Last week, I attended a workshop titled “Better Program Assessment” at the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention. The large group of attendees were there for a variety of reasons. Some were funders, some—like me—were there on behalf of arts education centers, one worked for the National Endowment for the Arts.

A young woman in the back of the room, who had some of the most interesting questions for the presenter, was trying to figure out how to assess her organization’s open studios program. The program had received a lot of questions and criticism from stakeholders about the quality of the art.

After the session, we spoke briefly about the problem presented in assessing open studios. Should they be evaluated on inclusivity? Economic impact? Audience exposure to new art forms? Artist satisfaction? Or … the more nebulous … “quality”?

My friends who have participated in open studios (as both artists and administrators) have a wide range of opinions. Some say that open studios are hard to fund and hard to publicize, and don’t translate into attendance for other programs. Another popular comment is that open studios are often looked down on by the “serious” art venues in a city, whose participation would grant the credibility and support needed to attract serious art buyers. The title of “open studios” is misleading in some cases, because not all open studios are open to everyone. Artists put a lot of work into preparing for open studios and are frequently disappointed by the turnout. These challenges can either present an opportunity for improvement, or a source of agitation for everyone involved. 

The proliferation of open studios in Connecticut, and the success of one in particular, have created a conundrum for Artspace in New Haven. Artspace runs City-Wide Open Studios, an event that has grown in the past 10 years to include three weekends and hundreds of artists. One of the most exciting aspects of CWOS has been the use of an alternative space, which for the past two years has included commissioned site-specific works and housed artists who do not have a studio in New Haven, but who participate in the densely populated visual art scene throughout the region.

This year, CWOS is scaling back to one long weekend, a decision that has sparked debate on Hank Hoffman’s blog. Leslie Shaffer, Executive Director of Artspace, admirably steps up to the plate to explain the thinking behind the decision. I wonder how many executive directors of Connecticut institutions as well-known as Artspace would respond to a blog post?

At any rate, the success of the new CWOS will no doubt be hard to measure—and interesting to watch.

If you read Scary Bunnies, Weekend Party Update, and The Beat Bike Blog, you will see the side of Hartford that I love—darkly humorous, community-minded, environmentalist, artistic, and generous.

Recent Examples:

—A few weeks ago, HartBeat Ensemble called community leaders to City Hall to discuss, through theater, why Connecticut is losing its young people (and they came).

—This week, Hartford progressives who are tired of fear culture and its impact on Hartford launched the Simsbury Chicken Debate on the Hartford Courant’s website. The comments about the suburban town (“I’ve only gone to Simsbury ONCE in my life, and I had to drive through it with my windows up and my doors locked!”) are kind of funny unless you have heard this type of comment about your own neighborhood over and over and over again. But sometimes, you have to laugh.

—This morning, Hartford-based Scary Bunnies pointed me south to New Haven, where Van Gogh’s Starry Night is on exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery through September 7. Somehow, I missed this bit of news.

Thanks, Hartford!

Faced with so many choices, I ended up interviewing Mike Donahue about his production of The Who’s Tommy at Yale’s Summer Cabaret. Donahue, a fellow Volksbuehne fan, is heading to Berlin this fall on a Fulbright.

Interview excerpted from The Art Agenda. Broadcast on 88.1fm, WESU, Middletown on June 26, 2008.

Interview with Joseph Smolinski, New Haven-based artist and one of twenty participants in the upcoming Badlands exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.Joseph talks about his tree turbine, thinking about art on a grand scale, provoking discussion about contemporary issues through the creation of art, his potato battery, spying on people at gallery openings, and more …

Interview excerpted from The Art Agenda. Originally broadcast on 88.1fm, WESU, Middletown on May 1, 2008.

Badlands opens Saturday, May 24, 2008.

For the past year, I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages. I created a group of fabricators from volunteers who submitted to periodic STD screenings and agreed to their complete and permanent anonymity …

Commentary roundup:

The Harvard Crimson
Ars Gratia Artis?
By Lucy M. Caldwell
April 25, 2008

Wall Street Journal: In the Fray
Art and (Wo)man at Yale
By MICHAEL J. LEWIS
April 24, 2008

The Huffington Post
Aliza Shvarts Insists Miscarriage Art Project is Real
April 17, 2008

Last week, Andrew Taylor at The Artful Manager posted an entry about “progressive disclosure,” a tech-savvy design strategy for conveying complex information to audiences.

Andrew invited readers to post their success stories, but—no surprise—there were none. Using technology effectively is hard! Most arts organizations are only beginning to look beyond basic e-marketing and websites to think about how the integration of technology on a subcutaneous level could serve their mission.

That is why I was so surprised to find DAISY close to home, in New Haven. DAISY, or the Dynamic Arts & Ideas Search Yielder, is a new tool for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. Not only does DAISY illustrate the many links between all events of the festival, it provides numerous ways to access information about events. Online browsers can view an alphabetical breakdown of events, or a list that is segmented by theme or genre. For example, Event: Bike Tour has connecting Themes: Environmental, Global and Spirituality. I was curious about how a Bike Tour connected to Spirituality, so I clicked, leading me to a tour of Sacred Architecture. It is more fun than a list, and if you don’t know where to start, there is even a “random” feature that will help you get going.

In the spirit of most ambitious projects, DAISY is not perfect. A simple search of “Bike Tour” in the DAISY system came up empty, and the back button on my browser pulled me back to the homepage instead of my previous search. I am curious to find out who’s behind DAISY, and where else it might be popping up. Stay tuned for an Art Agenda interview in the near.

Interview with photographer David Ottenstein, excerpted from The Art Agenda. Originally broadcast on 88.1fm, WESU, Middletown on April 11, 2008.

David’s exhibition Vanishing Landscape will be on display at the Exposure Gallery in New Haven through May 10, 2008.

Last year, New Haven arts council member and idea-man José Montero put a brass band on a city bus, with the intent of bringing live music into a new environment … and perhaps attracting New Haven hipsters to the wonders of mass transit? This Sunday, arts on the bus is back and better than ever with Exact Change, a series of improv, poetry, music and puppets, on four buses simultaneously!

In case you are looking for somewhere to go, Susan Morrow, Yale undergraduate, will be giving a tour in the Yale University Art Gallery at 3pm.

Interview with choreographer Elizabeth Streb, excerpted from The Art Agenda. Originally broadcast on 88.1fm, WESU, Middletown on June 7, 2006.

Interview with photographer Kevin Van Aelst, excerpted from The Art Agenda. Originally broadcast on 88.1fm, WESU, Middletown on May 8, 2007. (Correction: the New York Times fashion magazine referenced in this interview is seasonal, not every month.)