Tyranny of the Tangible

ARTS North Carolina has an interesting and recurring question: If the Arts are such an economic driver, why is it so difficult to obtain support?

The three reasons they point to is:

• A difficulty in defining exactly what falls under the auspices of "creative industries"
• Lack of a single organization that speaks with a single voice
• No single plan for the industry

Of these three, the first one is the one that compels me the most, but I don't think any of these three get really at the heart of the problem.

Take point one: a difficulty in defining what exactly falls under the auspices of "creative industries." While this might be a difficulty for certain members of the creative industries, I don't think this is why the arts/creative industries/cultural organizations have trouble getting support. See, this is a good way to lop off the fringe organizations that might live in the gray area between arts and other things, but big central organizations like the Brooklyn Academy of Music, or the Boston Philharmonic, etc. are clearly "creative industries." Public policy makers could definitely find artists that were clearly artists if they wanted to, if the desire was there -- even if maybe sometimes those big established "clearly artists" might not be the best investment.

Take point two: I'm not necessarily sure we don't have a big organization that speaks for us. If I had to point at one, it would be Americans for the Arts. After that come some more specific trade organizations like, I dunno, the Theatre Communications Group or the National Opera Association. I don't think we have a particular lack of trade organizations. Are they ineffective? Maybe, but I don't know if we can really put the blame (or at least the whole blame) at their feet. Some trade organizations are powerful (AFL-CIO) and others are not (NACTA?).

Point three is definitely out, in my book. What industry has a clear, unified plan? Does Wall Street have a clear, unified plan? Do the automakers? There are certain industries that appear to be running around with their heads cut off but are still strongly supported.

Okay, so I shut down a bunch of ideas to the question. Why do I think that the arts are hard to get support for?

I'd say it has to do with our intangible, indirect benefits. Even when we point to the money, people still ask, "well okay, it generates money, but what does it really do? What are we really supporting here?" If we made something 100%, people would judge us based on what we make.

I think, by the way, that this is part of the whole reason entitlements are resisted before they happen, and very difficult to take away once they exist. Take this email to Andrew Sullivan's blog:

Before this year I never gave much thought to social programs, frankly, I neither needed or qualified for them. However, when the time came that I needed assistance, the government was there to help. I am extremely grateful to our President and his allies in Congress, as their policies have had an immediate and direct impact on my family. Without the MHA and Cobra subsidy, it is likely that we would have lost our home and filed for bankruptcy.

A friend of mine who is an artist recently was told by another friend that, at her income levels, she qualified for food stamps. It was a rather shocking moment for her and for us, to realize that food stamps wasn't some abstraction -- it was a fact of life. A check you could hold, make decisions around. It was suddenly reified.

We're having a difficulty reifying the arts for our audiences. People who have had moving arts experiences know that we're worth supporting. People who have not don't know what the fuss is all about.

Grassroots + Power IV: Corruption

I promised I'd get back to my thoughts about the relationship between the grassroots and power, which I started here and continued here and here. The point of those posts were to debunk anonymous comments of an extremely negative tone related to my approval of the 9/11 Day of Service collaboration between Americans for the Arts and Serve.gov (and, extremely indirectly, the National Endowment of the Arts).

To get onto the subject, I saw an article about Disney and the New Orleans Museum of Art from Real Clear Arts that was really a good look at the relationship between artists and corporate entities. The article takes a stance against their upcoming exhibit on the art of Disney animation. The heart of the allegation is here:

According to The Times-Picayune, "Lella Smith, the creative director of Disney's Animation Research Library...selected the art for the exhibit..."

And that was because? NOMA has no curators? (I see several listed on the website.)

NOMA appears to have suspended any critical involvement in the presentation of the exhibit, meaning that it really is a Disney exhibit, physically located in a museum. Will NOMA profit by it? Probably.

It reminded me of Lawrence Lessig's lecture on corruption (which if you haven't seen it, is here). One of the core points in Lessig's lecture is that the appearance of corruption to an institution can be as damaging to the institution as the existence of corruption itself.

So, say for instance, NOMA agreed to allow a Disney executive to curate the exhibit because, I don't know, she's a former NOMA curator herself, and they have a relationship bond that assures them that even though she works for a for-profit company, she'll select the right art for NOMA's exhibit while also satisfying her job for Disney. NOMA could stand by that, insist that although the appearance is corrupt, it isn't. It wouldn't matter. NOMA is an organization for the community, presumably (the first phrase on their website is "Your New Orleans Museum of Art"), so if they're trading their legitimacy even on the belief that their exhibit will be better, they're eroding their ability to reach out to their own audience.

So back to the 9/11 Day of Service. Some questions about the impact of collaborating with Serve.gov about the nature of the collaboration:

1. To what degree does the government exert power over the grassroots? None at all. The government cannot force any decisions or choices on the grassroots organization.
2. To what degree does the grassroots organization suspend its critical faculty? None explicitly. No leadership positions are replaced or made subordinate to government leadership (as opposed to NOMA allowing Disney to curate). It may be that starry-eyed liberal artists swallow Obama administration lines because of their belief in Obama's propaganda, and thus are suspending their critical faculties, but that's either happening already or it's not going to happen. Certainly, liberals are capable of criticizing the president. Obviously others aren't. But that has nothing to do with the 9/11 Day of Service.
3. To what degree does the government influence the grassroots? Clearly, there is some minor degree of influence. The government is trying to maximize the impact of certain organizations it finds beneficial, and it will not exert that influence on organizations it doesn't want to be associated with. An artistic needle exchange project--I don't know, one that collects used needles from drug addicts for use in an art project and gives drug addicts clean needles--will probably not ever appear on Serve.gov. Then again, that project probably won't find much private support either. It sounds like a bad idea. In a way, the government is really only competing in the free market, albeit the free not-for-profit market. The tools it is using are tools that a private foundation could use: a small amount of resources, a cloak of legitimacy, centralized promotion. FringeNYC uses the same tools.
4. To what degree does the impression of corrupt influence exist? This is a much more complicated question, because it brings in the notion of an organization's audience. If your organization has a mission statement that says something like "Our purpose is to stand up to the power structures that be, to speak truth to power..." then you should not be working with Serve.gov. But then again, you probably wouldn't be, and no one will make you. Remember that the 9/11 Day of Service is in the more limited realm of artistic community service organizations. It is typically thoroughly expected that an artistic community service organization would be working with government leaders to help organize their efforts, because their mission statements are aligned and the above questions can be easily answered with satisfaction.
   
   Now, I have seen productions that have failed this. For instance, one of my favorite theater companies, Witness Relocation, did a Passover show with a sizable grant from a Jewish organization (I wanted to look up the details but it's not in the "Shows" section of their website). I saw the show, and my first impression was, "Wow, they made this show because they could get money for it." It didn't seem to me that they knew why they wanted to do a show about Passover. The show failed, and it took a little bit of its legitimacy away. If I hadn't seen the show right before that, Bluebird (which also is not on the "Shows" section of their website), I might have written them off has having little-to-no integrity. Bluebird was an excellent show, and it felt like it was needed--even though it too had a cultural grant behind it (if I remember the information correctly).

So what I'm realizing is that a corrupt power relationship between a grassroots organization and a power organization is where:

• The power organization (government or private) can exert power over the grassroots without the grassroots being able to defend against it
• The grassroots organization cedes critical faculty or self-control to the power organization
• The power organization exerts too much indirect influence over the grassroots organization
• The two organizations have dissonance in their missions and/or audiences

Obviously, corruption is a sliding scale, and not all of these elements have to be present for corruption to begin. But if you're about to collaborate with a power organization, then those are the four points you should test your relationship by.

Americans for the Arts + Emerging Arts Leaders

Hi everyone,

As you may know, the incomparable Ian Moss over at Createquity (which I have and will continue to contributed to) is one of the sharpest arts policy bloggers on the blogosphere. For instance, his updates on arts councils fundings is required reading for those of us who actually want to know what's going on in the arts community.

Well, Americans for the Arts is holding an election for an Emerging Leaders Council, and Ian Moss is on the ballot. If you're an Americans for the Arts member (which at the moment, I am not, although I plan to be when I get the chance), you should go here and vote. Even if you decide not to vote for Ian, go make your voice heard.

By the way, the concept of "emerging arts leaders" is being talked about so often everywhere that it kind of feels like a trope at this point. I kind of like that. Kudos to Americans for the Arts for making them a key part of the discussion.

Conference Call with Kalpen Modi, Americans for the Arts, and Corporation for National and Community Service

Sat in on a conference call between Kalpen Modi (previously Kal Penn), Americans for the Arts, and the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Some notes/reactions:

1. Although the arts are important to the Obama Administration in and of themselves (which I got from Arne Duncan in a conference call last week), Kalpen Modi underlined the instrumental benefits of the arts to the economy, to education, and to tie together economy (you can tell from how they speak that they've internalized the Obama heritage of community organizers).
2. The Obama Administration is not out to make artists.
3. The crux of Obama's approach to the arts currently is based around the Edward Kennedy Serve America Act. The act added arts to the types of community service supported, increased the amount of support for community service in a number of ways--especially in numbers of volunteers supported--and declared 9/11 a day of national service.
4. The 9/11 Day of Service is the current focus of arts policy, bringing together not only the Corporation of National and Community Service with Americans for the Arts, but also bringing together every branch of government that cares about the arts - Kalpen mentioned the Department of State's cultural ambassadorship program, and arts within HUD and Transportation (the latter two are departments I hadn't heard of any arts coming from, but I'm glad that I'm wrong)
5. Other programs on their way include the Social Innovation Fund (from the White House Office of Social Innovation) and a Volunteer Generation fund (to help nonprofits increase their ranks of volunteers). The appropriates for this have been passed in the House (which decreased the number) and in the Senate (which increased the number). Kalpen said that they were "looking with interest" to see how those two bills would be reconciled.
6. The 9/11 Day of Service comes with two websites: one is the general volunteerism website at Serve.gov, the other is the arts-specific website that Americans for the Arts set up, at Serve.artsusa.org. Arts volunteer organizations are encouraged to list their events on both, so that people can sign up, and post about their experiences.
   
7. Serve.artsusa.org also has two significant other attractions: one is a petition for the addition of Artistscorps to the current Peacecorps/Americorps/etc. within the Corporation for National and Community Service. The other is the United We Serve: Arts Idea Kit which is intended to serve as a springboard for ideas of how to mix art and public service.

That's really what you need to know. My sense, both from this conference call and the one with Arne Duncan, is this: the Obama Administration wants to create a grassroots arts policy, rather than a centralized, NEA-led policy. Given the difficulty in Congress of getting support for the arts, that's pobably wise for the moment, especially as he's neck deep in criminal prosecutions, healthcare, cap-and-trade, getting Ben Bernanke re-authorized, closing Guantanamo Bay and shipping the inmates to Kansas, and his coming legal battles around DoMA.

However, they recognize that we're crucial and they're willing to help us try to get boots on the ground. Where they see something effective happening, they want to duplicate it--the philosophy is the same as his proposal to duplicate the Harlem Children's Zone in 20 cities around America.

In a way, he's trying to use tools in the free-market to try and help promote the arts: increasing the incentives for success (for instance, part of the appropriations is that the education grants to students who participate in Americorps or Seniorcorps will be pegged to the level of Pell Grants, so that the benefit doesn't lag).

I left it reasonably happy: I'd have liked more direct support, but the general feeling was, "We'll provide some big infrastructure for volunteerism, and we'll put all our support behind the good work you do. Now get out there and do it."

To put it another way: "If you build it, we will come."