This third installment in a weeklong blogfest on art and political power I’m cohosting with blogger Barry Hessenius was authored by Diane Ragsdale, currently attending Erasmus University in Rotterdam (in the Netherlands), where she is researching the impact of economic forces on US nonprofit regional theaters since the 80′s and working towards a PhD in cultural economics. She is the author of the Jumper blog. For the six years prior to moving to Europe, Diane worked in the Performing Arts program at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where she had primary responsibility for theater, dance, and technology-related strategies and grants. Diane is a frequent panelist, provocateur, or keynote speaker at arts conferences within and outside of the US (notable addresses include “Surviving the Culture Change” and “The Excellence Barrier”) and has contributed articles to several publications, including “Recreating Fine Arts Institutions,” which was published in the fall 2009 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review.
The series began with a dialogue between Barry and myself and continued with Roberto Bedoya, Executive Director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council. Subsequent entries will be authored by Dudley Cocke, director of Roadside Theater; Ra Joy, executive director of Arts Alliance Illinois; and Barry Hessenius and myself. To each, we posed this question:
The way we’ve been doing arts advocacy for the past thirty years isn’t working: the real value of the NEA budget has dropped by well over half, for instance, and state funding has nosedived. We remain timid and unimaginative, acting as if cultural support were a rare privilege instead of a human right. With a blank slate and all your powers of social imagination, redesign it: why and how would artists and arts advocates claim social, economic, and true political power? What would you do for the arts to develop real political clout—and what has to change for us to move down that path?
Please read, forward, and comment. The entire series can be accessed here.
The NEA: An idea whose time has come and gone?
by Diane Ragsdale
Barry and Arlene have done a terrific job of priming this conversation. Here are my thoughts, building on their debate.
Part 1 – On why we may not be doing a better job of advocating for the arts…
It strikes me that there are a couple assumptions embedded in the questions above: (1) that arts organizations desire increased public support (particularly at the federal and state levels); and (2) they have been ineffective at getting this support because they do not have real political clout.
But are these assumptions true? I guess the first proposition I want to put on the table is that perhaps the arts and culture sector in the US is neither inept at nor put off by ‘politics,’ nor simply so demoralized or offended by 30 years in the political dog house that it doesn’t have the will or willingness to engage more strategically with the political sphere. Rather, I perceive that the sector may be quite reasonably shunning the approaches that Barry suggests (contributing money to campaigns, trying to influence elections, building meaningful relationships with politicians) because it is ambivalent about the benefits of public arts funding and long-ago figured out a way to use its perceived dog-house position to its advantage.
I don’t see the sector as Arlene and Barry do—Oliver Twist, cap in hand and a charming accent, pleading for any spare coin or crumb that can be spared. If the efforts seem half-hearted or even half-assed, perhaps it’s because deep down what many of those in the sector feel towards those that would shun them is, “Screw the Philistines, we don’t need them.” In other words, if we appear to be Oliver Twist, perhaps it’s an act?
As Lester Salamon (Johns Hopkins) has written, the US nonprofit sector (generally speaking, not exclusively in the arts) has proven to be incredibly resilient in recent decades, in the face of numerous challenges (including the loss of public support). Is it a stretch to think that such resilience might very well go hand-in-hand with our decentralized, indirect subsidy system? When government closes a door, quite often some wealthy individual opens a window (and doesn’t attach strings to funding like expectations of ‘access’ or ‘education’). And should no benefactor open a window? Well, there’s always the market (after all, it’s in the DNA of many in the sector).
Furthermore, as Arlene noted, the most powerful arts organizations in the arts and culture sector are already able to successfully lobby for line item allocations. So what’s in it for them to fight for a bigger pool for the rest? Again, they’ve figured out how to work the system to their advantage. Furthermore, significantly increased support would probably mean that many more organizations (those nudged out in the 80s and 90s and those that have never been in) would get (back) into the tent. So, if we’re waiting for the organizations that have the most power and influence in the arts and culture sector to lead the charge on this front, I think we may be waiting a long time.
Of course there are those that don’t have wealthy friends or significant government support. To the degree that they’ve survived it is probably by staying small, being entrepreneurial/market-oriented, and/or relying on low-cost (or even free) labor. But let’s face it: even if the budget of the NEA were quadrupled tomorrow most of them would not expect money to be flowing their way.
A different, but perhaps related, question is when will those artists and arts and culture organizations that are not benefitting from the current ‘arts system’ (that is, the large majority of them) take control of and reframe the conversation around culture?
Part II – On why other people may not be buying into us and how we might change it …
Both Arlene and Barry endorse the power of a grassroots movement (though Barry sees this as a longer term goal and secondary to a more immediate strategic engagement with the political sphere). Both also embrace the idea of cultural impact studies. In principle, I do as well; however, I doubt whether either of these approaches would be successful if they were biased towards the nonprofit arts and culture sector and if it were generally perceived that, again, the primary goal of such efforts would be increased support for the NEA.
This leads me to another point (also raised by Arlene). We stand for something both too abstract and too removed from everyday cultural life for most people to fight for. And this seems to suit us just fine. How do we think people in the professional nonprofit fine arts sector would answer (privately, if not publicly) if they were asked the following question?
In the minds of ‘the masses’, is it worse for ‘the arts’ to stand for:
A: Snooty orchestras and avant-garde work created for wealthy people, which you won’t understand and which may challenge your values or sensibilities?
OR
B: Your kid performing in a youth orchestra, your local banjo club performing at the zoo and at senior centers, the American Pie music video created by the ‘dying’ city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Wicked, the Broadway musical?
We need to address why ‘the arts’ are (and have been) such a hard sell in the US. The best explanation I’ve read in recent years is by Bill Ivey (former chairman of the NEA and director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt). Back in 2009, I interviewed Ivey for Grantmakers in the Arts in conjunction with the release of his book Arts, Inc: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights. In our interview (you can read the interview here), Ivey remarked that the US has never come to terms with American culture for what it really is: a grassroots vernacular “that embraces amateur as well as professional, rural as well as urban, and unschooled as well as schooled.” The concentration of public support and private philanthropy on the fine arts is not sustainable, he says, because it “flies in the face of American culture.”
Ivey correctly asserts that when we face resistance to the idea of support for the arts it’s often because our highest priorities are out of sync with those of everyday Americans. Too many people receive little or no tangible benefit from the current nonprofit arts system, thus whatever generalized good feelings citizens may have about the arts don’t translate into sufficient “goodwill” when the arts must compete with education or the environment—when advocacy really counts.
While Arlene and Barry invited those of us blogging this week to start with a blank slate, for my money, Ivey has already proposed an idea (both an ideological reframing and a practical reconstitution) that has legs. Ivey proposes that if we want to achieve true cultural vibrancy we must “adopt a new, comprehensive approach to our arts system” that encompasses the nonprofit, commercial, and amateur arts sectors. Furthermore, he suggests we need to coordinate our interventions in these interrelated sectors in order to serve the public interest. Finally, he proposes a Cultural Bill of Rights, which he says we must be willing to assert, with the goal of providing every American with the benefits of a vibrant, expressive life:
- The right to our heritage—to explore music, literature, drama, painting, and dance that define both our nation’s collective experience and our individual and community traditions.
- The right to the prominent presence of artists in public life—through their art and the incorporation of their voices and artistic visions into democratic debate.
- The right to an artistic life—to the knowledge and skills needed to play a musical instrument, draw, dance, compose, design, or otherwise live a life of active creativity.
- The right to be represented to the rest of the world by art that fairly and honestly communicates America’s democratic values and ideals.
- The right to know about and explore art of the highest quality and to the lasting truths embedded in those forms of expression that have survived, in many lands, through the ages.
- The right to healthy arts enterprises that can take risks and invest in innovation while serving communities and the public interest.
In their opening statement Barry and Arlene write, “We remain timid and unimaginative, acting as if cultural support were a rare privilege instead of a human right.” Actually, I would suggest (in line with Ivey) that the beneficiary of cultural support (if we want to talk of it in terms of a right) needs to be reframed in terms of citizens. Ivey writes, “It is time to establish a new set of goals designed to reclaim art and culture for the American people; it is time to assert the rights of citizens to the multiple benefits of an arts system turned to public purposes.”
Part 3 – A possible next step…
So, here’s my suggestion: What if the NEA were disintegrated and its components set free to be recombined (with other components) into an agency to fund the realization of Ivey’s Cultural Bill of Rights? The first order of business could be a broad cultural assets mapping of the commercial, amateur, and professional nonprofit sectors as Ivey has suggested. A second order of business could be trying to understand the interdependencies (on a local, national, and global level) across these sectors, as well as the diverse social, cultural, or economic values and impacts on individuals and communities realized by this comprehensive cultural sphere, and its leverage points. The third order of business could be using this knowledge to advocate for exponentially greater support for those leverage points—that is, where subsidy is both needed and likely to be impactful. The traditionally funded institutions that benefit from the NEA and state support would not be eliminated from the picture; they would be appropriately valued for their role within the larger cultural landscape.
At this point, how beneficial is it for us to advocate for increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts? I’m not challenging current leadership, programs, or strategies or asking how beneficial the money or NEA imprimatur may be to the organizations that receive funding. I’m asking whether the NEA is an idea for which we are likely to garner widespread support now, or in the future. I fear we may be chasing windmills. Political support for the NEA seems to have begun to wane almost as soon as it was written into the legislation.
And as for all that leverage? As John Kreidler points out in his essay “Leverage Lost: The Nonprofit Arts in the Post-Ford Era,” the NEA’s approach to providing seed funds to be matched by other sources was, of course, modeled on the Ford Foundation’s practice, which was widely adopted by all institutionalized funding sources. Those running arts organizations can bear witness better than anyone to the result of this widely-embraced practice: money leveraged is, too often, other money seeking to be leveraged. Everyone is counting on an ever-increasing flow of money and on someone else down the line to pick up the tab; however, resources are limited. We are not growing the pie; indeed, in some cases, we are just swapping leverage. Kreidler has likened it to a Ponzi scheme.
But I digress.
The preservation, advancement, and understanding of America’s diverse artistic and cultural heritage and the rights of citizens to an expressive life are vitally important. But is the NEA an adequate vessel for such goals? Here’s where we are curtailed by not having a larger cultural policy; NEA policy (with its limited mission and role) becomes our de facto cultural policy.
- Perhaps the NEA successfully fulfilled its mission (look at the exponential growth of the sector over the past 30 years)?
- Perhaps we are trying to sustain and advocate for an idea whose time has come and gone?
- Perhaps if we want to achieve real political clout in the arts and culture sector, we first need an idea that exponentially greater numbers of people can buy into?
In a society in which the social structures underpinning artistic and social hierarchies have been crumbling, ‘the arts’ appear to have a choice: become valued as an important part of a more catholic conception of arts and culture or willingly stay in the margins as the last man standing for the old system.
Stay tuned all week for more posts in Clout: A Blogfest on Art and Political Power, and be sure to comment!
Ivey believes that the art world needs to come to terms with real America’s grassroots vernacular. I would suggest that America needs to come to terms with what Dr. Cornel West called America’s Puritanical roots that brand intellectualism and aestheticism as close to immoral. America is handicapped by a mythology that sees ‘average’ and ‘hard working’ as morally superior to intelligence. Artists, museums, book readings, foreign movies, lecture series all are branded negatively as elitist.
We as a society are well under way to a world where arts organizations and arts advocacy organizations are developing their populist ideas about what the art world should be while the artists and performers and writers go about thinking something completely different.
Interesting conversation. Thanks for opening it up.
You bring up an interesting idea: perhaps the NEA’s value to the arts community has come and gone (I will say I think its value to society at large is still valid.) I live in Washington, DC and am inundated with politics in my daily life. One of the problems with disbanding the NEA is that it would be an incredible opportunity for those who would like to “eliminate” government funding of the arts to rally their troops. In other words, it would become a lightening rod. In this economic climate I wouldn’t take that chance right now (I’m not sure I’d take the chance at all but that’s my pessimistic attitude about citizens’ understanding of the role of the creative process in society).
This being said, I’d like to suggest another, perhaps non-exclusive, road to take: let’s work to make artists important in this culture. It’s an idea I’ve posed before. In the mid 1990s I wrote an article for the New York Foundation for the Arts called “Artists in the Information Age” (http://outtacontext.com/fyi1.html) I used Alvin Toffler’s three waves (agricultural, industrial, and now, the information age) to show the history of the relationship of artists to both their work and to culture’s sense of its importance.
In a nutshell, during early history artists were central to their societies as storytellers and soothsayers. As the Industrial Revolution took hold and means of production allowed surpluses of goods and markets to develop, artists were separated from their work. The art market separated the artists from his or her work. And, not surprisingly, that’s when many stereotypes of artists developed: those of the outsider and bohemian. Society disengaged from what artists had to say and contribute.
Now, in this information age, artists have the chance to reposition themselves back in the center of society as information providers and what I call “process analysts,” those who can look at often very complicated processes and both make sense of them and offer help in getting quickly to the right end. This is what organizations need now. From a societal point of view, contemporary culture relies heavily on the narrative. And, as storytellers we are in a prime position to form those stories. But only if we take the initiative and start to convey this very narrative to bring us back into the center of society.
Thanks for your comment, Jeff. I agree about artists’ value to civil society in the information age, and would like to see more people making that argument. And of course you are right about the NEA—in exactly the same way that I wouldn’t support another constitutional convention right now. Until a new vision takes hold, it’s best not to sweep away what exists.
“I agree about artists’ value to civil society in the information age, and would like to see more people making that argument.”
Great. Let’s start!
This is indeed a great conversation-
Jeff, your comment on process analyst made me think of this blog post from a few weeks ago.
http://www.howlround.com/translations-the-job-of-the-future-by-michael-rohd/
Has anyone noticed that Obama has been attacking artists?
I’m not joking, this is a huge threat to all artists, writers, filmmakers, etc. And we need to speak out!
I am honestly confused about this:
Obama signed the NDAA (after inserting language that included US citizens!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCNYhMAAZxA&feature=youtu.be
He signed ACTA (international SOPA),
and the Patriot Act – (check the ACLU site on this – http://www.aclu.org/reform-patriot-act,
supports the passing of the EEA – so that presidents can remove our citizenship at will,
and Signed HR347- effectively outlawing Protesting anywhere near public officials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2KAOn2dX8nw#!
He ordered US citizens murdered w/o trial (killing many other foreign civilians at the same time), http://www.salon.com/2011/10/20/the_killing_of_awlakis_16_year_old_son/
The LA Times said of him: “He may prove the most disastrous president in our history in terms of civil liberties.” http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/29/opinion/la-oe-turley-civil-liberties-20110929
Why do people support these policies, (when they support him)???
(Or Romney, Gingrich & Santorum*, who also support these positions!)
*Thank you Rick Santorum for opposing the NDAA, and thank you Ron Paul for vocally opposing ALL of it !
What is worth exchanging for free speech, thought, a fair trial, private homes and phone calls?!
And then to top this list off – this is shocking!:
“Obama’s personal role in a journalist’s imprisonment” http://shar.es/pHcgK
We study Ivey’s idea and this subject intensively in my classes at American University. I’ve come to believe that our toughest sell is within the arts –that is, from the nonprofit arts to the for-profit arts. Essentially, even with all the downloading, the commercial arts industries in the U.S. are still enormous — $160 billion-plus, according to the National Arts Index.
Because most people don’t immediately grasp (and why should they?) the finer points of what’s non profit and what’s for profit, they assume that in essence we really don’t need their money. Instead of blowing up the NEA, why not let it be a real cultural agency in charge of arts issues across the government (including SOPA and PIPA), while organizing grants to the arts a different way? I’m proposing a tax on for-profit arts tickets and sales that would more than substitute for the NEA and that would free arts advocates (once it’s enacted) to think about art instead of how to beg Congress for a few crumbs. (see http://blog.artsusa.org/2011/11/16/frog-toad-a-bold-solution-to-the-private-sectorarts-divide/).
Beyond that, yes we have walked away too often and too snobbily from those from whom we now want checks. Arlene Goldbard’s writing has been a huge influence on my thinking in recent years. Who is in our communities? What do they want? How can we help them? Not, “here’s some Mozart, why don’t you like it?” “Why don’t you donate?”
Of course there’s more anti intellectualism than I can bear, but that’s not by any means the whole story. We have to do more if we want more done for us.
Michael Wilkerson
Thank you, Michael. It’s wonderful to know my work has influence, and I support your search for alternate revenue streams. My personal favorite is a tax on advertising—even 1 percent would dwarf existing funds, and I also like a tax on recording media to support live creation. I’d love to come to AU for a symposium on alternative financing, should you want to consider such an event—let’s talk about it. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for the bracing conversation, Arlene. You DO that. In the Ragsdale/Ivey light, let me just point to the fascinating phenomenon that has caught my interest. El Sistema from Venezuela. It has flipped most of our standard and stuck “elitist” arguments upside down. Jose Antonio Abreu founded it 36 years ago precisely to give non-elite young musicians their share of the beauty and life-benefit of the elite music and orchestra opportunities. They discovered that intense application to orchestral music not only transformed at-risk lives in extremely dangerous barrios, but had a ripple effect on their communities. And before long they were outdoing the elites at their own game, with orchestras that are so dynamic and thrilling that they redefine what a classical music concert can feel like. Music education not for its own sake but for youth development and community improvement. At many of their barrio sites (called nucleos) you see a line of Audis parked around the side with waiting drivers—the rich kids coming to the ghetto to be in the best music program around.
54 U.S. cities now have El Sistema sites. They are young, but their funding, their leadership, their locations, all are atypical for arts startups. They are tapping different funding and building stakeholder networks with police and social service agencies. Venezuela’s El Sistema is mostly federally funded, but not through the arts/culture–entirely through youth development.
As I hear more and more arts and arts education thinkers here discuss “collective impact” and joining forces with other sectors to achieve serious social change, I see El Sistema’s efforts leading in this regard. Although I have to admit the U.S. scene is anything but system-ic at this point–it is a jumble, but a promising jumble.
Thanks, Eric. I agree, El Sistema is very interesting and deserving of close attention. In fact, my interactive publication for Community MusicWorks, which touches on El Sistema and related subjects in the Music & Civil Society symposium be both participated in, is now available for download at CMW’s site.
Yikes!
When I read this paragraph from Diane’s post I had to stop and catch my breath:
“Furthermore, as Arlene noted, the most powerful arts organizations in the arts and culture sector are already able to successfully lobby for line item allocations. So what’s in it for them to fight for a bigger pool for the rest? Again, they’ve figured out how to work the system to their advantage. Furthermore, significantly increased support would probably mean that many more organizations (those nudged out in the 80s and 90s and those that have never been in) would get (back) into the tent. So, if we’re waiting for the organizations that have the most power and influence in the arts and culture sector to lead the charge on this front, I think we may be waiting a long time.”
Is it possibly true that one of the obstacles in our fight for increased relevance is that there are institutions in place ‘advocating’ for the arts who are simply more interested in preserving the status quo? That their mission of supporting the arts basically comes down to defending the comfort zone of their familiar turf?
I guess my question is whether our advocacy institutions are more interested in promoting their pet preserves than advocating for arts in general, and if so how this affects our future. Are we so invested in getting the specifics that we miss the bigger picture? Do we save an orchestra at the expense of nurturing the population’s own creative potentials?
I guess the money is most evident in treating art as if it were a commodity, so its natural that we focus much of our attention of the products of art. But my concern is that we don’t spend enough effort building the creative instinct in our communities. We don’t do enough to train folks to be their own creators. We like them to be consumers of art more than their own generators.
So I guess I’m also asking whether our institutions’ vested interest in the status quo also ties in to the role of art as it functions in commerce, and whether by committing to play this side of the game we don’t do enough to encourage people to WANT to become artists. Sure, feed the professionals, but the rest can’t all merely be consumers. Does an emphasis on feeding the public specific brands of art in the long run serve as an obstacle to how widely these arts are appreciated? Does the audience shrink and narrow at every turn?
In other words, it seems that there is some truth in the view that artistic minds support the arts. Other artists buy artwork, not just collectors. They go to concerts and plays. Perhaps by turning more people into artists we wouldn’t depend so heavily on such a narrow institutional source of funding. Perhaps we wouldn’t need these bureaucratic advocates so much if more folks were more intimately connected to their own creative sides. Just a thought….
Any ideas?
Thanks for your comment, Carter. I agree. Do we select certain flowers, or water the roots? The latter is a strategy that can build a large constituency for the public interest in art. What if the paradigm shifted so that we supported the means of participation, learning, creation, and dissemination for everyone, not just those who rise as professionals in either the subsidized arts or the commercial cultural industries. I’d love to see studios, workshops, storefronts, rehearsal space underwritten for all the way public libraries once (and in some place, still do) serve as a resource for the citizenry—for instance.
As to whether some beneficiaries of the status quo aren’t terribly interested in seeing it changed (unless their lion’s share of the spoils can be even larger)—sadly, yes. As much as I’d like those at the top of the heap to voluntarily share and advocate for those without their access to wealth and privilege, the chances at the moment seem slim. Change will therefore have to come from an awakening by others to the public interest. My thoughts in the final blog next week.
Robert Genter in his book ‘Late Modernism’ reminds us that the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 was the result of a perceived need by leaders to promote an American culture and Aesthetics rather than what was the current trend of always looking toward Europe. The Act which founded the NEA was focused on the creation of America works of art and in doing so society would enjoy and benefit form that production.
That’s the system of populist arts education that is promoted today is beneficial but seems to growing at the expense of the original intentions of the 1965 Act.
Good morning, Richard. I’m not familiar with Genter’s book, but I know a great deal about the founding of the NEA/NEH, and the idea that the driving force was a high-minded desire for an American aesthetic makes me ask if he is joking. Two things converged to found the NEA.
First, there was a Cold War perception that the European and Soviet bloc countries were pushing their cultures out into the world through state arts funding, and the U.S. had to compete. So this was not a matter of aesthetic development, but of political presence through art. Second, and far more influential, was the Rockefeller performing arts panel that reported an “income gap” between what institutions were able to raise and what they wanted, and recommended that, following the lead of private donors, public funds fill the gap. The panel’s recommendations prevailed, and after a short time, Rockefeller also succeeded in installing its director, Nancy Hanks (also reputedly his paramour) at the helm, where she ruled with an iron hand. (The first time I met her, in the late 70s, she had a dossier on me and quoted from my critical talks and writings on the NEA—and I was merely a young artist/activist in the Bay Area, hardly a threat.)
All that having been said, the fact that mid-sixties arts administrators called for “an American aesthetic” would be grotesque transposed to today, when aesthetics are so deeply transnational and diverse in every part of the globe. And as for the “system of populist arts education”—where is it? Sadly, far too many schools have abandoned arts education or made it so minor and weak they may as well have done so. That is down to the imposition of corporate-driven test-based education and to right-wing cutting of education and other social goods, not some populist agenda. A genuine populism would have teaching artists in every school, nurturing the creativity that is the foundation of any robust democratic culture.
All artists today owe a debt of gratitude to President Kennedy whose New Frontier program included the ideas which were later to become the NEA.
President Kennedy believed not only in the importance of the arts to society but in the specialness of artists themselves and said in a speech to Amherst College shortly before he was assassinated,
“I see little of more importance to the future of our country…than full recognition of the place of the artist…Society must set the artist free to follow his vision where it takes him…And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites…the fate of having nothing to look backward to with pride and nothing to look froward to with hope… I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all our citizens.”
It’s interesting that he listed the importance of artistic accomplishments first.
Carter: you ask many questions, the answer to all of which is, in my opinion, “unfortunately, yes.”
Check out Linda’s vision at her blog.
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