Yesterday, an Education Commission of the States staff member with the memorable name of Claus von Zastrow published a blog reporting the findings of an art education question included in the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Math. It’s a substantial discovery—akin to when new stars are detected in a constellation, or a new species of insect is identified. His blog post and the accompanying data tables are a must-read. Longtime Department of Education watchers know that since 1995, there have been just two kinds of arts education research by the federal government, and not one of these tests over 25 years has ever captured arts education data on a state-by-state basis. So when eagle-eyed Claus spotted in the Math NAEP released in October 2019, among the 40 multi-part questions asked of the eighth grade test takers, that Question #21 was about art education—he must have been floored. As I am. This question, put to the 147,000 students that were a part of the 2019 Math NAEP sample, must be the single largest arts education data point in the history of federal education research.

October is National Arts & Humanities Month, a time to celebrate and champion the arts locally and nationally. The arts are fundamental to our humanity. They ennoble and inspire us—fostering creativity, goodness, and beauty. The arts bring us joy, help us express our values, and build bridges between cultures. The arts are also a fundamental component of a healthy community—strengthening them socially, educationally, and economically—benefits that persist even in difficult social and economic times. The effective arts advocate needs a full quiver of case-making arrows to articulate the value of the arts in as many ways as possible—from the passionately inherent to the functionally pragmatic. To help fill your quiver, I offer an updated Top 10 Reasons to Support the Arts.

When artists activate the social imagination and cultural practices bring people together, when new images and events claim or create public space, and when cultural organizing mobilizes people to action, art disrupts and influences social and political dynamics and discourse in the public realm. And, when funders shape programs to support this work, they too are influencers and activists in the public realm. As definitions of public art broaden to include social and civic practice, art in the public realm continues to recur as a central idea and practice. The concept of the “public realm” recognizes public space as more than physical places for locating art. They are connectors that support or facilitate public life and social interaction. In April, Americans for the Arts and The Barr Foundation released Programs Supporting Art in the Public Realm: A National Field Scan with snapshots of 28 programs supporting and building capacity for artists working in the public realm. The scan highlights how funders and cultural agencies are shaping programs to support artists for more place-specific and issue-specific work as well as cross-sector collaborations.

First launched in 2012, the pARTnership Movement is a program and online platform of Americans for the Arts which demonstrates that by partnering with the arts, businesses can gain a competitive edge. Over the past seven years, Americans for the Arts has developed toolkits, shared stories of success, published how-to workbooks to engage employees, and continued to celebrate America’s best businesses supporting the arts—all for the purpose of supporting the work of local arts organizations and businesses as they seek to build creative relationships. Our goal has always been two-fold: build the capacity of the arts field to cultivate and sustain mutually beneficial partnerships with business; and make the case to businesses why partnering with the arts is good for their people, their companies, and their communities. We are pleased to introduce a new pARTnership Movement website to help us (and you) further this work.

Donations by individuals are the oxygen of nonprofit organizations. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) has added new urgency to the question of what is the future of charitable giving by individuals in the United States. Specifically, how large of an impact, and for how long, will the new tax law affect individual giving—and which charities will be most adversely affected? In 2018-19, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and Americans for the Arts set out to understand the challenges that TCJA could pose on the philanthropic landscape. We reviewed philanthropic trends, donor behavior research, data-lag issues, tax policy, and economic models of the TCJA’s impact. After careful consideration of this material by academics, fundraising professionals, and tax policy experts, it is clear there are troubling phenomena in motion that, without intervention, could bring the nonprofit arts sector to a critical tipping point. 

To address the issue in a timely manner, the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and Americans for the Arts have designed a research solution that will bring reliable data to the table within a single year of deployment. It is built around a national panel study of 2,000 nonprofit organizations representing the full range of size, subsectors, and geographic regions. We will track key fundraising metrics and pair those with a qualitative on-the-ground perspective about shifts in contributions by individuals, changes in demand for services, and the ability to meet that demand. In other words: Real people at real organizations telling real stories about the impact of the tax law changes.

In a society struggling to find equity and social justice, Americans believe the arts improve the quality of our communities. How do we know? We asked. Americans Speak Out About the Arts in 2018 is the second in a series of national public opinion surveys conducted by Ipsos on behalf of Americans for the Arts. One of the largest ever conducted, it gauges the public perspective on (1) personal engagement in the arts as audience and creator, (2) support for arts education and government arts funding, (3) opinions on the personal and well-being benefits that come from engaging in the arts, and (4) how those personal benefits extend to the community. Here are some findings of the survey.