[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”KkC7I9hLXMdSqZ9yVeCleKO4zeItPdkO”]
ONE subject that comes up a lot on this site, especially in reader comments, is the public funding of art by European nations. That funding makes a lot of things possible — including access — that the market would not support. A new dispatch from Paris — where a private museum designed by Frank Gehry has recently opened — describes French arts funding as beginning the path to privatization.
France’s leadership is struggling to pay for the government it provides. While the capital remains a global magnet of culture, it increasingly risks becoming a playground for the world’s elite, detached from its midsize cities, villages and countryside, where rising hardships stoke resentments and widen the opening for far-right parties.
The tough economic climate is forcing France to revisit its vaunted model by which the state funds and manages the arts, and the juxtaposition of the two museums made clear the lurking shift being forced on France’s values, with all the attendant controversies.
The Louis Vuitton Foundation is just the latest example of how French cultural glory is being privatized. And the epic troubles of the Musée Picasso — closed five years amid cost overruns and a staff revolt — illustrate how even
a state with a proud history of arts patronage retooled its approach in the face of an erosion of resources.
As someone who’d like to see the fine arts thrive in this country, as remain as accessible as possible, I mostly prefer their system. There are advantages to both systems, but mostly this story made me weep.
Several of this site’s most active commenters often discuss the advantages of European-style arts funding, the implication sometimes being that if Americans knew how much better things were there, they’d adopt the system used by pretty much all the other civilized democracies. We did recently follow their lead (incompletely and with enormous political violence) regarding universal healthcare.
But this story reinforced my hunch that rather than the U.S. becoming more like Europe, that the ideological force of US/UK-style neoliberalism — along with austerity politics and the continued economic slump — will make those other countries more like us, with culture less well funded and more dependent on the market and its popularity contest. I’ve spoken recently two two Scandinavian composers, of different generations, and gotten a sense of how much support the arts are losing even in the Nordic states.
This is one of those predictions at which I’d be happy to be wrong. But hard to imagine this ending well.
As I explained in a previous post, the NYT article is propaganda and basically just lies. The arts funding supplied by European governments, as documented by scholars who work for the Council of Europe, remains relatively stable, and has even increased in several key countries. Before drawing your conclusions you should consult these studies and not rely on obvious neo-liberal propaganda in the Times and anecdotal info from a couple anonymous composers. The Times’ undocumented claim that France is eliminating its public funding system for the arts or slowly dismantling it is pure bull shit. That’s why the Times lists no numbers and no sources. When I get back home I’ll look up the studies and provide documentation showing the funding levels in Europe which completely contradict the Times’ propaganda..
As for Scandanavia, Norway, for just one example, spends about $450 per year per capita on the arts. In the USA, both public and private combined, its about $23. Arts funding in Norway is thus about 18 times higher than in the USA. Norway could reduce its arts funding to 1/10th its current amount and still have twice as much per capita as the USA. Nevermind, a couple anonymous composers let us know Europe’s public funding system is failing.
More when I get home.
Meanwhile, check out these charts from the Council of Europe which show that public funding in Europe remains stable. They definitively refute the Times’ claims about the demise of Europe’s public funding system. The numbers show that the system is not changing. The few countries that reduced funding did so out of financial duress, and not due to any change in funding philosophy.
http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/statistics-funding.php?aid=119&cid=80&lid=en
The numbers are hard to collect and involve a delay of about 3 years, so the numbers only go up to 2011 and are only complete for all countries up to about 2009. Neo-liberals will thus grasp at straws and claim big changes have happened in the last 5 years. That’s also untrue. And you will note they provide no documentation for their claims.
The Times’ article is Disaster Capitalism in an almost classic form. Wall Street’s mortgage crisis created worldwide economic havoc, which they they are now using to try to dismantle Europe’s social democracies. The Times’ specious article about arts funding is a part of that larger effort. If you want to address Culture Crash, these are facts you should study closely.
Here’s another table that is easier to read. Note that increases in European public arts funding far out number decreases. And note that in almost every case where there were decreases, it involved countries in strong financial duress (e.g. Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland.) The cuts in these countries were across the board in all areas of government, and do not reflect a shift to an American private arts funding system.
Now ask yourself why the NYT didn’t mention these numbers which are readily available. Part of culture crash is the loss of integrity in journalism.
Sorry, here is the url for the chart that is easier to read:
http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/statistics-funding.php?aid=232&cid=80&lid=en
Note in the above chart that public arts funding in all Scandanvian countries has remained stable or risen. I hope your anonymous composer friends have a better command of music than simple arithmetic…
Hi, I am looking for similar data re UK, France, US and Russia. Would you know where I could find them? Many thanks.
Wish I did — pls let me know if you find
Pace William Osborne, but the NYT article does cite specific cases where government funding was not available. Private funding had to step in to acquire specific works for the Louvre and the Orsay. The article says that the Musee Picasso “financed much of its remodeling costs by renting precious works to foreign museums.” It reports that the Palais de Tokyo is renting space to Chanel. It quotes the president of the Palais de Tokyo saying that he has had to raise 50 percent of its budget in the past two years. No doubt the vast bulk of the funding does come from the government, but Scott is talking about a trend, and there is evidence for the trend.
Sorry but as anyone with experience knows the Louvre has been buying art with aid from private individuals for a very, very long time. To suggest this is something new is outrageous. Also, nowhere in the world is an art institution or museum prohibited from receiving income from private sources and France was never the exception.
I understand the frustration with neoliberalism and the privatize-everything mindset; I share them. I simply don’t understand the shoot-the-messenger hostility to the New York Times for reporting the news. If you think that arts journalists are a bunch of corporate, market-worshiping right-wing stooges, you simply don’t know what you are talking about.
No, but I think they should know a bit about the city they are writing about.
The problem is, Tim, that I do not think articles like this are merely news reporting. They are propaganda. The intent is a neo-liberal attempt to discredit Europe’s public funding system and promote America’s private funding system. They thus claim Europe is dismantling its public system and replacing it with a private system. That is pure bullshit.
A few reasons the article is bullshit:
1. The documented evidence about public funding levels I provide above shows that there is no general trend toward dismantling of the Europe’s public funding system – and yet that is the main thesis of the article! In fact, the numbers show that the overall trend for public arts funding in Europe has actually risen a small amount.
2. The creation of an American system would require massive amounts of new tax legislation. There is no evidence this massive amount of legislation is being created. Nor is there any evidence that any party is trying to introduce such legislation.
3. The creation of a private system would require governments to dismiss tens of thousands of civil service employees (administrators, orchestra musicians, choristers, crafts people in opera houses, opera singers, service people like janitors in concert halls, orchestra librarians, recording technicians, etc., etc.) This would be legally impossible.
4. There have always been a small number of donations from the wealthy for the arts in Europe, but the documented numbers show that what they give remains and will continue to remain only a very small fraction of arts funding. There has not been a significant increase in funding from private sources.
5. A private system would vastly reduce arts funding in Europe. The firings required and the change in government policy would be inimical to the European mindset.
The article is an insidious form of propaganda. It claims a change has been made when it hasn’t, so that people will not resist if and when the change is made in the assumption that it has already happened. This is typical of America’s sly forms of propaganda. Again, the Times article is neo-liberal bullshit. As a person studying culture crash, you should understand the style and purpose of these forms of propaganda.
As for the author, he may not fully know what he is doing, but I strongly suspect he has seen what sort of articles curry favor.
When I was in Washington (2007-2012) I was aware of and often encountered visitors from around the world, often government officials, seeking to learn how to adopt the American (e.g., free to the federal government) system of arts support. The trend is real; the desire of governments to create a private support system is undeniable; and its success is unlikely, given that the U.S. has a highly anomalous system of private philanthropy, backed by tax incentives, that is not easy to transfer just because some government wants out of having to fund the arts.
But certainly there will be at least gradual declines in government funding, which is evidenced by the examples Scott cites above. Limits are being applied, and they will get more stringent over time.
It’s true that Europeans study the American system and are curious about it. This does not mean that are trying to adopt the system. In fact, their observations show them that the American system is not to be emulated.
They clearly see that Washington has 41 opera performances per year and compare that to other capital cities: Vienna 578, Berlin 523, Paris 437, Moscow 424, Prague 374, London 344, and Budapest 331. They see the rinky-dinkness of the American system.
Let’s take a look at Moscow which has six dedicated opera houses: the Bolshoi Opera House, Moscow New Opera Theatre, Helikon Opera Theater, Moscow Operetta Theatre, Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Center, and the Moscow Chamber Opera Theater. To read about the companies and see their houses go here:
http://www.moscow.info/theaters/opera-and-ballet.aspx
No wonder Moscow has 4 times as many opera performances per year as Washington. Europeans are no fools. They see the problems the American private funding system for the arts produces.
What is astounding about that, as Osborne so aptly described, “bullshit” article is that it is so lacking in knowledge of the scene in Paris. What planets are those “journalists” on? Certainly not ours. To take Paris for example, any “journalist” would know the buzz about a new, acoustically important concert hall opening in 12 days at Radio France. And how anyone can miss the next expensive new concert hall and related facilities named in Philharmonie, destined to be one of the top and most impressive – and expensive (at some 380 million euros) – concert halls in the world. It opens January 14 next to the Paris Conservatory. There is not the slightest suggestion that the Paris art scene is scraping by or shrinking – on the contrary.
I completed my Masters in Cultural Policy and Management from the City University in London and at the time I began my studies (2007), the CSR (comprehensive spending review, jic) was handed down and the loss of funding to the DCMS resulted in something like 200 cultural organizations across the UK receiving reduced or no government subsidy at all. An attempt to stem the flow of incredible backlash was to have arts organizations meet requirements established by Sir Brian McMaster and lay them out in quasi-proposal/appeal to have their subsidy restored. A result of this ‘event’, and this from my British professors, news articles I have read since and people I have worked with there, is that there is and has often been someone, some bodies in the public domain who portend that an American fundraising and marketing platform should be adopted in order to fulfill annual budgets that will see a diminishing of subsidy to the arts there and in other countries in Europe. Anyone can report that funding has diminished for the arts in Europe (yeah, I get that the UK is somewhat separated from the rest of Europe) and that Europeans are considering or should consider an American model of fundraising but anger over redundancies, a new tax code implemented and potentially poor journalism aside (and I’ve said this before in similar posts), ‘You cannot draw blood from a stone.’ My dissertation focused on the differences between English and American fundraising from an historical perspective and simply enough put, there is no culture of philanthropy that exists like the American one. We are born fundraising. (I’ve said this often too.) From the lemonade stand to the middle school car washes, collection plates and bake sales at church to Girl Scout cookies and holiday gift wrapping and chocolate bar sales in primary school, it’s in our DNA. And it’s born of a system in place almost since the birth of our nation. No one, anywhere, can truly replicate that cultural distinction. Keep going back and forth about journalistic integrity all you want, cause no matter who has it wrong or right, culturally, historically, an American fundraising system would never become a popular trend turned successfully replaceable model that would take hold anywhere else, anymore than overarching government subsidy of the arts would take over here…it was tried (WPA) and decades later we have the NEA which is given enough to spend, as William mentioned earlier, literally mere pennies per person here, on the arts. I’ve made two documents available: McMaster’s 2008 report and one from the NEA on how we find the arts here. I’m sure if I check my bookmarks online I can drum up plenty of innane articles from various news outlets such as the NYTimes, the Guardian, Independent, WSJ, Financial Times that all try to sell us on an American fundraising system as someone’s good idea for a place it will never work. http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/how-the-us-funds-the-arts.pdf http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/publication_archive/mcmaster-review-supporting-excellence-in-the-arts-from-measurement-to-judgement/)
As a Scandinavian, I’ve been watching the societal development of the region first-hand. Scandinavian countries (with the possible exception of Finland, about which country I know less), have been gravitating towards American culture more than most – if not all – countries in Europe.
The reasons for this are many, but perhaps the most obvious one is that many Scandinavians send their kids to the US for six months or a year through educational exchange programs. They do this so their kids can polish up their English and become more or less fluent in the language. It is practically essential for one’s advanced education and career to speak and read English, because many technical textbooks used in university education are in English because it would be too expensive to translate them all into 4 Scandinavian languages, each having no more than 4-8 million native speakers.
This has led to an Americanization of society, which is visible externally by the proliferation of American fast food joints and to locals in the form of economic reporting in the news and the privatization of education and health care. Today, reports about stock markets domestic and foreign are an integral part of newscasts. 25 years ago that reporting didn’t exist. Likewise, private hospitals were not allowed 25 years ago, while they’re quite normal and prosperous today. Private elementary schools were allowed, but private higher education which you paid for yourself was not allowed 25 years ago. Today, private business schools abound.
So what does this have to do with arts funding, you ask? Mr. Osborne is right that arts funding has remained fairly stable in Scandinavia so far – at least on first sight. However, given the societal shifts caused by a better understanding of capitalist economics among the average citizen and ever-increasing issues with the social welfare systems – which have been fixed by the sticking-in of governmental fingers into the cracks of the proverbial dam – I am not so sure this will continue in the future.
Scandinavia has been fortunate in having strong economies. Norway has invested its gigantic oil revenues into a state fund for protection against leaner times, so they’re safe. Norway could run 50 full-sized orchestras from now until the next ice age without noticing it much in their finances if they wanted to.
Finland has already experienced a bad case of depression when Nokia went down the drain (yes, one international megacorporation can have a huge influence in a small country). Finland is the Scandinavian country with the most symphony orchestras, though, and given the long, dark winter nights, the Finnish government has deemed it wise to provide lots of pastimes for the population lest they all end up as alcoholics. Thus their orchestra’s will probably stay as they are, if for nothing else than to play tangos for dancing on weekends.
Two decades ago, the Swedish economy tanked, which actually resulted in one day of 1000% interest rates and a sharp devaluation of the Swedish krone before things stabilized. They’ve gotten over it pretty well by now and Sweden still has many natural resources and an armaments industry which, given how the world looks today, will be a cash cow forever. Yet when you talk to Swedish musicians, they’ll tell you that their orchestras have come under severe economic pressure. Orchestras like the Gothenburg Symphony are being forced to do run-out concerts, and regional orchestras are facing budget cuts, if not the threat of closures.
Denmark is struggling with the world’s highest tax burden, a declining population base, a bloated government sector and skyrocketing welfare costs as Danes use and abuse their welfare system. This is causing a severe brain-drain as highly educated Danes seek jobs in the US and elsewhere. Meanwhile, Denmark can’t attract expertise from abroad – even with highly attractive tax rebates for foreign experts – due to the weather and a fairly inhospitable population (you don’t notice that as a visitor, but try living there and see how friendly the Danes really are if you don’t speak the language more or less fluently). With taxes so high that raising them even higher means that the government might as well adopt a communist system of just paying capped state salaries to everyone, Danish welfare and culture funding has had numerous haircuts and potentially faces a shaved head.
Not too many years ago, there were cuts in the chorus of the national opera (and a lot in other positions). Today, the Danish Radio Chamber Orchestra is facing being shut down after its last concert this month. In Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest town and one of the EU’s designated culture capitals in 2015, the symphony is facing substantial cuts once again. It’s staff is already as small as it can get, so the orchestra will probably be reduced by 4-5 positions. In Odense, birthplace of Carl Nielsen, his 200th birth anniversary in 2015 is mismanaged and so badly underfunded that the Carl Nielsen competitions were almost shut down before a popular outcry prevented it.
Scandinavia is fortunate inasmuch as state funding has kept classical music performances and music education affordable for many decades. This has resulted in Scandinavia having the highest classical music consumption in Europe, even higher than in Germany. Such spending levels have provided a level of budgetary stability for culture. However, while it may seem that spending on culture is still increasing in Scandinavia, it is not, for the most part, being spent on improving the cultural scene. The extra funding is necessary to keep up with inflation and higher-than-average salary increases for musicians in the past, as well as their use – and abuse – of the welfare system. The worsening climate for the arts in Denmark is, unfortunately, merely as warning of things to come throughout Scandinavia.
And Scandinavia is the part of the EU where the arts seem to have it best. Germany is abolishing orchestras and opera houses left and right to save money. Italy seems headed towards the US per-service model of orchestras in the wake of the Rome Opera firings. The UK is cutting its cultural budgets drastically, threatening the existence of many arts organizations. Spain is an economic basket case, where the arts are the least of the government’s worries.
Central and Eastern Europe will probably stay fairly stable. The great Austrian orchestras, especially those in Vienna, are such culture magnets that reducing their budgets would be like shutting down Broadway in New York – an overall tourism economic disaster. Musician salaries in the former East Block countries are still absurdly low and the national classical music repertoire is still well-ingrained in their populations. It is therefore unlikely that the governments of those countries will make any noticeable cuts in their national cultural spending.
Overall, this leads me to conclude that Mr. Timberg’s article, as the one in The NYT, is a fairly accurate predictor of the future for the larger part of Europe. American musicians in big six orchestras are about as well off as their colleagues in the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics. The 10 next largest US orchestras, however, are worse off salary-wise than their colleagues in French, German and Scandinavian colleagues. They can only compare themselves to the UK. As for the rest of American orchestras, some of which have smaller cores of musicians employed for 7-8 months of the year and otherwise complement their size through per-service salaries, they’re not much better off than musicians in the Czech Philharmonic, the Prague SO and the Prague Radio Orchestra. Yes, the Czech orchestra base salaries are quite a bit lower than what a per-service US musician might make in a month during the season, but they provide full-year employment, health care insurance in the Czech Republic is low-cost, and their base income is boosted by touring (because they’re the best orchestras still cheap enough to make touring at least a break-even proposition for presenters), and recording (even NAXOS contracts are somewhat attractive for some of these orchestras, and then there’s the movie industry with film scores needing orchestras). Finally, the cost of living in the Czech Republic is so much lower (still, if you avoid the beaten tourist paths) that a comfortable living can be attained. Some orchestras further east, in Poland, and south, in Slovakia, have somewhat similar conditions, though at a lower salary level. Further east (Ukraine, Byelarus, Russia, etc.), the musicians who were able to have already moved west, so those left have to do with what they get, which isn’t much.
Mr. Osborne’s statistics merely reflect the extremely high cost of living in Scandinavia and only somewhat less so in other European countries. In most cases, they also reflect generous government salary increases for musicians in the past, which are quickly becoming unsustainable in the economic climate of the EU today. I believe that most European countries will start to resemble the US/UK in terms of arts funding. Yes, government support for the arts in Europe will still be higher than in the US – even taking higher cost of living into consideration – but not high enough to preserve more than one or two flagship orchestras and opera houses per country (perhaps a few more in the largest countries), and something similar for other fields of art. The rest will either have to adjust to a per-service model for at least part of their complement of musicians as well as increased fundraising to make up for shortfalls. Fundraising is and will be difficult, however, so long as there isn’t an implicit social contract between government and industry like in France and to an extent in Germany. Forget about private funding given the tax structure of most European countries. With taxes at 45%-59% on average throughout most of the EU – and with a lot of cheating on taxes in southern Europe – individual contributions won’t make much of a difference even if they were fully tax-deductible, which they aren’t.
France, the most rigidly socialist country in Europe (even more so than Scandinavia; just count the number of greves each year), has actually transitioned to a semi-privately funded cultural sector better than the rest of the EU, and mostly it seems to be working for them. French corporations support the arts with significant sums of money, either directly or through cultural foundation. This has allowed France to become perhaps the most exciting country in Europe for period music ensembles, summer festivals and classical music recordings.
France is definitely the model country for maintaining a high level of culture. And insofar as they keep producing the level of art musical and otherwise as they do, what’s wrong with a partial privatization of culture in Europe? It’s better than having to rely 100% on government funding and having the orchestra you’ve worked in for decades suddenly disappear or to be one of the unlucky ones to lose your job in another round of cost-cutting. I don’t think Mr. Timberg should be too fearful of the future if Europe can adapt. Adaptation has, after all, been part of working in music ever since it started to become democratized in the 18th century.
Thank you for the detailed response. Your approach is fairer and more accurate than the article under discussion because it notes that no significant changes have been made, and merely speculates about possible moves toward a private funding system in Europe. I disagree with a number of your points, but I’ll only mention a couple.
No one has a crystal ball, but I seriously doubt Europeans will ever embrace America’s private funding system for the arts. Neo-liberals have created a lot of pressure and discussion to that end for about 20 years, but there has been very little movement – almost none. About all they have accomplished is the illusion that Europe is giving up its funding system when it is not.
Germany cut a number of orchestras, but this had nothing to do with moving toward an American system. East Germany had the highest concentration of orchestras in the world. It was truly excessive and so some of the orchestras were cut. Redundancies were also created when the wall came down. Orchestras that were only a few miles apart that had been separated by the wall were merged. Even at that, Berlin kept 3 full time opera houses, and 8 full time orchestras. Hardly an American standard.
The statistics I mention do NOT merely reflect the extremely high cost of living in Scandinavia and other European countries. A much better way to measure funding is to gauge its results and make comparisons between a country like Germany and the USA:
Full time opera houses: Germany 83/USA 0, though the USA has about 6 functional houses with part time seasons.
Full time orchestras. Germany 133/USA 17.
And this even though the USA has four times the population. That stats clearly show more than cost of living differences. Finland has an ever higher per capita ratio of orchestras than Germany.
I was part of the Aurora Festival in Sweden last summer. I can understand how Scandinavians might feel they are being Americanized, but the social, political, moral, and economic order in Scandinavia is vastly different. I could discuss this in detail, but it might get off-topic.
European governments continually pressure arts groups that are losing quality, and sometimes their funding is cut, and sometimes the groups are even eliminated. Sometimes consolidations make sense. This is not to be confused with a fundamental change in funding methods, such as moving to the American system.
As you note, the one continental country that might be held up as an example of moving toward America’s system is Italy, but even Italy has light years to go before it would ever reach an American style system. I expect a major rebellion will occur at some point to stop that trend. The adaptability of Europe will be found not in its embrace of American forms of funding, but rather in its ability to resist US/UK neoliberalism.
Indeed, I do not have a crystal ball. I agree with many of your assessments of the arts funding conditions of Europe today, but they don’t fully reflect the economic situation in Europe, which, I believe, is headed towards a general shake-up as has been the case in the PIIGS countries.
Having maxed out on taxation, European governments are now looking towards reducing costs and boosting the private sector. This is particularly applicable in countries where the public sector is larger than the private sector. A country which has more employees in the public sector than in the private sector is fundamentally flawed in terms of economic theory applied in practice because the public sector cannot generate increases in productivity unless it invests in infrastructure. True, Europe has a better infrastructure today than the US, but there are limits to how much productivity can be generated through Public Works Administration if such public works do not boost private industry productivity. The US has fairly unlimited amounts of productivity gains stored in technological advances, so future US spending on infrastructure will only boost the US economy. The same cannot be said about the EU, for all its bullet trains, internet connectivity, etc.
I apologize for bringing economics into the picture so much, but ultimately, the financial prosperity of a region determines how much it will eventually spend on the arts, since they are both a leading and lagging indicator of economic growth.
Certainly, the US can’t compare with Europe in most areas of culture as things stand now. In music, this is a self-inflicted wound, because Americans of generations past were too snobbish to create a truly American roster of national composers and a canon of national works, Instead they imported Europeans who promoted other Europeans. As the cultural ties between immigrant communities and the culture of the Old World continue to erode, the effect will no doubt be damaging to “traditional” American arts culture as we have known it in the past.
Hence there is no point in discussing to what degree Europeans will adopt purely artistic considerations from the US. There’s not much to pick up in purely artistic terms. The only potential learning experience for Europe is in the financial models created in the US, which have – at least until the past two or three decades – been far more adaptive and flexible than the standard European models of government financing.
Considering how successful the American model has been in developing funds for an arts environment that, at least until recently, was far more dynamic than the European model, one must wonder to what extent the European model can thrive in a time of harsh economic realities. Europe has weathered economic storms before, e.g., during the post-WW I period, when the not only European populations, but also European economies were bled white. But that particular situation was a temporary one; today, the European economic and productivity woes are systemic. And such issues take a far longer time to straighten out than temporary financial crises.
Whether one likes the American lasses-faire capitalist model or not, it is inherently far more flexible and adaptable than the European social-capitalist model. It therefore stands to reason that while Europe is going to be mired in lackluster GDP growth and relatively high unemployment in the foreseeable future, the US will – as usual – grow faster. In purely economic terms, this will free more capital for spending on culture (which is mainly driven by individual donations, then corporate sponsorships, then foundations grants and finally government support). The greatest danger facing the arts in the US today is less a long-term economic challenge than a cultural disconnect between a rapidly growing immigrant population and a settled population which no longer feels much connection to its European roots or which has been overwhelmed by the American mass-marketing and dumbing down processes that dominate culture in the US today.
If Americans don’t like classical music or art, they’re naturally not donate money to “classical” arts organizations. This will potentially have as negative an impact on the US arts scene as slow economic and productivity growth in Europe. Both systems are in danger, for quite different reasons.
I am personally sick and tired of both American and European politics. They are both stale and corrupt in their own ways. Therefore I tend to look at the future of the arts in purely economic terms, since the politically sane expedient of promoting culture because it increases intelligence and test scores in kids and slows the onset of ageing in adults – not to mention providing intellectual enjoyment throughout one’s life – is not something politicians today understand or care about.
So what we see happening to culture in both the US and Europe today is even worse than the lack of a crystal ball. We are in a cultural fog where we can’t see even a decade into the future. Support for the arts may get better or it may get a lot worse. I doubt anyone can predict the future on the basis of how much money is spent on public funding for culture in Europe vs. the US, or how many orchestras one country supports relative to another, let alone a continent relative to another.
All I know from history in general is that all trends ebb and flow, both artistic and political. From the heights of Greco-Roman art between the 5th century BCE to the 3rd century CE, the arts descended into a relative coarseness for about a thousand years. That is not to say that no great art was created during the “dark ages” – we just don’t have a lot of it to peruse and during this period, the arts depended on the temporary stability and support created by overlords (which means there wasn’t much stability at all). Arguably, the finest artistic developments occurred in architecture during this time in the form of the great gothic cathedrals.
I have often wondered if we’re heading towards a new era of cultural decline a la the Greek and Roman empires. If we are, it will be a decline fundamentally different from 1700 years ago (unless we blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, go extinct from an as-yet unknown plague or a meteorite hits the earth or whatever).
Such unpredictability is both the greatest threat as well as the greatest hope for the arts in the decades to come. I have no idea what the outcome will be. Most likely there will not be any kind of definite outcome within my lifetime. But as someone who treasures the arts, I have hope for the flexibility and ability of artists to survive even the most difficult of circumstances, since an artistic inclination cannot be denied in an individual. The question is how difficult it will be to pursue artistic inclinations for the individuals who feel the calling within themselves in the future.
Interesting ideas. There is an essential fallacy in the assumption that American innovation has been based on small government and a self-reliant private sector. America leads in fields like computer science, telecommunications, and aeronautics exactly because the government has a long history of massively subsidizing these industries.
We might also note that Germany made some reforms but still maintains its social democracy (the government still spends 50% of the GDP) but that its economy is doing very well.
Contrary to neoliberal philosophy, the private/public paradigm is too simple and one-dimensional to explain innovation and creativity. It might be more accurate to say that creativity follows money, and it doesn’t matter so much where the money comes from as long as the society, economy, and government are healthy.
Are you telling me that Apple, Microsoft and Facebook started with US government support?
If Germany’s doing so well, why is it shutting down or merging orchestras and opera houses? If Germany were flush with cash, it would preserve even the glut of the former East German orchestras and opera houses. Surely there cannot be an excess of art in a cultured country.
As for your last paragraph, I couldn’t agree more.
PS Check the latest revised numbers for economic growth in Germany. It’s not a pretty picture at basically 0% growth. The US was steaming ahead at 3,5% in the most recent government survey data and independent projections.
Yes, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and countless other tech industries were built upon a massive technical, scientific, and educational infrastructure that was greatly enhanced by the government, most specifically through military spending that found its origins in the WWII and the Cold War. The three companies you mention are only the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps you will remember that the Internet, for example, is a hand-me-down from the military which now has its own much more powerful network.
As I mentioned, Germany eliminated a number orchestras due to redundancies when the wall came down. Once this was completed, the reductions tapered off greatly. This is illustrated by the longitudinal data for the elimination of German orchestras, which can be viewed here:
http://www.miz.org/intern/uploads/statistik16.pdf
The graph shows that in the first four years after unification (1992-1996) the number of positions in East German orchestras were reduced by 20%. After that, the cuts tapered off strongly. There were, for example, no reductions in East Germany from 1996 to 1998. In the 14 years since then, the number of positions in East German orchestras has dropped by about 1% per year. In the 20 years since the wall came down, the number of positions in West German orchestras has only dropped by 7.2% — which is only about 1/3 of a percentage point per year. No draconian movement, and yet neo-liberals howl in false delight.
Now that the economic stresses of unification and the redundancy of orchestras have been eliminated, the reductions in orchestra positions have flattened out and will remain relatively stable for a long period. It is interesting that the Germans have spread these reductions out over a 20 year period, and that they are now once again raising their sums for cultural funding. It stands as a positive sign of their social and cultural consciousness.
This is a far cry from the USA where even venerable institutions like the New York City Opera was eliminated and the Philadelphia Orchestra declared bankruptcy. In short, your arguments repeat the half truths and contrived, specious conclusions of neo-liberal propaganda.
Repeating the same data over and over again does not contribute to a debate, especially when the data is flawed. You don’t have to shut down orchestras to decrease government spending on the arts. You can just slash their budgets or leave unfilled positions empty. This is exactly what has been going on in Germany in recent years.
What the heck is a “neo-liberal”? The opposite of a neo-con? I was under the impression – mistaken perhaps – that liberals (whatever that epithet covers) were all for increased spending on the arts. I don’t bother following partisan politics because doing so kills brain cells faster than Alzheimer’s.
Neoliberalism is a technical term for a particular economic philosophy. Some general info about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
This is a great discussion. Just to clarify my point (far) above, it’s government officials from Europe and other continents who are trying to emulate the American arts system. They compare vast subsidies from their own treasuries to the U.S. model — essentially zero subsidies. Those funds are then freed up for other government uses. And, they conclude, if it works in the U.S., why not take it on? I don’t know of any arts administrators who are enthusiastically embracing the U.S. model of cradle-to-grave fund raising, but it’s likely to become more prevalent over time, as others have said better above. And just to clarify my own philosophy, I don’t think the U.S. system, by and large, is healthy. It forces too much energy to go to fund raising, and it bends artistic decision making toward (usually wealthy) donor preferences, which makes for less interesting and more timid art in general. That said, there is a sense of dynamism and freedom that exists from not being dependent on a single funder (government), but I would trade the exhaustion of fund raising perpetually for a little security.
Actually, European politicians and arts administrators look at the American model and see that it does NOT work. That’s why they are NOT emulating it. Even after 3 decades of neo-liberal indoctrination, not one European country has gone over to the American system. Not even the UK.
And further, not a single continental European country has even developed a hybrid system that uses a significant amount of private funding. The numbers are there for all to see.