Center: About the Center

	Background

	The Staff

	Board of Directors

	Research Task Force

	Contributors

The Center for Arts and Culture is America's first independent think tank for arts and cultural issues. Based in Washington, D.C., the Center considers the role of creativity and innovation in our national and international life through research, analysis, publication and dialogue. It sparks a fresh look at the scope and contributions of art and culture to society, and links people, groups, and governments with the information they need for the future.

In its nearly three years of operations, the Center has catalyzed a new kind of policy community through two core programmatic areas:
Communications and Research.

The Center is now at work on Art, Culture and the National Agenda, a project to identify critical issues in arts and culture that will face the next President and Congress. These issues range from technology to heritage to intellectual property and the effects of corporate consolidation on the cultural sector.

The Center is grateful for the continuing support of the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation and for the project support of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

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Communications Program
The Center is deeply involved in fostering a lively community of thought and discourse in culture and policy. It sustains this effort through the following programs:

Cultural Policy Inventory
This database is available on-line. It includes:

·		A bibliography of relevant works

·		A bank of experts

·		A link library of organizational web sites related to issues in arts, culture and policy

·		A calendar of events

·		An analysis of cultural journalism

Calling the Question Series
This series of public programs addressing critical issues in the cultural sector opens a dialogue with national and international leaders and identifies future areas for Center research and recommendations. In fall 1999, programs will examine Globalization and its Impact on Culture. In spring 2000, three panels will investigate technology’s effects on the cultural sector.

Publications

·		The Politics of Culture: Policy Perspectives for Individuals, Institutions and Communities, a volume of essays introduced and edited by Center staff and published by the New Press in early 2000, surveys issues we will face in the next century.

·		In collaboration with the Henry Luce Foundation, the Center will produce the anthology Crossroads of the Spirit: Religion and Art in American Life to explore both the points of tension and areas of common ground for understanding the relationship between religion and the arts.

Research Program
Through its research initiatives and partnerships, strategies to support the emerging field of culture and policy, publications, and on-line communications, the Center will affirm its role as a thoughtful and reliable source of information for the emerging cultural sector. The Center is developing reliable tools to understand The New Policy Landscape through Creative Transition: Art, Culture and the National Agenda, a project to identify critical issues in arts and culture that will face the next President and Congress.

A nascent field needs to build a capacity for research. The Center is developing this intellectual infrastructure through its Cultural Policy Network. This confederation of colleges and universities across the country has been formed to increase the amount and improve the quality of studies on arts and cultural issues. The Network meets to discuss topics and methodologies of inquiry. With the Center’s Research Task Force, a distinguished panel of scholars, the Network helps to identify key questions and produce relevant work.