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ONE of the key issues which underlies this blog and the book which inspired it is the role of public funding in the arts. I hate to give the end away, but one of the concluding points of Culture Crash is the need for more funding in the US, and something closer to a British or European model. (This is hardly an unpopular opinion among my colleagues.)
Similarly, I am skeptical though not opposed to the entrepreneurial spirit in the arts — that is, I often like the kind of specialized and niche-driven groups and series that the market makes possible, but view the whole cultural mix as an ecology. And these private/ entrepreneurial efforts often draw from publicly funded halls, grants, tax-breaks, and the public arts education of both players and audiences. So we can’t neglect the larger arts infrastructure, in the same way a forest needs light, clean water, healthy topsoil, and the right amount of shade to get a rich blend of flora and fauna.
And any reader of this blog knows I consider cultural journalism a crucial piece of the puzzle; and the disappearance of arts coverage aimed at a general audience is a tragedy comparable to the disappearance of arts and music education from public schools.
But this blog, and this post, is not simply about my ideas but a forum and discussion of where culture has been and where it’s going. And while I don’t entirely agree with Adrian Spence, founder of a well-regarded chamber group which has lasted three decades, I take his point of view seriously enough that I’ll follow up here with an answer of his that tripped me up both when he mentioned it over coffee a few weeks ago as well as when he included it in our recent correspondence. (I have removed a surname to keep from making this personal.)
So, here goes:
You say what you’ve done here would be less possible in Europe or the UK. Why does the US seem like the better spot for Camerata, despite the much broader and deeper arts funding over there? Or is it something about the audiences and musical taste in the US that makes a group like yours a better fit?
Ah, a little push back from one of your readers. Excellent. How exciting to actually have a debate about the ARTS!
In form of a preface, I have always found it absolutely astonishing that this wonderful country, my adopted home, shows so little national pride in its arts community; a community that has generated leading, form-changing, artists for well over a century. Does the statistic still hold true that this country spends more on military bands than the NEA? An even greater tragedy is the lack of arts education in schools. Well documented science demonstrates the substantial benefits of musical/instrumental instruction on a child’s cognitive development. That is not just an arts issue but nigh on a human rights issue, that these benefits are deliberately withheld from our youngest citizens.
Here that all is beyond my remit. Scott asked about my Scots/Irish background whence the rest of this has sprung.
I can state categorically I could not have started Camerata Pacifica in Northern Ireland or the U.K. in the late 80s. Back then the notion of an unknown, working class, 25 year old starting what would become a well regarded chamber group would have been seen as preposterous. The still quite pronounced social stratification in the U.K. was also contributory. My ideas would not have been received well and certainly I could not have obtained the seed funding. Perhaps much has changed in the intervening decades, but generally I don’t see it. Not only would it be difficult to sustain a $1,000,000+ budget on whatever small government funding was available, but the musical hierarchy is much more rigid — less so now I think, but still difficult — it is hard to break longstanding traditions. 30 years ago the U.S. offered the American Dream. It promised reward for innovative thinking and I deliberately choose to leave the more closed environment of 1980s Britain.
My intention was never to launch a symphony orchestra or opera house suitable to a capital city. Those institutional pillars of the arts are vital to cities and countries, but there should also be a constant boil of invention and exploration. I became part of a movement in which musicians wrested back control of their, and the greater, musical destiny. I don’t think it is any less than that, and I don’t see how that can happen via an arts council application process.
A healthy arts environment, any business environment, requires the encouragement of innovation and start ups. In classical music today we’re witnessing, in the U.S., Europe and beyond, incredible fertility in that regard, which is driving the renaissance. In any country this will be driven by individual entrepreneurship and funding, not the bureaucracy. Say indeed UK arts councils do have incubator programs to encourage the formation of new ensembles; along comes a recession, arts budgets are slashed, grants withdrawn and groups disappear. That happened. Scott, perhaps a little investigative journalism can precisely determine the extent of it, but in the last decade that happened. Without investment from individuals those groups had nothing once government funds evaporated.
The first sentence of Camerata Pacifica’s mission statement states we exist, “to affect positively how people experience live performances of classical music.”
Are we touching people? Have we affected positively, have we changed, their experience of classical music? Over 28 years I can say we have. Part of that is a result of how this country’s citizens interact with non-profits of all sorts in their communities. Personal investment is key, financial, emotional and otherwise, which I simply do not witness occurs to the same degree in the U.K. or Europe.
Permit me to directly address Mr. [name deleted]’s under informed view of the arts scene in Los Angeles. At best it’s dated or he’s Wikipedia-bound. Certainly he has access to an abundance of statistics and we know what Mark Twain had to say about that ☺
Camerata Pacifica’s Adrian Spence, w flute
I don’t understand the point being made behind those data he presents. Is it that L.A. would be better served than London if it had 6 orchestras? Off the top of my head in L.A. I can think of: Jacaranda, Da Camera Society, LA Chamber Orchestra, Musica Angelica, Wild Up, The Industry, Salastina, Pittance Chamber Players, Kaleidoscope, PianoSpheres, Colburn Chamber, Salon de Musique, plus all the regional orchestras and operas. I could go on, and Scott I’m sure you know many more than I, but our population doesn’t seem starved for music. Indeed, it seems like a pretty healthy situation to me.
On NPR last week I heard that, per capita, the U.S. has 5 times more mall space than the U.K. Most of empty; desperately seeking retailers and consumers. It’s overbuilt. The number of orchestras in a town tells us nothing, especially if they are primarily state supported. Show me the hard data concerning subscription & ticket sales. Not student outreach tickets or other discounted offers. Not one time sales, which reveal a recruit who didn’t like what was offered and didn’t return. Retention is the most important data point. Year upon year Camerata Pacifica’s subscription sales are up. People come, they stay and, due not in small part to this American model, they become donors and a happy, invested part of a shared, musically inquisitive community.
Camerata Pacifica’s Santa Barbara and Ventura venues sell out regularly. A beautiful new hall at The Huntington has almost doubled our capacity there, and our youngest, largest venue, Zipper Hall in the Colburn School, has plenty of seat availability. In other words, subscription growth will continue. When all of the venues are sold out? It’s chamber music, we’ll add another. The model is sustainable. However, eliminate government funding from any of the European groups, (and in the age of austerity who can say that won’t occur), what’s going to happen?
One can endlessly argue the merits and flaws of each system, and there are many. I’ll leave it to others to continue that debate. For Camerata Pacifica however, pursuing the mission it does at the beginning of the 21st century, this model of personal investment is the most effective, durable and rewarding to all involved.
Interesting that you removed the surname of the individual who provided the pushback, but when I saw the nature of the pushback, I knew exactly whom it came from. (I had not read the comments on the previous article.)
Scott, I think you missed the time that said individual wrote (in a comment – again, about arts funding – on another ArtsJournal blog) the following sentence: “The San Francisco Opera holds a position of great influence in American society.”
Now who could that be? I believe that in context he was speaking about the classic music world, where the house’s influence is indeed considerable.
I appreciate Adrian’s candid assessment of his organization’s special relationship with wealthy donors. In spite of the social drawbacks, this is the usual way arts organizations in the USA function. His persistence over 28 years is especially remarkable. The difficulties of funding non-profits in the USA seldom allows smaller organizations in classical music to last so long. His work has been a real service to the LA arts world.
His perspectives are part of a larger neoliberal philosophy concerning arts funding that was established during the Reagan administration. Small government, aesthetic leveling, entrepreneurship, and market fundamentalism are its basic tenants. On the surface these concepts seem benign to many artists. They do not realize that the philosophy is part of America’s harshly unmitigated form of capitalism that is unique among the developed countries, and which cause our arts world severe problems.
The neoliberal arguments against Europe’s public arts funding are based on a number of falsehoods so often repeated that they have become myths. I’m sorry I can’t spend more time writing about such a complicated topic, but on the spur of the moment I will briefly outline ten of them:
1. The first myth is that the overwhelming statistical data concerning the beneficial effects of public arts funding in Europe is somehow meaningless or unimportant. In reality, the data shows how public funding creates a much richer cultural landscape in Europe, and that the results of the private system in the USA compare very poorly. In the Culture Crash blog that preceded this one, I documented some of those numbers in detail, such as LA having the third largest metro GDP in the world, but ranking 133rd among cities for opera performances per year. Or that LA has only one full time symphony orchestra for a metro area of 18 million, while London has five full time orchestras, Munich 5, Berlin 6, Paris 5, and so on.
A good example of the differences is provided in a commentary in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis from April 23, 2004 entitled “Music Education Permeates Finnish Society.” Kristin Tillotson wrote: “ Helsinki alone is home to five symphony orchestras. Nationwide, there are 21 more, as well as 12 regional opera companies. At least eight world-class conductors, including the Minnesota Orchestra’s Osmo Vanska and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Esa-Pekka Salonen, were raised and trained in Finland . More than 30 full-time classical composers live and work there.” Think of the contrast with the lack of top level American conductors.
The article continues: “How has a nation of 5.2 million people — a population only slighter greater than the state of Minnesota ‘s — produced such a surplus of talent? […] Outstanding music education is the primary reason. But at its source is a national attitude that music is not dessert, but an essential food group for personal, cultural and civic sustenance, and as deserving of government subsidy as health care and schools.”
The article continues with a quote of the director of advanced studies at the Sibelius Academy, Osmo Palonen: “Music is so ingrained in our culture; there is never a question about the government putting a lot of money into it. This also makes music very democratic here, not just something for the elite.”
The examples can go on endlessly. Germany has 83 full time, state owned opera houses, while the USA with four times the population only has about six genuinely functional houses, and only one, The Met, is full time. The USA only has four cities in the top 100 for opera performances per year. It ranks 39th in the world for opera performances per capita – behind every European country except impoverished Portugal. There are nine fulltime opera houses within two hours of my house in Germany. There are also the many new music ensembles heavily supported by the government such as the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, and Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, to name just a few of dozens. To discount data like this is simply self-delusion.
2. The second myth is that Europe’s cultural life is somehow buried in a destructive bureaucracy. There is no meaningful evidence for this, and the quality of the arts in Europe demonstrate the point. The Berlin Phil, the Vienna Phil, La Scala, the Concertgebouw, The Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden, the London Symphony, the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Paris Opera, The Salzburger Festspiel, Bayreuth, the Maggio Musicale, and countless other examples all belie this claim of low quality created by public funding. We also see the quality of the system in the excellent and highly cultured state radio networks like the BBC in the UK, the ARD in Germany, RAI in Italy, Radio France, and countless others. How blessed the USA would be to have such “bureaucracy.”
3. A third myth is that public funding does not create personal engagement in the citizenry. In fact, just the opposite happens. Instead of a cultural system by and for the wealthy, the people in Europe see the arts as belonging to them. The ticket prices for the performing arts are on average about a quarter or a third the cost in the USA. People can often have a front row seat in a world class opera house for about $80 – good seats for $30. The communal dialog surrounding the arts is extremely active, if not fierce at times. Political careers are built around the health of a city’s cultural institutions. Americans can easily note this lively communal engagement in the arts by reading the London papers, if not those in Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw, Moscow, Copenhagen, Rome, Barcelona, and so on. There are also state run radio and television networks entirely devoted to arts coverage such as Arte or 3SAT. The idea that public funding keeps these citizens from being closely engaged with the arts is absurd. The breadth and intensity of engagement is far wider than in the USA.
4. A fourth myth is that our private funding system is more democratic. In reality, it tends to concentrate the arts in a few financial centers where wealthy donors live, while leaving the rest of the country culturally impoverished. And as LA illustrates, even the financial centers are often poorly served because the arts remain centered around the wealthy while large segments of the urban population remain neglected. Public arts funding is inherently more democratic, because it is distributed around the country so that all are fairly served. And governments by their nature direct funding toward groups that would otherwise be underserved.
5. A fifth myth is that public arts funding is inefficient. In reality, it is far more efficient than private funding. State owned and operated arts institutions keep costs down since salaries and budgets are rationally regulated by the government similar to the way civil servants are paid. This stands in great contrast to the exorbitant salaries far too often paid in the USA. (I document astounding examples of these US arts salaries in the previous Culture Crash blog. They stand in contrast to just about everything a non-profit is supposed to be.)
It should also be noted that about a third of the costs of most larger performing arts organizations in the USA are directed toward fund-raising and “development.” Every year the fund-raising wheel must be re-invented. Arts organizations often slowly die from the endless treadmill exhaustion of the fund-raisers and donors. By contrast, the public institutions in continental Europe do not even need such departments. And they can plan their programs years in advance since the government’s long-range funding is predictable and secure. (More about this below.)
6. A sixth myth is that public funding is inconsistent. In reality, it is far more consistent than private funding which is strongly influenced by perennially volatile market conditions and the personal whims of big donors. As I noted in the previous blog, in recent years the orchestras in San Diego, Miami, Kansas City, Albuquerque, Syracuse, Tulsa, San Antonio, New Orleans, Denver, San Jose, Colorado Springs, Honolulu, Miami, and Philadelphia have declared bankruptcy. When orchestras like these manage to return to life they are often depleted and their musicians demoralized. Many more orchestras are in continual financial trouble even if they skirt bankruptcy. There is no comparable situation in Europe – not even in the isolated case Germany after the stresses of unification and the redundancies of orchestras created by the removal of the wall.
Another notable example is that after the 2008 housing crash, American arts funding was significantly diminished due to donor losses, while in Europe funding remained comparatively stable even in the most stressed countries such as Spain. (I can document this if needed.) It is also notable that Europeans directed a huge portion of their bailout funds to their state run arts organizations. In the USA by contrast, only 50 million of the 800 billion TARP funds went to the NEA (1/16,000th of the total.)
7. An seventh myth is that Europe’s publicly funded arts institutions aren’t well attended. Again, exactly the opposite is true. The tickets are far cheaper than in the USA. And since there are many more performing arts institutions, they are much closer at hand. Public arts funding also allows for far more extensive educational and outreach programs. The Vienna State Opera runs at 99% capacity, as opposed to the Met’s 69%. The Vienna Phil can’t supply enough tickets and resorts to selling subscriptions by lottery. In Europe, if arts institutions become poorly attended, political heads roll. There is a strong incentive to keep them functioning well and well attended.
8. A eighth myth is that public funding suppresses innovation. Just the opposite is true. Public funding gives artists the financial freedom to explore. Countless state funded new music groups such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern, and the mandate of Europe’s state radio orchestras to perform new music are a few examples. The many state funded new music festivals are another.
In fact, many state organizations such as the radio orchestras and opera houses consciously aim for slightly lowered attendance levels so that they can include both popular and innovative programming. As the CEO of the London Phil said a few years ago in the Guardian, they could sell 90% of their tickets even competing against London’s five full time orchestras, but that they would be “…worried that our program was not adventurous enough. If we program in a conservative way, with great conductors and soloists, we are confident we would sell out the concert hall. With new, edgier work, and younger artists, the risks are higher. Orchestras are very fragile organizations. It is always difficult to balance the commercial and creative aspects of the orchestra.” He notes they thus aim for about 82% attendance which creates a reasonable balance between popularity and innovation. This flexibility is allowed by public funding.
9. A ninth myth is that the USA does not suffer from the lack of funding its dysfunctional private system creates. False impressions of actual cultural activity in the performing arts are thus consciously created. People list numerous names of arts organizations as examples of cultural richness, without noting that the activities of many of these groups are significantly limited by a lack of funding. The New Mexico Philharmonic, for example, can’t tour around the state — something that is much needed– because most the musicians must have day jobs. The San Francisco Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera only have half year seasons in spite of being among the world’s richest and most important cities. Combined with very high ticket prices, this greatly limits the demographic they can reach. The seasons in Houston and Seattle are even shorter.
As part of this façade, the San Francisco Opera literally calculates its season to be just long enough for the musicians to collect unemployment benefits. We might ask ourselves why a region as rich as the Bay Area with its enormous concentration of billionaires uses unemployment benefits as a vicarious method of arts funding! Boston, that great center of American learning, ranks 219th in the world for opera performances per year. As the stats on Operabase document, there are more opera performances per year in Istanbul and Cairo than in Boston and Atlanta. We create a façade of arts activity by showcasing names without truly examining the limited sphere of activity these organizations have due to a lack of funding.
10. A tenth myth is that even if public funding is better, we can never achieve it. In reality, times are changing, and the civic consciousness of American society is slowly maturing in ways that will eventually allow for public arts funding. Our slow move toward national health insurance is an example. Young people overwhelmingly supported Bernie Sander’s social democratic platform, a concept of government in which public arts support is a central tenant. We can feel very happy that these young people formulate America’s future. We should do everything we can to help pave the way for them. That includes clear and firm advocacy for public arts funding, and especially from the arts community.
Thanks to Scott Timberg for facilitating this discussion. It’s a true service and an example of what arts journalism should be.
Much of this is so, but Adrian Spence was hardly giving a full-bore defense of neoliberalism or going on a Thatcherite rampage. When the topic of neoliberalism came up in our discussion a few weeks ago, he told me he did not like the system and sent me an article about its failings
So some of this above is a bit of a tangent
That’s part of why the issue is so complex. I can’t speak for Adrain, but members of the arts community have tangentially picked up some of the ideas of neoliberalism without understanding their source or what their full implications are. That’s one reason why discussions like this are important.
The LA Phil has announced that it plans to spend half a billion dollars on its centennial celebrations. 1/500th of that amount would double the budget of the Camerata Pacifica, and people would get FAR more value for the money. This illustrates another advantage of public funding systems. The government can take a larger overview of the entire cultural scene and see that funding is rationally distributed.