What People Are Saying

Clay Lord, Americans for the Arts:

Nina Simon is our oracle in the arts.  She has a tremendous knack for telling the arts field where we have to go next, and we are all better for the wisdom she provides. Hers is one of the most important, urgent, and informed voices writing in the arts today, and I hope we heed what she’s telling us—she speaks the truth, and gives us the map to navigate forward towards a more relevant role for all of the arts in our communities.

Diane Ragsdale, Jumper:

Nina Simon has not only transformed a museum she has transformed the way people in the arts think about the role of arts institutions in society. Administrators, artists, funders, arts educators, and policymakers—all are avid readers of Simon’s blog as she is, without a doubt, one of the most important and engaging voices in the field and her ideas are simultaneously game-changing and absolutely doable.

Roberto Bedoya, creative placemaker:

Nina’s mind, passion and eloquence evident in her writing manifests relevance as radical hope, it prompts artists, audience and the “we” that include people you don’t know, the secular “we” that engages with the poesies and praxis of making our expressive life, our cities, our cultural institution alive and frisky.

Jon Moscone, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts:

If you are looking into the space of meaning and wondering why you can’t get in, or looking out onto the street from that space and wondering why they are not coming, then this is the book that you must read, right now, and maybe twice.

Laura Zabel, Springboard for the Arts:

This is a fantastic book that thinks beyond the cliches of relevance to actually define and provide practical ideas and thought provoking stories to illustrate how we can all make our work, organizations, causes meaningful to more people in new ways. An important book that is full of elegant metaphors and well crafted stories–a great beach read for nerds from nonprofit, social justice and business sectors alike!

Read more reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

PRESS, BLOGS, & INTERVIEWS

ArtsJournal: Insiders and Outsiders – Reflections on The Art of Relevance by Nina Simon (Diane Ragsdale)

Santa Cruz Sentinel: In her new book ‘The Art of Relevance,’ MAH director Nina Simon explores what it takes to connect, and stay connected, to the community (Wallace Baine)

MuseumNext: Nina Simon – The Art of Relevance (Jim Richardson)

Exhibitricks: The Art of Relevance – An Interview with Nina Simon (Paul Orselli)

Fractured Atlas: Book Recommendation – The Art of Relevance (Lisa Neidermeyer)

Thinking Practice: The Art of Relevance and Brexit Listening Strategies (Mark Robinson)