Displaying items by tag: arts education

Last spring, some heavy lifting in the California Legislature produced a budget bill that gave state arts funding its first legislated boost in more than a decade, albeit a modest one.

California taxpayers’ investment in the California Arts Council, the state’s grantmaking agency for nonprofit arts organizations and public school arts education, rose from $1 million to $6 million.

But Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal for the coming 2015-16 year puts advocates of arts spending back at the bottom of the hill. His spending plan gives the arts council just $1.1 million from the tax-fed general fund.

New York City is allocating another $23 million for arts education in the upcoming school year.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, Comptroller Scott Stringer and Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina said Tuesday the city will hire another 120 arts teachers.

It also will rehabilitate dilapidated arts facilities in dozens of schools.

The funding is part of the budget approved by the City Council last week. It covers fiscal year 2015, which began Monday.

Pablo Picasso’s Paris studio where he painted the iconic Guernica in 1937 is at the center of a legal battle. The cultural group The National Committee for Artistic Education (CNEA) has been using the historic loft as its headquarters since 2002 but a French court is considering evicting the committee.

Founded in 1966, CNEA promotes arts education in schools and was given the space by Paris’ Chambre des Huissiers de Justice. As property prices in the artsy Saint-Germain-des Prés soar, the Chambre could make a considerable profit from the loft.

Besides being Picasso’s home and studio from 1936 to 1955, No. 7 Rue Grands-Augustins was the setting of a Honore de Balzac short story, the first home of Jean-Louis Barrault’s theatre company and a popular meeting place for Jean-Paul Sartre, George Bataille and Jean Cocteau. CNEA has hosted over 700 events at the loft.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is hosting Modern Women at PAFA: From Cassatt to O’Keeffe through September 1, 2013. The exhibition, which features 40 works by pioneering female artists, is a companion installation to the exhibition The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World, which is on view through April 7, 2013.

Modern Women at PAFA includes both paintings and sculptures and explores themes such as motherhood and beauty, the natural landscape, self-portraiture, women in their community, women illustrators, and modern women in motion. Artists on view include Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), Violet Oakley (1874-1961), and Susan Macdowell Eakins (1851-1938).

PAFA has been a notable supporter of female artists since its inaugural exhibition in 1811, which featured works by Anna Claypoole Peale (1791-1878), Margaretta Angelica Peale (1795-1882), and Sarah Miriam Peale (1800-1885), all members of the Peale family of American painters descended from the miniaturist and still-life painter James Peale (1749-1831). By 1844 PAFA encouraged female students to participate in art classes, distinguishing itself as a leader in arts education for women. A number of important female artists including Cassatt, Cecilia Beaux (1885-1942), and Emily Clayton Bishop (1883-1912) went on to forge important relationships with PAFA as both students and instructors.