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“The most extraordinary aspect of the programme was not its scale but that it employed artists at all, that art was considered as important to a nation as infrastructure. The government saw art as labour, and artists as workers worthy of employment and, therefore, public funds. In 1936, Holger Cahill, the curator who ran the FAP, claimed that, ‘The organization of the Project has proceeded on the principle that it is not the solitary genius but a sound general movement which maintains art as a vital, functioning part of any cultural scheme. Art is not a matter of rare, occasional masterpieces.”

It’s always fun to check out the homes of creative people. Here’s a mother lode from all over the world.

Attention writers! Our newest Flash Points topic, Contemporary Art + Economics, launches next week. This time, we’re opening up the editorial process and inviting you to participate. Have an idea for a post? Interested in what’s going down on Capitol Hill or how the current economic climate has affected the arts closer to home, in your own community? Propose a Flash Points blog post and have a chance to be featured on this site.

Arts advocates, from Robert Redford to the president of New York’s Lincoln Center, are celebrating now. But I wonder, in a still, small voice, if this is really such a victory.

For one thing, in the larger scope of things, it’s not much money. Fifty million dollars, in a hastily assembled $800 billion stimulus, is just a bubble on a wave. It’s a rounding error, a random fluctuation. It doesn’t mean that arts support runs deep and strong. The battle for the arts has been going on for decades, and in my view — as a person in the arts myself — the arguments we make aren’t nearly strong enough

The Camel Collective began as a loose affiliation of artists, architects, and writers in the Spring of 2005. The U.S. invasion of Iraq, the dominant media’s tacit support for an illegitimate administration, and the hysterical real estate speculation in New York City motivated us to consider how we might orient our individual practices towards collective organization. Our belief in the productive force of collectivity and exchange across disciplines, along with the necessity to address social, political and economic issues as artists is what motivates our activities. C-M-L is an ongoing online project of Camel Collective. We invite similarly engaged artists to submit works and documents to build an archive available online and distributed in the form of a newsletter. This newsletter includes two main sections—a growing archive of projects selected by the editors, and a bimonthly guest curatorial examination thereof. C-M-L also extends an open invitation for project submissions. Please write us at mail@c-m-l.org. We intend C-M-L to be a forum that circulates projects—produced for other spaces and translated into web-based documentation—among artists, curators, political organizers, and whoever else might happen by. We enjoy works that refuse the division between the aesthetic and the political, and insist that just as any political practice has an aesthetic dimension, any aesthetic practice has political consequences. Subscription is free.

President Barack Obama has established a staff position in the White House to oversee arts and culture in the Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs under Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, a White House official confirmed.

Though it isn’t the cabinet-level position that the petition was advocating for, it still seems like a step in the right direction.