Art and Public Policy: Synthesis

As part of my professional education and ongoing research, I was fortunate to audit George Sampson and Lindsey Hepler’s class on the Arts and Public Policy in the Architecture School at the University of Virginia. This post, and others in this series are reaction to our readings and discussions in which I find links between our readings and discussion and the front lines of community-based art. This is my end-of class synthesis essay.

The Citizen Artist, protagonist in our Arts and Public Policy course, embodies the broad intersection between art and policy. We’ve described him, asked what he can offer and wondered whether he is getting what he needs to thrive. This question is about more than personal satisfaction: the citizen artist is ideally suited for our rapidly changing world and his critical thinking, creativity, synthesizing approach and ability to imagine into reality are key ingredients for a healthy democracy. As Bill Bennett says, those who are competent manage but those who are creative lead. Prior to the course I suspected, and the readings and lectures have confirmed, that the dominant public policy approach is not particularly well suited for assessing or fostering creative civics; it has a real blind spot there. Perhaps the question needs to be inverted: rather than focusing mainly on the worthy goal of fostering the arts through policy, let’s ask how the arts can inform better public policy—or, at least, how they can work better in tandem.

Artists actively engage their own experiential development—discovery, experimentation, synthesis, pursuit of excellence. They delight in process as much as result, and are therefore disciplined in developing their ideas and capacity through endless iterative and synthetic experimentations. They want to sharpen their skills so they can bring their creations to life. They also broaden their vision and have a high capacity for diversity (for it is their fuel) and they are therefore unhindered by the central dilemma of democracy: how to reconcile freedom and consensus. They do it all the time in their artwork. The America of our dreams where creativity, discipline and joy in work open a brighter future for all will need a population rich in these qualities.

Is Extreme Wealth Killing Art?

It’s great when a newspaper story about art jumps off of the kitchen table and demands to be noticed. This week, it happened in two very different articles about money in the arts, both laments, about where our culture is going and how its creative edge is being dulled through neglect.

The tighter, more straight-forward piece was in Sunday's Washington Post. Philip Kennicott asks, “As the price of art rises, is its value plummeting?” It’s a great, if oft-posed, question: as asking prices for blue-chip art enter mathematical ranges, and it becomes monitized, what does that do to the motives behind its creation, curation and distribution? How can that have an other-than-malign impact throughout the food chain? If one assumes that art is meant to be for something does not the commodity role squeeze other things out?

It can be argued that other assets—grain, for example—successfully perform dual roles as repositories for wealth and useful social functions. But those roles, different as they may be, are apples-to-apples: they are both utilitarian. Art has a quasi-spiritual function and that is what differentiates a urinal from a DuChamps. As we move into a supra-corporate model of wealth, with oceans of opacity between owners and assets—and increasing walls between people, I can say as an artist that it’s despairingly difficult to connect money and meaning in art.

Kennicott opens the piece by describing the record-breaking sale at Christie's of a Francis Bacon triptych. He closes by noting that the piece will be on display in Portland for a short time and notes that the anonymous owner is being heavily reimbursed for the loan through a tax deduction. The bad thing in my view is this: almost no one will go to see Bacon's art (although justifiably many people love his work); let’s be honest—everyone is going to see the huge container of wealth, ostentatiously displayed by someone who is ironically uncomfortable (also, I think, justified) about that very wealth. And even this one act of sharing is heavily caveated.

If I were to hazard one explanation of art’s social purpose, it would be that art is an exploration of each maker’s individualistic condition and that by midwifing those ideas into an object and putting it into public space, it transforms into an independent object among us all for discussion and reflection. It brings us together despite all of our differences because we all have varied but equally valid connections.

But by standing in as an explicit class signifier, the Bacon becomes a symbol of difference. Instead of bridging barriers, it is wall itself and the crowds that will go see it do so in the spirit of fascination with a car wreck. Is that what art is for? Is that what Bacon intended? As an artist, it is discomfiting, to say the least.

Surely we can do better.

[Full Story]

Editor’s Note: This phenomenon is the reason why Monticello Road is explicitly non-commercial. Too often, the confluence of money and art is a barrier between people. As this project strives for the opposite effect, it was important (though difficult) to find a way to get money out of the picture. Anyone who wishes to have a picture can have one through a variety of channels and support strategies, all deriving from the community, not through government or foundation financial. 

As part of my professional education and ongoing research, I’m fortunate to be to audit George Sampson and Lindsey Hepler’s class on the Arts and Public Policy in the Architecture School at the University of Virginia. This post, and others in the series are reaction to our readings and discussions.

Where's the Art Version of Streetball?

The book I’m reading, Arts Inc. by Bill Ivey (former head of the NEA) is full of provocative and smart ideas but one quote made me throw the book in the air and start clapping. It’s spot-on accurate but I really love it because it makes an explicit connection that I’m always reaching for between my two twin interests: art and running. Furthermore he states explicitly what I’m always preaching: that art organizations should study sports marketing and especially those groups working on the grassroots—like, my employer, New YorkRoad Runners. They are doing a better job of changing lives than anyone in the arts and there are specific reasons why. Here’s Bill's blurb:

We first need to reframe our connection to art-making to match the way we think of athletics and exercise. In the world of museums, symphony orchestras, and dance companies, “participation” today means “attendance”; we’re participating in art when we buy a ticket to an exhibition or plant ourselves in a seat at a Mozart festival. In the world of sports we also participate by purchasing tickets and attending competitions, sometimes alongside thousands of fellow fans. But real sports activity is spread throughout the population; for those who don’t play tennis or golf or participate in an amateur softball league, society offers plenty of encouragement to exercise—even if it’s just a long, brisk walk three or four times a week. Our relationship with amateur sport seems healthy and rounded; we are accepting of wide disparities in talent and generous to those who can only take part in limited ways: we applaud the ten-minute miler just as vigorously as the sub-four champion. “Participation”, in sports and exercise means just what it says, doing. And, as a bonus, broad participation produces knowledgeable, enthusiastic audiences who support substantial compensation for thousands of professional athletes.

In contrast, most Americans are almost afraid to make art casually; there’s no longer an equivalent, in music, dance, drama, or drawing to the pickup touch football game on the back lawn on a Sunday afternoon. If we’re going to make art, it’s got to be serious business and the result has to be good. As Kimmelman observes, “Amateur equates to amateurish.” My friends in classical music talk with envy about European opera or symphony performances at which innovative or controversial performances once produced audience outrage and near-riots—people over there really care! Of course American enthusiasts are just wishing for the kind of audiences we find today at U.S. sporting events. To reach such a point we need to reconfigure the hierarchical pyramid that today is geared toward elevating only the best.[1]

Bill actually doesn’t go far enough. Sports programs that are well done create a virtuous cycle of health and fitness and that cycle is self-powered. He cites running, an industry I understand extremely well. Here’s how it works at the most macro level:

1. Small groups gather informally at the amateur level to train or play. They are very welcoming.
2. They work alongside one another pushing their own limits and each-others’ in a mutually supportive environment.
3. Some few rise to such prominence that others want to come out and see them.
4. Those performances inspire others (of all abilities) to run alongside them.
5. People of all ages get out there and try to better themselves literally one step at a time.
6. Here’s the cool part: others, including (and especially) the professionals see those kids, old folks and couch potatoes moving and they are hugely inspired.
7. Repeat, only in larger numbers…

Of course, the analogy has limits. Running does not produce a very large cadre of people earning a living that way. It may seem impossible, but the odds of “making it” as a performer are even less for a runner than as an artist. Running is quirky that way. But the endeavor attracts breathtakingly many committed practitioners. Imagine what America would be like if as much time, and numbers, were devoted to actively exercising our souls as we do at the gym, trail or park. I suspect that many things would change.

The positive trends in health and fitness are exactly that: positive; so no one would advocate staying in a room (or a studio) at the expense of going for a run. Yet, the time and energy needs to come from someplace and I suspect the book will go on to advocate that we make time and money for informal, spontaneous art by refraining from so much consumerism and passive entertainment.

He’s interested in finding a way to get everyone involved and inspired and to feel empowered to do so at whatever level makes sense. That’s what we’re trying to do too.

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1. Ivey, Bill. Arts Inc: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyedour Cultural Rights. University of California Press, 2008 pp. 118-119. Reprinted without permission. Since Bill devoted  about 50 pages prior to that quote arguing that fair use is essential for a thriving democracy, I will take my chances…

My most challenging resolution

Each year, I come up with a bunch of pretty challenging New Years resolutions and I usually make good on them. In addition to the usual mundane “buy a house/get health insurance/run more often” type of self-helpish to-do-list items, I try to list some self-helpish abstract ones that address my character flaws more directly. For example, last year I resolved to learn the differences between my boundaries (good) and my limitations (bad).

This year I would like to stop worrying (or obsessing) about other people’s advantages because it interferes with my happiness. That, in turn, makes me cranky, which is bad. It’s such an easy trap to become envious and so enamoured with the riches we see all around that we lose track of our own gifts. Every minute we spend thinking about how easy our neighbors are riding makes our own trip a little bit harder. I would like to free myself from that.

Yet in America, and especially in New York, Envy is big business. It’s peddled in ways both obvious and subtle all the time, every day. From gigantic billboards with airbrushed faces and bodies clinging to cologne bottles to that little message tagged to the end of emails that reads “Sent from my Crackberry.” It's bad, dangerous stuff and you have to be really strong to shut it all out and remain focused on what’s really important.

The good news: I am, in fact, really strong. So I can do this.

-countrymouse

My first thought was that a little bit of envy can also be called "motivation." When I see how well other people are doing, it makes me want to work harder and do better for myself and my family, which is good, right?

I think that is true as long as we keep things in perspective. Many of our envious thoughts are quite simply inaccurate. We have no way to judge how difficult or easy someone else's lot may be and we never have all the facts. Let's don't judge one another without the facts, please.

What seems to dog me even more is my tendency to lose track of my own position and to forget my own advantages and consequently not use them to best effect. That's where the real waste happens.

Keep the eyes wide-open and know when generosity is merited instead of meanness. That's always good policy. At the same time, be aware of what's going on in my own pot of stew and how that can can get me where I want to go.

-citymouse

p.s. Is that ad telling us that the cologne will make us like the guy or make him like us? You know, really like us...