We like to think of creativity as a mysterious, indeterminate quality that resists being measured. But it's also a potent economic reality, as the National Endowment for the Arts emphasizes — through the drama of statistics — in a comprehensive new report [PDF]. Released yesterday, Artists in the Workforce: 1990-2005 synthesizes data from the last two U.S. censuses as well as the American Community Survey to give a statistical portrait of the artist in our society — the first such report the NEA has published in the 21st century.
Since my return to Seattle more than seven years ago, I have noted many changes in the state and local political cultures. The most disappointing has been the degree to which supposedly "liberal" governors, legislators, mayors and others accept as business-as-usual policies and practices which are shockingly self-interested and against the interests of a majority of their constituents.
With last-minute approval of a faculty-union contract, outgoing president Karen Morse leaves the new guy with a crisis resolved. Shepard, of Wisconsin, takes office in September.
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