Over the past two decades, the arts in America have experienced an unprecedented building boom, with more than sixteen billion dollars directed to the building, expansion, and renovation of museums, theaters, symphony halls, opera houses, and centers for the visual and performing arts. Among the projects that emerged from the boom were many brilliant successes. Others, like the striking addition of the Quadracci Pavilion to the Milwaukee Art Museum, brought international renown but also tens of millions of dollars of off-budget debt while offering scarce additional benefit to the arts and embodying the cultural sector’s worst fears that the arts themselves were being displaced by the big, status-driven architecture projects built to contain them. With Building for the Arts, Peter Frumkin and Ana Kolendo explore how artistic vision, funding partnerships, and institutional culture work together—or fail to—throughout the process of major cultural construction projects. Drawing on detailed case studies and in-depth interviews at museums and other cultural institutions varying in size and funding arrangements, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Atlanta Opera, and AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, Frumkin and Kolendo analyze the decision-making considerations and challenges and identify four factors whose alignment characterizes the most successful and sustainable of the projects discussed: institutional requirements, capacity of the institution to manage the project while maintaining ongoing operations, community interest and support, and sufficient sources of funding. How and whether these factors are strategically aligned in the design and execution of a building initiative, the authors argue, can lead an organization to either thrive or fail. The book closes with an analysis of specific tactics that can enhance the chances of a project’s success. A practical guide grounded in the latest scholarship on nonprofit strategy and governance, Building for the Arts will be an invaluable resource for professional arts staff and management, trustees of arts organizations, development professionals, and donors, as well as those who study and seek to understand them.

Acknowledged as the nation’s foremost expert on audience development involving America’s growing multicultural population by the Arts and Business Council, Donna Walker-Kuhne has now written the first book describing her strategies and methods to engage diverse communities as participants for arts and culture. By offering strategic collaborations and efforts to develop and sustain nontraditional audiences, this book will directly impact the stability and future of America’s cultural and artistic landscape. Donna Walker-Kuhne has spent the last 20 years developing and refining these principles with such success as both the Broadway and national touring productions of Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk, as well as transforming the audiences at one of the U.S.’s most important and visible arts institutions, New York’s Public Theater. This book is a practical and inspirational guide on ways to invite, engage and partner with culturally diverse communities, and how to enfranchise those communities into the fabric of arts and culture in the United States. Donna Walker-Kuhne is the president of Walker International Communications Group. From 1993 to 2002, she served as the marketing director for the Public Theater in New York, where she originated a range of audience-development activities for children, students and adults throughout New York City. Ms. Walker-Kuhne is an Adjunct Professor in marketing the arts at Fordham University, Brooklyn College and New York University. She was formerly marketing director for Dance Theatre of Harlem. Ms. Walker-Kuhne has given numerous workshops and presentations for arts groups throughout the U.S., including the Arts and Business Council, League of American Theaters and Producers, the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for Arts to name a few. She has been nominated for the Ford Foundation’s 2001 Leadership for a Changing World Fellowship.

Hugh Hardy covers the essentials of designing performing arts facilities, including need-to-know information about design renovation, & technical aspects such as lighting, acoustics & materials.

As both an activist and the dynamic editor of Negro Digest, Hoyt W. Fuller stood at the nexus of the Black Arts Movement and the broader black cultural politics of his time. Jonathan Fenderson uses historical snapshots of Fuller's life and achievements to rethink the period and establish Fuller's important role in laying the foundation for the movement. In telling Fuller's story, Fenderson provides provocative new insights into the movement's international dimensions, the ways the movement took shape at the local level, the impact of race and other factors, and the challenges--corporate, political, and personal--that Fuller and others faced in trying to build black institutions. An innovative study that approaches the movement from a historical perspective, Building the Black Arts Movement is a much-needed reassessment of the trajectory of African American culture over two explosive decades.

You can still fill your home with the useful and beautiful pieces of the Arts & Crafts movement. Work your way through these 25 well-crafted projects, making authentic reproductions of classic pieces. With clean lines and timeless styles, this furniture goes well with everything.

Building Communities, Not Audiences: The Future of the Arts in the U.S, written and edited by Doug Borwick, holds that established arts organizations, for practical and moral reasons, need to be more deeply connected to their communities. It serves as an essential primer for any member of the arts community-artist, administrator, board member, patron, or friend-who is interested in the future of the arts in the U.S. It also provides new ways of looking at the arts as a powerful force for building better communities and improving lives. "It is from community that the arts developed and it is in serving communities that the arts will thrive . . . Communities do not exist to serve the arts; the arts exist to serve communities." Building Communities, Not Audiences identifies the factors that serve to isolate established arts organizations from their communities, points out the trends that loom as imminent threats to the long-term viability of the artistic status quo, and presents principles and mechanisms whereby arts organizations can significantly extend their reach into the community, supporting enhanced sustainability. Included are case studies and examples of successful community engagement work being conducted by arts organizations from around the U.S. Twenty-three contributors, representing chamber music, dance, museums, opera, orchestras, and theatre as well as an array of arts administration perspectives provide breadth of coverage. "The economic, social, and political environments out of which the infrastructure for Western 'high arts' grew have changed. Today's major arts institutions, products of that legacy, no longer benefit from relatively inexpensive labor, a nominally homogeneous culture, or a polity openly managed by an elite class. Expenses are rising precipitously and competition for major donors is increasing; as a result, the survival of established arts organizations hinges on their ability to engage effectively with a far broader segment of the population than has been true to date." -------------------------- From the Foreword by Rocco Landesman, Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts: "I think the days of the arts in ivory towers are behind us; the very best arts organizations are . . . connecting communities with artists . . . . Not only can the arts build communities, I think we must." From the Foreword by Robert L. Lynch, President & CEO, Americans for the Arts: "Doug Borwick calls for substantive rather than superficial efforts, authentic and systemic changes. . . . The challenge is not whether to build communities or audiences but how to build communities and audiences together." -------------------------- Contributors: Barbara Schaffer Bacon: Co-Director, Animating Democracy Sandra Bernhard: Director/HGOco, Houston Grand Opera Susan Badger Booth: Professor, Eastern Michigan University Tom Borrup: Principal, Creative Community Builders Ben Cameron: Program Director for the Arts, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation William Cleveland: Director, Center for the Study of Art and Community Lyz Crane: Community Development Consultant David Dombrosky: CMO/InstantEncore Maryo Gard Ewell: Community Arts Consultant Tom Finkelpearl: Executive Director, Queens Museum of Art Pam Korza: Co-Director, Animating Democracy Denise Kulawik: Principal, Oneiros, LLC Helen Lessick: Artist, Civic Art Advocate Dorothy Gunther Pugh: Founder & Artistic Director, Ballet Memphis Stephanie Moore: Arts and Culture Researcher Diane Ragsdale: Cultural Critic, Speaker, Writer Noel Raymond: Co-Director, Pillsbury House Theatre, St. Paul, MN Preranna Reddy: Director-Public Events, Queens Museum of Art Sebastian Ruth: Founder/Artistic Director, Community MusicWorks, Providence, RI Russell Willis Taylor: President & CEO, National Arts Strategies James Undercofler: Professor, Drexel University; former President/CEO, Philadelphia Orchestra Roseann Weiss: Director, CAT Institute, Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis, MO