The politics of art. That isn’t my field, and yet it is. I listened to the back and forth about arts funding during the Stimulus Bill discussions with mixed emotions. Sometimes the arguments rang true, sometimes they didn’t.
The fact is that OF COURSE we need to fund and support the arts. Those who think otherwise are living in a state of disconnectedness. But for me the operative question is how do you do it? What does “supporting the arts” really mean? Whether your nut is $50 million or $500 million, how do you decide where best to invest? And in this difficult economic environment, what would be the most stimulative approach? And how do you deal with that nasty problem of elitism, perceived and/or real?
Greg Sandow, an arts writer I follow, wrote the following for the Wall Street Journal. I don’t necessarily agree with all of his claims, but I found his point of view provocative and worthwhile. See what you think.
People in the arts had a triumph.
They got culture money into the stimulus bill — but not without a fight. The House, in its version of the bill, gave $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts, increasing its budget by more than the third. Then the Senate took that out. Arts advocates mobilized, made phone calls, asked supporters to make some noise. And lo! The final version of the bill restored the funds.
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
Take the economic argument. That took center stage in the Battle for the Stimulus. The arts, we like to say, create jobs and bolster the economy. That’s prominently argued on the Web site of Americans for the Arts, an advocacy group. The nonprofit arts, the site insists, generate $166 billion in economic activity each year, and offer the equivalent of full-time employment to 5.7 million souls.
But does this mean — as Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D., N.Y.) told the New York Times, after victory was won — that “if we’re trying to stimulate the economy, and get money into the Treasury, nothing does that better than art”? Well, hardly. Let’s not get carried away. Not even Americans for the Arts suggests such a thing.
And unless you go all the way with Rep. Slaughter, the economic argument for arts support has a hole in it. Other things have economic impact, too. Why choose the arts? All of Michigan is suffering because the auto industry collapsed.
Arts advocates also love to say that arts generate indirect spending and employment. In that same Times article, Kate D. Levin, cultural affairs commissioner of New York City, said that “even the smallest organization can record the fact that the parking lot down the street and the dry cleaner around the corner and the restaurant nearby all do better when the organization is functioning.” But that’s true of any business. In New York, it’s virulently true for Wall Street, whose sickness hurts all sorts of New York enterprises, from real estate to small businesses in the financial district. (Even culture!) This, in fact, became an argument in favor of those hated Wall Street bonuses. Without them, New York’s economy is reeling.
But then the choices that our nation has to make go even further. The San Francisco city government is facing a $576 million budget deficit. Cuts have been proposed, some involving public health. For hours at a meeting of the city’s Board of Supervisors, there were protests from advocates for homeless people, medical clinics that serve the poor, and many other worthy groups.
So somebody proposed an alternative — cut funding for the symphony and ballet. The matter hasn’t been resolved, but would you like to be the opera representative, arguing to keep your funds, with people from endangered clinics in the room?
And what if those clinic workers and others like them say the arts have a lot of money, and that they largely serve an upscale audience? Arts advocates hate that kind of talk. It’s not correct, they say. It’s anti-arts, anti-intellectual.
But let’s not underestimate how persistent those perceptions are, especially when reality at least partly seems to back them up. In New York, the Metropolitan Opera sells some of its tickets for as much as $375 each and has board members who make million-dollar gifts (or, in one case, a $25 million gift — an overflowing cornucopia). In 2006, the most recent year for which numbers are available, the New York Philharmonic paid $2.8 million to its music director and $864,000 to its CEO.
The Met, of course, has huge expenses, as does the Philharmonic. Both can say they’re paying what the market charges for the talent that they need. And the Met, on top of that, is in financial trouble. But will everyday Americans jump up and down for joy if the Met gets extra funds while public health is cut?
The arts are going to need a better strategy. And in the end it’s going to have to come from art itself, from the benefits art brings, in a world where popular culture — which has gotten smart and serious — also helps bring depth and meaning to our lives.
That’s the kicker: the popular culture part. Once we figure that out, we can leave our shaky arguments behind and really try to prove we matter.
“The fact is that OF COURSE we need to fund and support the arts. Those who think otherwise are living in a state of disconnectedness.”
You have to distinguish between voluntary, private funding and public funding. There is no reason that “of course” taxpayer dollars should be given to fund the arts.
But, since you are passionate this is the case, I’d suggest you look into an experimental voucher system introduced in New York for off-Broadway theatres. The concept is consumer-driven subsidy, which in my opinion is a far more equitable solution for subsidy. Consumers can use subsidized vouchers, so art is more affordable, but they are also free to choose the “winning” art! Arts organizations still have to aim to please audiences (the ultimate consumer of their end product, those who determine their long-term success) versus grant approval panels. Arts organizations learn the desperately-needed business and marketing skills critical to audience development, education, and maintenance.
The trials were successful, yet ended without a reason.
The history of the NEA is frought with discord over censorship, inefficiency, entitlement, and dependency. Artist learn to be rewarded on a system based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or geographic region – not the intrinsic value of their art – which is ultimately decided by the people who receive the message. Art is created for an audience, no?
Milena, there’s more to the issue of arts funding than relying on market dynamics. In that world view, the street becomes the arbiter of taste and excellence. That isn’t a vetting process that has worked all that well over time IMHO. For movies perhaps, but not the kind of artistic ventures that I am most interested in fostering.
Yes, art needs an audience. But sometimes the audience for something truly great is initially very small. With time, others may come to see that brilliance. But in your scheme, there’s no time frame to let work gestate in the culture.
The making and production of art works is more complex than a transaction-driven economic model. That’s why the question of how to fund is so critical.
Thanks for stopping in.
Much depends on whether you think art follows consumer taste or leads it. And on whether you would be happy for art to reflect culture rather than to stimulate it.
You have to consider how much poorer your life would be if an artist were not different from an entertainer. Maybe not poorer at all, if entertainment is the objective. If what you’re seeking is to beguile your hours, get a change of scene and a sense of relaxation, that’s no bad thing. The government funds the gratification of that aim if you can accomplish these things by going for a day in the park, and you fund it if you buy a ticket to the concert of a commercially successful band. (To say a band is commercially successful is not to slight it, only to emphasize that it’s available on the basis of a ticket, as artistically successful bands for which there is less consumer demand are not.)
If what you want is to immerse in a different reality that might or might not be gentle and fun, however, and to confront rather than escape yourself, taking away food for thought for many days or years — all of this in the company of strangers who are doing more or less the same — then you might want art, perhaps without knowing it. My view is that people want art without knowing it all the time, because we seek transformational as well as restorative experiences, and long to be knocked for a loop. This takes vision, however, and while everyone is responsive to vision not everyone has it.
Some artists do have it. Does this mean they function for the public good? If the answer is yes, then you posit one difference between a consumer, who funds her private idea of a good time, and a taxpayer, who needs to be concerned with the public good even when she doesn’t personally respond to certain artists. Art can reset the human imagination, temporarily turning a consumer into a person who strives and is illuminated. Entertainment can’t risk that, although it occasionally accomplishes it anyway.
You have no right to be entertained at the public expense — as we have seen, that results only in pitting lions against Christians, or perhaps in the creation of “The Yellow River Concerto.” But you have a right to art as you have a right to health care. It should be yours for the price of citizenship, yours like a day in the park.
What do I think? There’s been a lot of discussion over the past few years about the economic value of art and culture to society. I’m not sure if that dialogue is appropriate: is economics the best measure of artistic worth?
I think that incorporating arts funding into the Recovery Act was a political more than a cultural statement. While I might agree that public support for the arts is necessary, there’s much yet to be decided: what art (public, private, popular culture, crafts), to benefit whom (the artist, the public, the gallery owner, the museum curator), and for what purpose?
~MadSilence
MS, Absolutely true, economics is not the best measure of artistic worth. In fact it is counter-creative in most instances.
And your question is my question: “There’s much yet to be decided: what art (public, private, popular culture, crafts), to benefit whom (the artist, the public, the gallery owner, the museum curator), and for what purpose?” That’s where the level of focus should be, not on the issue of public support for the arts.
I caught some of the debate around the stimulus package, maybe it was on one of the Sunday-before-last Meet the Press type shows. One senator called out Arts funding as unneeded/pork, and another said Nonesense, Art is viable industry, at least in his state.
Another example of the so-called cultural wars…why is something like soybeans or oil or semiconductor chips more valued than art? I don’t get it. It must be the result of a case of looking at the pie as finite; thus, one must be better than the other.