestions for future rounds of a national survey of the public.

 

Advisory Committee Meeting

January 21, 2021
At the annual meeting of the Humanities Indicators Advisory Committee, the participants reviewed the results of the two national surveys conducted by the project in the prior year and assessed plans for future publications and research.

Participants
 

Norman M. Bradburn
NORC at the University of Chicago

Edward Ayers
University of Richmond

Jack Buckley
Research at the College Board

Jonathan R. Cole
Columbia University

Joy Connolly
American Council of Learned Societies

John Dichtl
American Association of State and Local History

Michael Hout
New York University

Felice J. Levine
American Educational Research Association

Phoebe Stein
Federation of State Humanities Councils

Judith Tanur
Stony Brook University

Carolyn Fuqua
American Ƶ of Arts and Sciences

Robert B. Townsend
American Ƶ of Arts and Sciences