In late July 2001 Americans for the Arts held its annual conference in New York City. It was the biggest gathering we had ever had, some 1,600 leaders from the local arts agency and state arts agency worlds, including not only members of Americans for the Arts but also the...

The other week was National Arts Advocacy week in Washington, D.C. Officially, Tuesday April 5 was Arts Advocacy Day, but it was so action-packed it took the whole week. The time period was a complex one in the nation's capital; a government shutdown was looming, and endless bickering threatened reasonable...

One of the largest arts audience activities of the year happened earlier this week. Thousands of artists from around the United States and throughout the world prepared for months for this single event on one night in February. It's called the Super Bowl. Yes there was football, too and some...

Twenty-five Chinese Ministry of Culture executives just left my office. It was exciting to learn about Chinese cultural investment in projects -- from massive contemporary visual art colonies in Beijing and Shanghai to an exploding phenomenon of cultural festivals in cities and villages throughout...

It was almost 200 years ago, after a day and night of relentless attack by the British in Baltimore, that the flag of the United States of America stood against the morning sky and inspired Francis Scott Key to write the words to the "The Star-Spangled Banner." I recently saw...

Labor Day has come and gone again with all its incongruities. It is a day when we celebrate laborers and the work ethic... by taking a day off. It's a national day of leisure where we heap well-deserved praise on workers, many of them working all around us, many of...