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The Arts in 2017
Federal arts policy received not a whit of attention from either presidential campaign this year. I’m not surprised. Before I became a curator and museum director, I had a long career in political life. Over many years, I found most people who ran for office or had high-level political jobs singularly unfocused on the arts. Didn’t matter whether they were Republicans or Democrats. The nice surprise was the politico with a passion for art, dance, music, theater, film, or good writing. They do exist, and I enjoy hearing about their interests.
At one point I’ll write about why politics and the arts are a rarefied mix, but in this post I’ll suggest some new thinking the new order can bring specifically to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Some of these ideas can apply to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). I happen to know the NEA best.
I hope this post will start a smart conversation on the role the culture agencies can best serve in 2017 and beyond. I think the assumption now is that Congress will simply zero out the culture agencies. This would be so wrong and a missed opportunity.
I want the culture agencies to thrive. Since Trump’s the new boss, thrive they can in ways consistent with his campaign themes. These include support for quality and innovative programs freed from the dead weight of political correctness. Arts infrastructure needs to become a new priority. Let’s advance the public’s understanding of American art, the art of our own country. Let’s do more for theaters and museums between the narrow bands of our two coasts. The arts in schools need a new, sharper focus. And how about collection sharing that brings great art in storage at our big city museums on the two coasts to audiences in America’s heartland.
I read the list of recent NEA grant recipients. My sense is that spending goes in dribs and drabs to lots of programs and organizations spread over many Congressional districts. As Churchill said, “a pudding without a theme.” Many small things adding up to nothing big.
The money doesn’t seem to make big, promising things happen, things that wouldn’t happen otherwise. Much of the giving feels like disguised budget offset. The NEA’s goal looks like survival. It has been so beleaguered over the years, so pummeled, that its mission each year is to dodge the fatal bullet.
Yet the NEA – or federal funding for the arts – has served many great goals and can do it once more.
This starts with quality. First to go are projects whose principal goal is to feed the beast of racial, gender, or class dogma regardless of whether the art is, well, any good. I certainly did lots of shows on race, gender, and class, but the starting point was art of the very highest quality. Quality was the first order of business. This means intellectual rigor and a curiosity about different points of view.
Message – if arts venues want to mount boring, one dimensional, anti-historical, politically correct programs, let them find the money privately.
I raised $35 million for a museum renovation and addition, so I know fundraising for a renovation is difficult. It doesn’t pay for new and shiny things. It’s tough to get money for handicapped access, HVAC, a new roof, new storage, restored stages and new seating, more parking, or better security. Not much glamour. Yet the lack of these bricks and mortar essentials seriously hinders any organization regardless of its creative vision or ambition. A big priority of the new administration is infrastructure, and better arts infrastructure is a good philosophical fit. It’s foundational money, often hard to find, but you can’t do much without it. I’m a big believer in matching grant programs, with government cultural support leveraging private support to get basic infrastructure improvements done rather than deferred.
My academic specialty is American art. I was an American art curator and directed a distinguished museum, the Addison Gallery, dedicated to American art through the centuries. It’s the art of our country. I’ve done European art shows and enjoy good art, music, theater, and dance from any period or region. It does make sense, though, to make American culture first among equals in getting federal help. In the museum world, there are few institutional funders solely dedicated to American art, so I know the need is both there and often unmet. The government should help advance great art and scholarship from many cultures but I’d like to see American arts get some special attention.
To me, the arts and education are inseparable. When I was teaching art history, some of my best students were science majors. I learned a lot from them, especially about the aesthetics of many branches of the sciences and the creative spark the arts give to fledgling engineers, tech people, doctors, chemists, math geeks, and others whose intellectual home is the left side of the brain. The arts – visual arts, music, dance, theater, writing of all kinds among them – are more than leaveners. They promote outside the box thinking and both augment and enrich logical, analytical, and methodical inquiry. There’s lots of talk about STEM learning and teaching but not enough on how to get the arts in the mix to sharpen and deepen all minds.
I think the NEA has a bully pulpit – backed by some real power – fit to persuade big, encyclopedic museums in places like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston to share the wealth with the many fine museums in America’s heartland. These big museums have hundreds of thousands of objects, many great, in storage, rarely seen, not contributing to the education or the aesthetic joy of anyone. Long term loans – without expensive loan fees – to good museums throughout the country, in places that never had the money or collector base to generate great permanent collections, is a solid goal the NEA can achieve.
The culture agencies can accomplish plenty by stressing quality, collaboration, leverage, and learning. It’s a great time to make some needed, positive impact.
Published in Culture
The “artistic community”, writ large, goes out of its way to insult, ridicule, and demonize the vast bulk of the taxpaying public. Any objection to this is spun as attempted censorship (piss-Christ being the most obvious example). So, fine. If we’re not allowed a say, then zero it all out. I expect the overall quality of art would go up substantially, even as the quantity declines.
The problem is, there is still the question of just what is selected to be carted around the country. Who chooses? The arts establishment is not friendly to traditional standards of art, and I believe it is much more likely that such a program would mean that garbage is sent around the country at great cost, the more offensive and politically charged, the better. Do you really think the arts elite could resist any opportunity to show the rest of the country just what stupid rubes we are?
I, for one, embrace my stupid rubiness.
Ok, I see your point. You’re based in the Minnesota, where progressivism rules.
My thinking was based on local art museums in flyover country getting both Old World and New World “masterpieces” (like over 100 years old) for public display and for the art students to use. If the flyover citizens could demand what gets chosen from the big cities, such as with an on-line voting system, this could bypass the so-called art experts. After all, even the big city museums must think these “masterpieces” have some value.
Yes, progressivism rules in Minnesota, or at least it does in the urban areas. But it also emphatically rules in the art establishment, regardless of locale.
Sounds nice, but don’t expect the art elites to give up control that easily. And, with the exception of ateliers, most art schools are enthusiastically teaching the usual rubbish — that is, that there are no standards. Here’s the text from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design’s website that appears when one selects “Fine Art Studio” under a listing of their academic majors: “Push traditional boundaries. Critique work in political and cultural contexts. Reevaluate the artist’s role in society.” That’s the mindset. You’re not going to find much different in other art colleges, because the art establishment is drearily conformist and like-minded. So their students aren’t likely to care much about that old stuff…….
If you want to improve the state of the visual arts, get rid of government funding.
I’d also add that, as wonderful as it is to see Old Masters’ work in person, these days anyone with a library card (OK, you might have to use interlibrary loan) or an internet connection can at least gaze upon prints or photos of the work, many of them quite fine.
Most of my own admiration for the great masterpieces was not developed by seeing them in person. Even art students can get a lot out of looking at prints and photos of great work.
That’s not how it will work. Even in Red States, most “arts” orgs are led by the kind of people that march in p#ssy hats. They keep a lower profile because they have to, but under Obama, I noted they got bolder even in my deepest of red states. So that money will go towards things like lesbian expressionist menstrual finger painting, not getting Albrecht Durer woodcuts on display.
Cut. Them. Off.
If the fly-over museum can find 100+ year old lesbian expressionist stuff in the big city museums not presently being displayed, good luck.
I think this art world nonsense is easier to change than the movie/TV business proposed by conservatives such as @garymcvey.
I agree, to a point. But some things don’t translate as well to the scale of a computer screen, or even a large-screen TV.
My wife and I had the good fortune to visit Paris about 20 years ago, and made the requisite trip to the Louvre.
The Mona Lisa can be just as easily appreciated from a good image on your computer, perhaps more so, IMHO. It’s much smaller than I expected, and I couldn’t get close enough to it to get a really good look due to the crowd.
But there are huge canvases there that really need to be seen in person to be appreciated. Likewise, the statuary.
I’d also argue that Shakespeare should be seen performed live to be properly appreciated (assuming a good performance of course).
And no MP3 played through even the best sound system can reproduce the sound of a full orchestra in a concert hall.
I agree that it would be easier, precisely because the government can shut off the funding that keeps some of this alive, unlike Hollywood. No one forces us to buy a movie ticket or watch a TV show, but we are forced to fund “Piss Christ” and photos of naked guys with bullwhips in their rectums. Let the Left scream censorship all it wants — I’m with Douglas: Cut. Them. Off.
Nor would your proposal of restricting the traveling artwork to 100+ years-old pieces last for long.
I think getting the art out to museums on loan would be the best thing possible for the NEA. There is so much great art locked in basements in museums all over the world.
In the 80s I had a friend who was one of the first American women to be an art restorer in Italy and while showing me around Florence she told me of the vast amounts of amazing art awaiting restoration in the dingy basements of Italy’s museums. At that time I realized that any art lovers best ROI would be for paying for the restoration of art in exchange for rights to show it for a period.
Last year, on Econtalk the guest was a Berkely Business School Professor Michael O’Hare who talked about this issue. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/05/michael_ohare_o.html
With government backing, museums are much more likely to loan out artwork. And also private owners.
Great idea – so much better than the thousands of little grants.
I’mma let Ron Swanson take this one.
On a more serious note, my wife and I, while on a long drive through the desert back to our home today, actually discussed this very topic. She mentioned a violinist friend on Facebook who was upset about possible cuts to the NEA. My wife and I both share the same opinion as many here: good art is great and enriching, but there’s no reason the government should be using tax money to fund any of it. If you want to make your living as an artist, find a way to do it on voluntary contributions from others.
In way of Federal funding, I hate to see young people wanting to educate themselves so as to earn a living suitable to survive and support a family without depending upon welfare – get a government guaranteed loan if not an outright grant to go to college to become an artist.
Just another way my tax dollars go to support and encourage mediocre art.
I believe the arts establishment is a lost cause. It is run by the Left, and has been for so long that it’s in its DNA. That doesn’t mean that we won’t, as a culture, produce art of lasting worth — there will always be people who are greatly moved by the visual world, or the world of their imagination, and who have the talent to express. (Some of them are here on Ricochet – Dave Matheny, for one, and there are others). They’ll choose the ateliers over the art schools. They won’t be feeding out of the grant trough. In the case of organizations such as orchestras and museums, they will likely discover that there are wealthy patrons who will support them. They will adapt. And we won’t have to support “artists” whose primary motivation appears to be to offend and sneer at most of America.
There are costs and benefits to the different appreciation formats, aren’t there? Seeing stuff live in person, unfiltered by a recording device, is special in its own way. Experiencing visual art at full scale in 3-D, or seeing performing artists perform in person.
On the other hand, you can take as much time as you want to study prints and recordings in the privacy of your own time, and whatever music loses by being digitized, even great performers can gain something by having several shots to record their best take.
Our violinist friends need to get more interested in sustainability. In an earlier age of paper making Michigan paper companies along the Kalamazoo River did wonderful things – providing jobs to people, producing inexpensive, high quality products for a myriad of uses, and supporting the local economy. The effluent from these processes also gave the Kalamazoo River an international reputation for pollution. It was not a sustainable process. The paper companies are almost all gone now, and the river is much cleaner. We still have cheap paper, but there has been the usual consolidation and shifting to better locations.
Anyhow, losing the local paper industry was a jolt to the local economy, just as losing their NEA funding will be a jolt to concert violinists. But the old way was not sustainable. (And yes, concert violinists who get NEA funding are the moral equivalent of industrial papermakers.)
Really? I grew up along the Fox River in Wisconsin, which has a very similar history with the paper industry, but I didn’t know that about the Kalamazoo, the mouth of which (Saugatuck) is now host to our summer place. Is that an odd coincidence? Or were there paper mills spewing muck into rivers everywhere at one time?
Yes, there are great advantages to our digital age. I’m sure that, for someone studying art history or music appreciation or the like, easy access to high resolution images and recordings of a given artist’s works is invaluable.
It’s just that your absolutely-correct comment brought to mind the awe this bit-twiddling, house-broken cowboy felt taking in those masterpieces in person. I also remember how, in high school, I never “got” Shakespeare until we took a field trip to a Dallas playhouse to see Hamlet performed live. Hence my reply.
I don’t know that anybody has put together a one-stop history of the paper industry on the Kalamazoo River, but when we moved to this area 37 years ago there were still several paper mills that are gone now. I’ve worked with refugees from the once-great paper industry. As far as I know WMU still has a small sized paper plant that is used in cooperation with local paper companies for experimental runs. It was 20 years ago when I got a tour of it with a group of young students.
At one time there was a lot of wood pulp from Michigan forests that helped to make the Kalamazoo River a good place for this industry, but I think some of this business has moved to Canada, closer to the best wood pulp sources. But there are environmental controls and technologies now that make it a more sustainable process.
Long ago we almost bought a house on the Mississippi in Minnesota, just downstream from a polluting paper mill. Those used to be in a lot of places.
To further answer your question, back before we moved to Michigan I had been reading some of Francis Schaffer’s books in which the topic of “Christian Environmentalism” was a common theme. He often used the example of the Kalamazoo River, referring to it as if everybody knew it as a byword for industrial pollution. I had not known that. I had known about the Cuyahoga River, which is another example he used, but he wrote as though I would also have known all about the Kalamazoo. It was later that I learned that much of this pollution in Michigan was from the paper industry, but I think it was already a lot cleaner by the time we moved here.
I also have got interested in the local history of this area, and am struck by the late 19th century writers who wrote approvingly of the wonders and results of industrial development along the Kalamazoo. In those days they didn’t think about the downstream consequences, any more than our concert violinist friends think about the downstream consequences of NEA funding.
I have a slightly more nuanced view of the Constitutional issue. The penultimate clause of Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power:
Apart from this, Article 8 is silent on Congress’s authority to construct buildings. I’ve never researched this clause, but insofar as my ellipsis refers to the District of Columbia, I suspect it was intended to give Congress plenary powers over Federal territories, and was not limited to the erection of buildings. In fact, I’m at a loss as to how to interpret the “for the” clause at the end.
In any event, either this clause or the final “necessary and proper” clause should give Congress the power to construct and furnish buildings for the federal government and acquire land from the states for public parks or memorials (or are we against maintaining Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields?). I would understand the “necessary and proper” clause to permit Congress to exercise the right of a property holder and, consequently, to commission or purchase art for these public spaces. So Congress can purchase a painting of the Yellowstone Falls to hang in the capital or memorials at Arlington Cemetery.
But no “endowments” for art generally.
Why do PBS or NPR receive any tax support? We live in a time of NatGeo, Discovery, Bravo, and The History Channel as well as podcasts and satellite radio. PBS and NPR should be privatized and let their subscribers support them (or sell advertising). (Of course, I feel the same way about Planned Parenthood – if you support their mission, then do so with your dollars – and leave tax dollars out of it – but that’t the subject of another post :)
Actually, if you listen to them, they DO sell advertising – understated, but advertising nonetheless. They just need to do more.
And because the “artistic community” will desperately try to convince President Trump and the GOP-led Congress not to slash their funding, Stephen Colbert was announced this morning as this year’s host of the Emmy Awards. That’ll convince them.