The organizations in this Snap Shot study play a vital role in the cultural arts field highlighting institutions that reflect the aesthetic spectrum of excellence grounded in the international community perspectives that nurtured their growth. These organizations reflect the rich tapestry of racial and cultural groups that are major contributors to the cultural life of this nation. They also represent important pillars in the infrastructure of historically underserved and under-resourced communities of color and poor white rural sectors.This initial ³Snap Shot² has raised more questions than it answers. It is clear that a more extensive, in-depth study must be conducted to fully understand how organizations that are critical assets to their communities and influence the cultural diverse programming of large organizations are still fragile and at risk of surviving. Similar to the questions raised by the Occupy Wall Street Movement, how does the role of the top 1% of wealthy individuals, corporate, foundation, and public funders, influence policies to disproportionately support the more endowed organizations and under resource the community cultural organizations that reflect the 99%?Historical underfunding coupled with economic crisis have further impacted the ability of these important organizations to sustain their operations and some of the Snap Shot organizations have been forced to close their doors. Others continue to struggle to survive while serving their communities who are also at risk due to the fiscal crisis that has heightened unemployment, homelessness and decreased social services vital to the infrastructure of underserved communities. These community cultural arts organizations are in large part multidisciplinary in their framework and are beacons of light for communities that still believe in the promise of equal opportunity and access for all.Since the second edition of Cultural Centers of Color by the National Endowment for the Arts, December 1993 (first edition, August 1992) there has not been a critical look at the state of the community cultural arts field. This preliminary study begins to address this void by identifying a sample of multidisciplinary cultural arts community organizations that developed specifically to address the cultural and artistic contributions, histories, and cultural legacies of their communities to a national audience. The work of these organizations have been instrumental in making visible and insisting that the stories of their communities are part of our nations narrative.The realization that these vital small and mid-size community organizations survive in a year-to-year funding world speaks to the commitment of Board of Directors, staff, volunteers and audiences that are committed to their survival. It is our expectations that this Snap Shot of Community Based Cultural Arts Organizations encourages policymakers, funders, and communities to understand the critical voices that these institutions contribute to the cultural life of the Nation, our international profile, and their immediate communities.

"In 1981, Chicana literary icons Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherie Moraga published what would become a foundational legacy for generations of feminist women of color-the seminal This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. In celebration of that legacy's 40th anniversary, editors gloria j. wilson, Joni Boyd Acuff, and Amelia M. Kraehe offer new generations A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back. A Love Letter contributors illuminate, question, and respond to current politics, progressive struggles, transformations, acts of resistance, and solidarity, while also offering readers a space for renewal and healing"--

The Routledge Companion to Art and Politics offers a thorough examination of the complex relationship between art and politics, and the many forms and approaches the engagement between them can take. The contributors - a diverse assembly of artists, activists, scholars from around the world – discuss and demonstrate ways of making art and politics legible and salient in the world. As such the 32 chapters in this volume reflect on performing and visual arts; music, film and new media; as well as covering social practice, community-based work, conceptual, interventionist and movement affiliated forms. The Companion is divided into four distinct parts: Conceptual Cartographies Institutional Materialities Modalities of Practice Making Publics Randy Martin has assembled a collection that ensures that readers will come away with a wider view of what can count as art and politics; where they might find it; and how it moves in the world. The diversity of perspectives is at once challenging and fortifying to those who might dismiss political art on the one hand as not making sufficient difference and on the other to those embracing it but seeking a means to elaborate the significance that it can make in the world. The Routledge Companion to Art and Politics brings together a range of issues and approaches and encourages critical and creative thinking about how art is produced, perceived, and received.

"A cultural and structural analysis of the NEA's dance funding from its inception through the early 2000s. Wilbur studies how people in power engineer and translate institutional norms of arts recognition within dance, performance, and arts policy disclosure"--

This book examines links between gender, race and national identity by analyzing a range of mass-mediated and pop-cultural ‘texts’ in four nations: Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA.