Arts/Culture

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation will award $50 million over 10 years to more than 200 performing artists, dance companies, theaters and presenters, the foundation is to announce on Thursday. Rather than allotting funds for specific projects as foundations typically do, the Doris Duke Performing Artists Initiative will invest in artists’ future work with flexible multiyear cash awards of as much as $275,000, starting next year.

According to preliminary figures released for the first time, the Metropolitan Opera hauled in $182 million, an astonishing amount in a tough economic climate and 50 percent more than it raised just the year before. And for the first time in seven years, the Met had balanced its budget, thanks partly to $11 million in profits last year from its HD movie theater transmissions, which had been operating for only five years.

Billions of dollars in arts funding is serving a mostly wealthy, white audience that is shrinking while only a small chunk of money goes to emerging art groups that serve poorer communities that are more ethnically diverse, according to a report released Monday.

The report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group, shows foundation giving has fallen out of balance with the nation's increasingly diverse demographics. The report was provided to The Associated Press before its release.

Theatre Communications Group (TCG) has received $1 million from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to launch Leadership U[niversity], a grant program to support the development of theatre leaders at various points in their career. The overall intent of this program is to strengthen the field by developing the individuals who are the core and the future of theatre.

Nicholas Karabots hadn't been to the Franklin Institute in decades when, several months ago, he accepted an invitation to stop in.
Karabots felt a deep connection; he himself was once an inner-city kid — "a bad kid," said the former South Bronx gang member — which informs his philanthropic decisions to this day. Relatively quickly, he and his wife, Athena, decided to give the Franklin Institute $10 million.

MetLife Foundation and Theatre Communications Group (TCG) announce the fourth round of recipients for the MetLife/TCG A-ha! Program: Think It, Do It, which supports the creative thinking and action of TCG member theatres with the goal of impacting the larger theatre community. Five theatres were awarded grants, totaling $225,000, to either research and develop new ideas or experiment and implement innovative concepts.

The 2011 MetLife/TCG A-ha! Program recipients are Perseverance Theatre, Center for New Performance at CalArts, Curious Theatre Co., Salvage Vanguard Theater and The Wooster Group.

Legion Arts, an Iowa nonprofit arts organization that recently renovated its flood-damaged social hall, is selling naming rights to its new toilets, complete with decorative plaques to be placed above each facility, for $1,000 a pop. The Des Moines Register reports that while supplies last, donors can even choose their particular comfort station.

An Ames, Iowa public radio station used a similar strategy a few years ago, offering donors the opportunity to name a chicken at Living History Farms in Des Moines in return for a $35 donation.

Jeff Bezos, the self-made billionaire who started Amazon.com out of a Bellevue, Wash., garage and built it into the world's dominant online retailer over the past two decades, has given $10 million to the Museum of History & Industry to establish a "Center for Innovation" at MOHAI's new location on South Lake Union.

The gift is the largest in the museum's 59-year history. It also is the most visible sign yet of personal giving by Bezos, who is better known for spending money on space exploration and other business investments than on local philanthropic activities.

The leaders of the Sacramento Opera and Sacramento Philharmonic are discussing a merger as a way to secure their futures — and potentially grow — despite a troubled economy.

Like other organizations that have gone down this road, they are learning there are pitfalls as well as benefits. Marc Scorca has seen it all in his years as president of Opera America.

"There are a number of factors to consider, like the issue of loyalty to an art form among donors," Scorca said. "Blending the two can be less appealing to everyone than the individual identity over which they are passionate."

In 2009, when the recession was in full swing, the Washington Business Journal did a story on five new nonprofit theaters in the Washington, D.C. area: The Hub, Doorway Arts Ensemble, Ambassador Theater, Factory 449, and theHegira. The article highlighted how these five organizations “defied the recession” by making it through their first year. Now, two years later and with 12 additional theater companies in the area, a recent follow-up story provides an update on these theaters, all still in operation, and offers a list of four tips for small arts organizations navigating similarly challenging courses: