Two unrelated incidents in my professional life have me fixated on the issue of government support for arts and culture. One, the class I’m currently teaching at Drexel took up in discussion and research the topic, and as I had hoped, had strong and intelligent opinions. And two, I’m presently working on a project involving a municipality and its performing arts center. First the class —
Among many aspects of government funding for arts and culture, I posed the idea of a culture “czar,” a secretary of arts and culture. The summary: dead set against it. My students, many coming from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities, were vehement in their arguments. They zeroed in on the question of “whose art?” “Who would decide?” “Don’t tell me what is worthy or good art. I want to have the freedom to make these decisions myself.” After killing the idea of an arts czar, they quickly moved on to expressing skepticism about government involvement in the arts and culture at all. Are my students liberals? I believe, yes, quite so.
I realized that they were focused heavily on the more complex interior of government support, such as cultural heritage, dominant cultures, support for large organizations, determination of what constitutes excellence, etc. They were not considering (during this particular discussion) other aspects, such as economic development and equal access. (For this blog post I omit arts education — clearly an important focus — of government interest and support)
Now the municipality and its performing arts center: in this instance only economic development and equal access are being directly considered (of course many of the government officials recognize the deeper value of the arts and culture). What’s so deeply interesting on the policy front is putting a price or dollar value on the 2 items. Yes, the appropriations process throughout governments places a price on everything, and I think here it’s simply my own sudden awareness of it — enhanced by my students’ comments about the arts czar.
I think it’s time to rethink the relationship between arts and culture and government.
If you present the idea as headed by a “culture czar,” just about any group will react negatively. Due to the history of the word czar, it is unavoidably associated with brutal, autocratic despotism. It’s almost as bad as asking the students if they want to be led by a “culture Führer.” In fact, the use of the term czar for heads of government agencies was first coined by rightwingers in order to disparage government programs they don’t want.
Why not approach the topic in a more reasoned and educational manner by examining the public funding systems of Europe and notice how they are not only very open and tolerant, but also allow for far more cultural institutions, a wider and more diverse demographic in arts participation, and much better regional access to the arts. If approached in this way, your students would obviously react differently.
As a working artist of liberal tendencies, living in Canada, where there is more state support for the arts than in the US, I sympathize with your students. On the one hand, my colleagues benefit from government support (I’ve never received a direct grant, but indirectly I have benefited.) On the other hand, there is much to question about the government’s hand in the arts.
Still, I believe we have a happy compromise here (how Canadian)- much of the government funding is channelled through independent councils made up of rotating juries of peers.
The system works passably well. There is no arts “czar”, just a cabinet minister who has responsibility, but no administrative powers.
I too am in Canada, and I don’t think the system of government funding for the arts works well at all. Except in the opinion of those who benefit, as can be seen in the comment by Ron Davis below.
I agree with Undercrofler on most of what he says. In Canada, we have lots of symphonies, museums, fancy concert halls, subsidized galleries, shows, events, festivals, the money flows to the highly self-interested arts lobby.
Who, along with their well-paid administrative staffs, also expect the money to flow out of the public pocket not once but twice–first, to fund them and their event, and then, to pay to get into it.
The work these people present is often deviod of content and quality, and that’s not just because of any sort of slacker trend. It’s because artists in all mediums are afraid to provoke anything except the most mundane of common truths. The work I see lacks humour, public engagement, and most of all, political insight or commentary. It is meaningless.
Thanks to a Royal Commission back in the 1950s, Canadian taxpayers have been saddled with this idea that the high arts must be funded with public money no matter what. What most Canadians don’t even realize that this idea was put in place by the wealthy mostly in order to save themselves from doing the funding.
And now, it’s mostly only the wealthy who can afford to buy expensive tickets to the ballet, or pay twenty dollars a shot to get into our fancy new museums and galleries.
The independent artist is invisible in such venues and looked down upon in Canada, and so is the craftsperson. Anyone, really, who tries to practice either art or craft without also entering the funding racket are simply left out. All shows are mediated by boards of public galleries that revolve around the system. So they show the funded artists and craftspeople, because part of their grant contracts stipulate the work must be shown.
It is a terrible system. Philanthropy, when it does exist, only props it up further.
What I think Canada and the Massey Commission built with their public funding structure is a society of artists who don’t seem to care about society or challenging anything for fear of losing their funding. Our right-wing government has ensured the silence of the arts community by not cutting their funding, rather continually increasing it. And the artists are complying with grant-fuelled fervor, with art whose empty nationalism and weak conceptual framework leaves me in total dismay.
I feel this sad situation is generated not just by cronyist funding structures, but also by way too many self-interested, tenured, unskilled profs clinging to jobs at small art departments ensconsed in universities that mystifyingly bestow BFAs as if they are a production line, and each diploma comes with grant application paperwork attached.