Arts, Culture & Humanities

SEATTLE, April 14, 2009, Associated Press — The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $5 million to help libraries serve more people during the economic downturn, starting with communities in Iowa and Georgia.

April 14, 2009, Dow Jones Newswires — With the art market generally in sharp decline, collectors looking to divest should consider the benefits of passing down artwork, antiques and collectibles to family members or donating them to a qualified charity.

April 11, 2009, The New York Times — More than 2,000 applications have poured in to the National Endowment for the Arts from cultural organizations all over the country seeking a piece of the stimulus pie allotted to the arts by President Obama.

April 11, 2009, The Los Angeles Times — It's Eli Broad to the rescue again. This time, the beneficiary of the L.A. philanthropist's largess will be a Juilliard School student training program, which was slated to be eliminated in an upcoming round of budget cuts.

April 8, 2009 — Edward Hirsch, the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, announced today that in its eighty-fifth annual competition for the United States and Canada the Foundation has awarded 180 Fellowships to artists, scientists, and scholars. The successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants.

April 7, 2009, The Philadelphia Inquirer — With board chairman H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest acting as a powerful catalyst, the Curtis Institute of Music has raised $65 million for a Locust Street expansion.

MILWAUKEE, Associated Press, April 6, 2009 — Milwaukee Art Museum visitors can hear about American furniture from the 18th and 19th century, and music from those periods in the new iPod Touch tour.

VIENNA, Reuters, April 1, 2009 — Two million euros in three months: that's the cost so far for Vienna's Albertina Museum, home to landmark Impressionist works by Monet and Renoir, as the financial crisis pulled some of its most generous sponsors.

The National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts has received a grant of $275,000 from MetLife Foundation to continue the MetLife Foundation Partners in Arts Education Program. The national initiative, now in its fifth year, aims to improve teaching and learning in the arts by supporting and promoting sustainable partnerships between community arts education organizations and public schools. Objectives include the distribution of grants of up to $20,000 to support arts education partnerships during the 2009-2010 school year and the production of the Partners in Excellence: Arts Education Partnerships Institute in conjunction with the Guild's annual Conference for Community Arts Education (Nov. 11-14, 2009, in Minneapolis, MN).

After a queasy freefall, the leadership of the Philadelphia Orchestra is regaining its footing.