Economics vs culture: 21st c. boxing match.

We had a rousing good discussion in cultural policy class last night on the issue of globalization as it affects the arts. It's a tangled web of economic and governmental interests versus a variety of artists, local and small-country governments, and nonprofit arts advocates and managers, trying to negotiate terrain that gets more complicated every day as the digital capabilities of the world increase.

It comes down to money versus culture. Two interests speaking different languages. At present, there is no authority who decides. The World Trade Organization versus UNESCO. Just as the "culture wars" of the 80s and 90s were so much about women, sex, the gay movement, and religion under the guise of arguments about art, the "trade wars" of the 2010s might well be about big money vs little (and individual culture), under the guise of "free trade" versus "protectionism." There's a lot of work to be done -- advocacy, education, scholarship, negotiation, just plain thinking. Keep the artists at the center and much will be gained, not so much lost.

We need new arguments

The elimination of the arts from the stimulus bill -- and the chorus of "who needs the arts" that followed even on liberal sites like Huffington Post and Daily Kos, suggests that we have so spectacularly failed to make our case that the arts are important. The popular imagination doesn't buy the "arts create jobs" concept, even though it's true. People generally understand roads, rails and buildings as ways to employ people. They support (sort of) education, especially when the President talks about crumbling school buildings and the need for science labs.

One of my students last night rather brilliantly linked the beleageured cause of the arts to the sciences, which, under the previous administration and in the chorus of global warming-deniers, has become a somewhat partisan cause. Who knew that the search for objective truth would become a liberal cause, when even many if not most scientists aren't liberals?

Artists, academics, humanists, scientists -- we're all in the same boat, drifting further and further from the mainstream's perception. Obama's election helped, but we have to row this boat on our own, not wait for his administration's solutions. How shall we speak up for the arts?

Are these the Democrats we were voting for?

Apparently these are not. At least in the U.S. Senate. Last Friday (Feb 6), the Senate vote 73-24 to ban arts, recreation, or any other kind of leisure oriented funding from the Stimulus bill by passing an amendment offered by Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma. Like the author of the expensive and relatively un-stimulative credit for homebuyers (and real estate speculators), Johnny Isakson, R-Georgia, Coburn has no intention of voting for the stimulus bill, only of damaging it.

The $50 million boost the House provided will not put the National Endowment for the Arts back to where its funding level was prior to the mid-nineties Culture Wars. But it's a start, and you can bet that money given to arts organizations prevents layoffs and hired artists, techs, and publicists -- stimulus. The anti-culture posturing in the name of "saving money" is irrational and ill-placed. Let's hope the House restores sanity to the stimulus bill.

Every executive, whether of a small dance company or a Fortune 500 conglomerate knows that sometimes you try to achieve consensus ("Bipartisanship") and sometimes you just have to do what's right and wait for your critics to get on board.

More on the Rose: "Disaster Capitalism?"

When the Rose Museum closing was announced, I suspected that we would see evidence that Brandeis, in this era of economic downturn, was uniquely broke. Perhaps its endowment had been eaten by Bernie Madoff, or had done markedly worse than everyone else's. But it turns out that the Chronicle for Higher Education's survey of university endowments indicates that Brandeis has lost 22.9% of its original $700 million, right at, even slightly under, the average loss of 25%. Therefore, Brandeis is declaring a calamity in order to seize the cash it could generate from the art. My guess is that at least some board members and administrators have been eyeing that art for a long time. Naomi Klein calls this phenomenon of doing bold, bad things (like the bank bailout last October) "Disaster Capitalism," and it turns out that the arts aren't immune to it.

A crazy idea to save the banks and ourselves

What if, instead of sending cash to the banks and hoping they use it in ways that will help the people of the USA, why not pass a "bailout bill" for credit card debt? We could use government funds to go directly to cutting all credit card balances in half. Oh, I know, the cuts would only help people who've been irresponsible, sick, unlucky, overly optimistic about the future, etc. But so many of us have credit card debt, and even though the banks now borrow money from the Fed at 0% interest rates, few have seen cuts in credit card and consumer rates.

So along with the tightening of credit standards and credit lines, which was probably long overdue, we could maintain those standards while helping both the banks (at-risk balances reduced) and consumers (their own daunting high interest balances reduced), knowing that federal money would actually accomplish something.

And if ordinary people's debt loads and monthly payments decreased, wouldn't they have more money every month to create the economic activity we're trying to "stimulate"?

Along with debt load reduction, government could also mandate a decrease in credit card interest rates, returning to the caps of olden days, at say, 15%. That, too, would reduce debt, increase spending, and, as long as lending and credit guidelines remain tight, should not lead to an expansion of irresponsibility and all the alleged evils that saddled us all with so much of a problem.

A modest post from outside the beltway (well, I'm half a mile outside...)

The Rose Museum controversy proves two things

If you haven't been following this particular strand of the apocalypse, the Rose Museum at Brandeis University has been ordered closed by the Brandeis Board of Trustees, and the art collection, valued at half a billion dollars, is to be sold off to finance Brandeis's operations.

Like most universities, companies, nonprofits, and people, Brandeis is having a hard time right now financially. Selling off the art collection is extreme, even shocking, coming from an intellectual powerhouse of a college. But it's evidence that 1), the arts just aren't very important to a lot of people, and 2), that the historic link of an important art collection to a university as a key teaching tool is dead, a relic not so different from the amusing turn-of-the-century biology specimen collections that used to adorn every life sciences department at every college.

Regardless of whether the Rose survives, and it still might, what needs fundamental work from the artistic standpoint is to rebuild that critical link of art and university, and most significantly to raise the value and nature of the arts in the public's consciousness. These are long-term struggles, but necessary ones. Meanwhile, one can find save-the-Rose groups on Facebook and other networthy sites.