Content area
Full text
Cultural Democracy: The Arts, Community, and the Public Purpose. By James Bau Graves. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005. Pp. xii + 256, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, charts, table, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00 cloth, $20.00 paper); Federalizing the Muse: United States Arts Policy and the National Endowment for the Arts, 1965-1980. By Donna M. Binkiewicz. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. xii + 295, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, table, notes, bibliography, index. $59.95 cloth, $24.95 paper)
Both of these titles should be added to the folk-arts administrator's reading list, and both should be included in syllabi for public-sector folklore courses. We advise the same for arts administrators and arts-administration curricula. These two volumes provide historical context and useful insight into funding mechanisms and program development.
In the first volume, Cultural Democracy (the term is defined here as "social agenda"), James Bau Graves provides a view of the evolution of this movement in the United States, its relationship to corporate America-and its potential global impact. He offers strong arguments for the economic benefits of cultural democracy and the sustainability of traditional culture. He explores the conflicts and blessings of corporate and foundation funding in addition to addressing the impact of America's political agenda and private sector sphere on the rest of the world.
An ethnomusicologist and the director of the Center for Cultural Exchange in Portland, Maine, Graves draws extensively from his own experience working with immigrant communities over twenty years. Because he readily admits his own foibles in...