The National Summit for the Arts idea has become a Facebook cause! If you'd like to join, go to: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/join/202708/42790651?m=ac75a943. Spread the word! Thanks for the suggestions to coordinate with such events as the Community Arts and Grantmakers in the Arts conferences - both good ideas. I was also thinking that the Americans for the Arts convention might be a good tie-in. It's in Philadelphia this June, I think.
Joiners welcome! Skeptics, too.
Monday, January 26, 2009
We haven't made the case!
My last post calling for a National Summit elicited a mini-torrent of attack on DailyKos, where I cross posted it. Surprisingly, even in a liberal group blog like Kos, it's clear that a lot of people don't have a sense that the arts are important and that they need help from the government. The hard part about getting government support is that artists, arts organizations, and indeed the whole cultural sector is completely misunderstood by the public. We have to come together, find common arguments and unified ideas about why others should care about us. Until we do, we'll remain in the relative wilderness.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Let's have a national arts summit in summer 2009
Petitions and ideas are flying through the internets -- Arlene Goldbard has issued a call for a new WPA for artists; President Obama himself called for an "Artists Corps" in the schools, modeled on Teach for America, during his campaign; fragments of information suggest that some substantial millions, if not even a billion, will be appropriated to bodies like the NEA, the Smithsonian, and the IMLS when the stimulus package passes.
And most dramatic of all is the Quincy Jones petition that would create a cabinet-level "culture czar" or ministry of culture.
All these ideas paint a wildly optimistic future for the arts after years in the fiscal wilderness. We've been sustained by an economic boom that has enabled our private donors, foundations, and corporate sponsors to be unusually generous. But even during a two-decade mostly-boom period, the arts have neither flourished financially nor been able to save for the rainy day that's now monsooning all of us.
So maybe it's time we gathered all the artists and arts leaders and theorists and public policy experts together with key Congressional and administration leaders -- hello, Obama arts transition team? -- in one huge conference, in Washington, DC, where the public funding decisions will be made. May or June sounds good to me. Let the new Obama administration get its stimulus bill passed and its economic and national security/diplomacy efforts rolling. But then let's take a global look at every aspect of the arts support system that's been created, or that's grown at random, over the last few decades. And let's make recommendations for something new, something optimal for this new century. Spread the word: arts summit now.
And most dramatic of all is the Quincy Jones petition that would create a cabinet-level "culture czar" or ministry of culture.
All these ideas paint a wildly optimistic future for the arts after years in the fiscal wilderness. We've been sustained by an economic boom that has enabled our private donors, foundations, and corporate sponsors to be unusually generous. But even during a two-decade mostly-boom period, the arts have neither flourished financially nor been able to save for the rainy day that's now monsooning all of us.
So maybe it's time we gathered all the artists and arts leaders and theorists and public policy experts together with key Congressional and administration leaders -- hello, Obama arts transition team? -- in one huge conference, in Washington, DC, where the public funding decisions will be made. May or June sounds good to me. Let the new Obama administration get its stimulus bill passed and its economic and national security/diplomacy efforts rolling. But then let's take a global look at every aspect of the arts support system that's been created, or that's grown at random, over the last few decades. And let's make recommendations for something new, something optimal for this new century. Spread the word: arts summit now.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
happy new year! leave your cliches at the door.
Hello
The blog went dormant as I lost my way from the arts to obsessing on the election. Not wanting to be one more of the several million election bloggers, I decided to wait until now. New year, new president, new economic reality. This is a blog about the convergence of art, politics, money and memory.
Everyone is saying that we are in an unprecedented economic reality, that "everything has changed," and that we are in "uncharted waters." At this point, they're way ahead of themselves. We are in a recession; the wall street ponzi scheme has collapsed, for now; a major sector of the economy (or two) is reorganizing; we don't know how long this recession will last or how deep it will be.
What we do know is that the vulnerable get hurt first. That's true with individuals - this will be our country's first test of "welfare reform," which works well when the economy's humming, but now?
In the arts, underfunded organizations are going down. Museums are selling off collections and performing groups are cutting back on seasons. This happens every recession. The question is, will this recession cause us to revisit good ideas like --
real government funding of the arts; substantial support for individual artists; a resurrection of WPA/CETA concepts that would employ artists to document and describe this sprawling society; and new forms of funding for arts organizations.
The Panglossian approach ("the hybrid model of funding with waning government support is great") will have to sharpen their arguments which sounded good when the society was awash in cash..
This spring, I'll be teaching cultural policy and financial management. One is a theory course, the other a how-to. Both will have a tinge of crisis about them that wasn't there a year ago, when we addressed the arts going broke as a theoretical possibiity, not as today's news.
Happy new year. May the recession be brief but good lessons be learned!
The blog went dormant as I lost my way from the arts to obsessing on the election. Not wanting to be one more of the several million election bloggers, I decided to wait until now. New year, new president, new economic reality. This is a blog about the convergence of art, politics, money and memory.
Everyone is saying that we are in an unprecedented economic reality, that "everything has changed," and that we are in "uncharted waters." At this point, they're way ahead of themselves. We are in a recession; the wall street ponzi scheme has collapsed, for now; a major sector of the economy (or two) is reorganizing; we don't know how long this recession will last or how deep it will be.
What we do know is that the vulnerable get hurt first. That's true with individuals - this will be our country's first test of "welfare reform," which works well when the economy's humming, but now?
In the arts, underfunded organizations are going down. Museums are selling off collections and performing groups are cutting back on seasons. This happens every recession. The question is, will this recession cause us to revisit good ideas like --
real government funding of the arts; substantial support for individual artists; a resurrection of WPA/CETA concepts that would employ artists to document and describe this sprawling society; and new forms of funding for arts organizations.
The Panglossian approach ("the hybrid model of funding with waning government support is great") will have to sharpen their arguments which sounded good when the society was awash in cash..
This spring, I'll be teaching cultural policy and financial management. One is a theory course, the other a how-to. Both will have a tinge of crisis about them that wasn't there a year ago, when we addressed the arts going broke as a theoretical possibiity, not as today's news.
Happy new year. May the recession be brief but good lessons be learned!
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Who's Super?
Am surprised at the lack of real insight about Super Tuesday. Obviously there is a rift in the democratic party that may be as much generational as it is race or gender-driven. The Boomers aren't really ready to hand over the reins to the new generation X of leadership. We want a chance to make up for the wreckage of our own generation's frat-boy CEO leader. So why not a feminist leader? But at the same time it's hard to ignore Barack's Jedi-mind-trick ability to convert people to whatever it is he is representing.
All the professional pundits aren't offering much by way of explanation of what's happening outside the beltway. What's with this record turnout across the land, not just with Obama voters but all over the Democratic spectrum?
My marketing class has been examining the different techniques of the campaigns. Obama's is "lateral" marketing -- broadening the brand or the appeal to unexpected provinces, while Hillary's is brilliantly "vertical," demonstrating a complete understanding of and ability to tap every identifiable voting demographic. It's a fascinating contrast in styles, not just of the leaders, but of the whole way of operating.
Meanwhile, it looks as though the "Superdelegates" will play a big role in deciding the Dem nominee, and no one seems to remember why they were inserted in the process. Many are "blaming" McGovern, which is partially true, but I recall vividly that August night in 1980 when the Democrats came to sputtering end of a horribly divisive one on one primary battle between the increasingly disliked incumbent Jimmy Carter and the challenger, Ted Kennedy. Kennedy had gotten off to a terrible start and Carter had smoked him in the early primaries, but as the Iran hostage crisis dragged on, and the Soviets made him look weak in Afghanistan, the Olympic boycott irked everyone without moving the Soviets an inch out of Kabul, public opinion coalesced around Kennedy.
But there were no superdelegates, and Carter had a slim but real majority of the convention in pledged -- contractually bound -- delegates. The rest of the story's obvious. Carter nominated, defeated by Reagan, superdelegates added to make sure there would be a cure for late summer "buyer's remorse."
It's a long time till August. Stand by, supermen and superwomen
All the professional pundits aren't offering much by way of explanation of what's happening outside the beltway. What's with this record turnout across the land, not just with Obama voters but all over the Democratic spectrum?
My marketing class has been examining the different techniques of the campaigns. Obama's is "lateral" marketing -- broadening the brand or the appeal to unexpected provinces, while Hillary's is brilliantly "vertical," demonstrating a complete understanding of and ability to tap every identifiable voting demographic. It's a fascinating contrast in styles, not just of the leaders, but of the whole way of operating.
Meanwhile, it looks as though the "Superdelegates" will play a big role in deciding the Dem nominee, and no one seems to remember why they were inserted in the process. Many are "blaming" McGovern, which is partially true, but I recall vividly that August night in 1980 when the Democrats came to sputtering end of a horribly divisive one on one primary battle between the increasingly disliked incumbent Jimmy Carter and the challenger, Ted Kennedy. Kennedy had gotten off to a terrible start and Carter had smoked him in the early primaries, but as the Iran hostage crisis dragged on, and the Soviets made him look weak in Afghanistan, the Olympic boycott irked everyone without moving the Soviets an inch out of Kabul, public opinion coalesced around Kennedy.
But there were no superdelegates, and Carter had a slim but real majority of the convention in pledged -- contractually bound -- delegates. The rest of the story's obvious. Carter nominated, defeated by Reagan, superdelegates added to make sure there would be a cure for late summer "buyer's remorse."
It's a long time till August. Stand by, supermen and superwomen
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Proud to be an American (U)
My wife, son and I were among the 6,000 jammed into Bender Arena at American University to hear the Kennedys and Barack Obama speak on Monday. The hours of icy standing in line were well worth it. I've seen endorsements before, but never in person, and there have seldom been endorsements of this significance. The Kennedys didn't just endorse, they passed the torch, their own Camelot torch, to Barack Obama, with the 6,000 witnesses in person and a few million more on TV.
The Obama campaign does a lot of little things right -- the music ("Graceland," the fusion of black and white, of old and new), the slogans, the campaign-created handmade billboards designed to look spontaneously homemade, and the Kennedy appeal to older folks via TV while filling the room with college students to generate that crazy enthusiasm that, well, only college students can produce.
I feel lucky to work at American U. and to have been part of this historic, made for TV art happening. I actually haven't decided who to support in the election, but being in Obama's presence does help one understand the appeal...
The Obama campaign does a lot of little things right -- the music ("Graceland," the fusion of black and white, of old and new), the slogans, the campaign-created handmade billboards designed to look spontaneously homemade, and the Kennedy appeal to older folks via TV while filling the room with college students to generate that crazy enthusiasm that, well, only college students can produce.
I feel lucky to work at American U. and to have been part of this historic, made for TV art happening. I actually haven't decided who to support in the election, but being in Obama's presence does help one understand the appeal...
Monday, January 21, 2008
No audience
Blogging seems the perfect and logical consequence of the profusion of literary magazines and journals in the 1980's and 1990's. I founded my own, Indiana Review, in 1981, and it's still going. Most of the ones begun then are still around, chugging along through subsidy, editorial grit, and human desire, fueled by the massive number of submissions from writers who, weirdly, dwarf the number of readers.
Litmags are still where good writers get their start, so the function is important. But even in my heyday as a "creative writing person," I never devoured them by the dozen, nor do I recall animated conversations with other writers about the latest TriQuarterly or Fiction issue.
So now we have come to the point where millions of us are Authors of cost-free Blogs about everything from thrift-shopping to cat-photographing, and often about nothing in particular.
I asked my students in arts management to invent an arts organization and their choice was one in which the audience members and the performers were essentially the same people. So it has become, in a high-tech reprise of the arts and crafts movement, a participatory, hands-on culture, where the work is done for its own sake, apparently, and not for the audience's.
If everyone is an author, what's really being said, exchanged, understood?
a holiday weekend meditation.
what if Martin Luther King Jr had been an unread blogger, writing the same brilliant words we universally celebrate today?
Litmags are still where good writers get their start, so the function is important. But even in my heyday as a "creative writing person," I never devoured them by the dozen, nor do I recall animated conversations with other writers about the latest TriQuarterly or Fiction issue.
So now we have come to the point where millions of us are Authors of cost-free Blogs about everything from thrift-shopping to cat-photographing, and often about nothing in particular.
I asked my students in arts management to invent an arts organization and their choice was one in which the audience members and the performers were essentially the same people. So it has become, in a high-tech reprise of the arts and crafts movement, a participatory, hands-on culture, where the work is done for its own sake, apparently, and not for the audience's.
If everyone is an author, what's really being said, exchanged, understood?
a holiday weekend meditation.
what if Martin Luther King Jr had been an unread blogger, writing the same brilliant words we universally celebrate today?
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