Art by the numbers

 Many people underestimate the contribution disease makes to the economy. In Britain, more than a million people are employed to diagnose and treat disease and care for the ill. Thousands of people build hospitals and surgeries, and many small and medium-size enterprises manufacture hospital supplies. Illness contributes about 10 per cent of the UK’s economy: the government does not do enough to promote disease.

Such reasoning is identical to that of studies sitting on my desk that purport to measure the economic contribution of sport, tourism and the arts.

—John Kay, economist

A post I came across yesterday reinforces a basic contention of mine related to arts and the future. Economist John Kay reveals the logical fallacy of defending the arts, as well as sports and tourism, from a purely financial standpoint. Click here for the full post. However clearly the case may be made for the value of art by compiling financial data, it is not especially compelling. How many great works of art can you name that are celebrated because of what they do for the economy, much less any which were conceived and created for that reason? The most winsome argument for support of the arts is art itself. So it follows that articulating art’s value, particularly by way of numbers, is limiting. But I wouldn’t dare to fault anyone for trying. Particularly from the standpoint of public policy, NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman’s statement, “Art jobs are real jobs that are part of the real economy,” is worth consideration.

August 18, 2010 | Filed Under Culture | Leave a Comment 

Arts and the Future

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The cultural real estate the arts will claim in the future is difficult to surmise. Among a myriad of variables in play, the economic instability, social diversity and media saturation of our world today make it nearly impossible to know how art will thrive, particularly at the institutional level, as the 21st century further unfolds. The dynamics of private and public patronage in Europe and America are in flux. Social media and the race for the virtual fan base command an almost era-defining significance while their ultimate value remains largely unknown. Old audiences are receding. New audiences are coming of age whose consumerism is sought by a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry, whose philanthropic consciousness is tapped by a host of charitable causes, and whose interest in art will not be won by tomorrow’s development initiatives as much as by today’s primary and secondary education programs. Board and executive leadership in the arts will soon completely pass from the hands of Baby Boomers to those of generations hardly capable of recalling a world without digital communication and media platforms that revolutionized the flow of information over the last two decades. Will broad interest in art be sustained in an increasingly diverse and commercially competitive era? Will funding increase in concert with rising production costs? How will arts organizations weather recession, war and crises yet to come?

Despite the complexity of these issues, the qualities that propel the most successful cultural institutions today, and likely will in the future, remain in clear focus.

ADAPTATION AND INNOVATION: DEVELOPING SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODELS

Economic developments over the last two years have illustrated how inexorably linked financial trends in the nonprofit sector are with those in the for-profit world. Companies find it difficult to justify investment in the arts when their own survival meanwhile necessitates payroll freezes and job cuts. Individual donors are likewise stilted in their ability to give while their investment portfolios are tanking. In this environment especially, the ability to adapt is critical. The force of evolution in the arts today is toward new, sustainable business models, and the most forward-thinking organizations are those embracing new ways to achieve them.

In Detroit, where the recession set back many businesses, including major auto manufacturers who were once robust patrons of culture, arts organizations are coping with dire circumstances. In their struggle to stay solvent, some are finding new ways to attract audiences and generate revenue. The Michigan Opera Theatre posts rehearsal videos on YouTube and runs event promotions on Facebook and Twitter—specifically aimed at students and young professionals—that have attracted hundreds of first-time ticket buyers. The Detroit Institute of Arts invites Friday night museum attendees to enjoy free live music, art-making workshops, drawing in the galleries and guided tours. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has increased its free concert offerings and begun broadcasting performances to a nearby hospital by closed circuit TV.

Elsewhere in the arts world, development efforts are redrawing cultural territories. An ever growing audience gathers in movie theaters across the U.S. to enjoy live broadcasts from New York’s Metropolitan Opera through one of the industry’s most ambitious and successful brand-building initiatives. Russia’s Bolshoi Theatre followed suit this spring with simulcasts from its home in Moscow to hundreds of theaters in France. Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet is designing a new reality TV series that will spotlight its dancers-in-training and thus share its work with new audiences on national television. Syndication in theaters and on TV may be financially impossible for most arts organizations, but affordable online distribution channels abound and are becoming the outlet of choice for a growing slice of the population. The organizations that will thrive in the future will doubtless be those whose mission is easily found and followed across an array of platforms.

While innovation is proving increasingly important in sustaining the arts, it seems clear that for even the most creative and adaptive organizations of the future, solvency will always require subsidization. This is especially true for those involved in the performing arts. John F. Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser aptly wrote recently that, “The central challenge facing arts managers is to fill the ever-widening gap between rapidly increasing expenses and earned income, primarily from ticket sales. This gap continues to grow each year since the number of seats we have to sell does not increase but expenses do.” As it has before, the future filling of this gap will require a passionate understanding of art’s value and a heightened ability to articulate that to all who will listen.

MAKING THE CASE: GOING BEYOND RELEVANCE

An interesting scenario played out in the arts field early this year. Like so many nonprofits beleaguered by the recession, the Utah Symphony began 2010 in financial straits. Despite cost-cutting measures, including salary reductions and donated services, and an increase in ticket sales in 2009, revenue was set back by a dearth of sponsorship and endowment income. The organization struggled to meet payroll expenses and teetered on the verge of collapse. Undaunted, leaders in Salt Lake City spoke out on what exactly was at risk, revealing a range of values the arts hold for the community:

Civic pride

“The Utah Symphony helps define Salt Lake City as a leader among cities in the country for performing arts… Continuing support for the Utah Symphony is an important part of who we are as a community.” – Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker

Educational value

“Without having these people [symphony musicians] in town, our students would suffer…” – Robert Walzel, University of Utah School of Music

“…they do more for arts education in our state than any other organization.” – Neil Hendriksen, Utah Music Teachers Association

Economic importance

“It’s part of the whole package of offerings that we have as a city . . . gives us advantages as we’re growing our community and competing with other regions.” – Bob Farrington, Economic Development Director, Salt Lake City

The symphony’s crisis and the chorus of rallying cries surrounding it are a microcosm. On the national level, NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman is similarly campaigning for the arts against major economic odds. Significantly, his agency’s new mantra, “Art Works,” seeks to brand the arts as an economic engine. “Someone who works in the arts is every bit as gainfully employed as someone who works in an auto plant or a steel mill,” said Landesman. “Art jobs are real jobs that are part of the real economy . . . We’re going to make the point till people are tired of hearing it.”

It’s no surprise that current economics have put arts advocates in a defensive mode. But recession or no, with over 1.8 million nonprofit organizations operating in a nation of only 304 million citizens, making the case for art will remain critically important to its survival at the institutional level. America’s philanthropic consciousness is caught in a multi-directional tug of war. If ever there was a time when funding for the arts was the result of polished mission statements, that time is no more. In a competitive environment, it is not enough for arts organizations to principally articulate what they do, or even underscore the exceptional quality of their programs; increasingly, forward-looking organizations will seek to be identified by the all-important why that drives their work, namely its human impact and community value. “The essence of fund-raising,” explains Atlanta Symphony Orchestra President Stanley Romanstein, “is connecting your values with the values of the community. . . We need to say clearly and concisely to the community what our values are.”

Among all institutions dependent on subsidies, arts organizations are at a palpable disadvantage when it comes to quantifying program value and direct return on investment. This will always be the case, which is ultimately why the most endearing and enduring rally cries for these institutions will not hinge on art’s economic value. Nor will they tout the somewhat circular institutional betterments of educating audiences, fostering civic pride and inspiring greater numbers of young artists. Throughout history, art has held its societal ground in even the worst of circumstances because of its intrinsic human value. For all its fascinating accoutrements, art dazzles and intoxicates us first and last with its promise of meaning. It is otherworldly, yet has the power to tell us, viscerally, what it means to be human. Whatever challenges await the arts in the future, understanding, embracing and magnifying this dynamic will remain the ultimate point of departure for the programs, institutions and audiences that flourish.

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April 29, 2010 | Filed Under Culture | Leave a Comment 

Art, religion, culture

I read an interesting article today in the Times Online (London), addressing the interplay of art, religion and culture. Here are a few passages that stood out to me in particular:

“Artists responded to religious commissions with some of their finest works. And it was not just money that moved them. They worked in the service of a faith that could lift their talents above the level of mere illustration and offer a supreme test of skill.”

“Over the past decades the irreverent subversion of religion has been most discussed. . . artists have played transgressive games. But in so doing they pay homage, in a sense, to the power of religion. On the flipside of their blasphemies lies an acknowledgement of the potency of the symbols that they attack. They follow simple principles: the bigger the tree that they hack at, the more spectacular the crash as it falls.”

“Culture often takes the role of religion in our contemporary world. Galleries are modern-day temples, regularly attended by the people on their day of rest. Exhibitions are discussed with almost evangelical fervour. . . . As we wander through museums, we ponder the sort of questions that theology once asked: why is this here at all? What does it mean? How should we live in the face of our challenges? In an era in which religion is too often reduced to dogmatic squabbles, art reopens the mind and emotions to the wider questions of the world. As we push our prams through Tate Modern we are not so far removed from those medieval peasants who once stood gawping in cathedrals, learning their Bible stories from the stonemason’s works.”

Perhaps Pope Benedict XVI was thinking along these same lines to some extent when he invited hundreds of artists to the Vatican last fall for a ceremony in which he issued “a cordial, friendly and impassioned appeal” to transmit “authentic beauty that unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other.” You can read about the Vatican gathering in a New York Times article here, though the article is somewhat preoccupied with the event’s public relations value. For more of what the Pope said to his audience, click here.

“Be grateful, then, for the gifts you have received and be fully conscious of your great responsibility to communicate beauty, to communicate in and through beauty! Through your art, you yourselves are to be heralds and witnesses of hope for humanity! And do not be afraid to approach the first and last source of beauty, to enter into dialogue with believers, with those who, like yourselves, consider that they are pilgrims in this world and in history towards infinite Beauty! Faith takes nothing away from your genius or your art: on the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them.” – Pope Benedict XVI

I beg to differ with the Times London article’s statement that theology used to lead us to contemplate the spiritual meaning of our lives. Theology most certainly can and still does do that, even with broad cultural effect, with or without great art to accompany it. On the other hand, I very much agree with the comment that “art reopens the mind and emotions to the wider questions of the world.”

April 6, 2010 | Filed Under Faith, Culture | 2 Comments 

The difference between art and entertainment?

Stained glass - Alice Millar Chapel, Chicago

The question of art versus entertainment was on my mind last weekend after reading a NY Times article spotlighting a recent panel discussion at Carnegie Hall organized by the World Economic Forum. There at Carnegie, the question was raised as to the difference between art and entertainment. Among the answers given were the following:

To this list I would add that art addresses the whole person, body, mind and spirit, whereas entertainment doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against entertainment. I would even argue that entertainment is important in some contexts and measure. And I’d add that the line between art and entertainment can be blurred, and often is, sometimes in beautifully skillful ways.

Getting back to the Times article, the answer that will no doubt stick with me the longest came from The Economist’s New York Bureau Chief, Matthew Bishop: People pay for entertainment. Art is subsidized.

March 4, 2010 | Filed Under Culture | 1 Comment 

Rocco Landesman interview

Read an interesting NY Times interview today featuring the newly-appointed chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman. An obviously ambitious person, Landesman plans to change the agency’s motto and activity, in part by underscoring the economic importance of artists and artistic activity in America. Said Landesman, “Someone who works in the arts is every bit as gainfully employed as someone who works in an auto plant or a steel mill. We’re going to make the point till people are tired of hearing it.” I wonder if he’ll be able to communicate that point in a convincing and compelling way to our nation’s decision-makers. I must say, for a nation with a population of over 300 million, an agency budget of $155 million does seem slim, if not “pathetic” as Landesman put it. Ultimately, art is not created for economic stimulus, or at least that’s not its greatest value to society. But it makes sense that economic impact appears to be a major agenda item for Landesman. How would our cultural landscape change if our leaders came to share Landesman’s belief that the arts have a major role to play in America’s economic recovery?

The NEA has a generally divisive reputation with diverse public opinion on the role of the arts in America further polarized by the agency’s past support of offensive artistic projects. What’s your general perception of the agency? Did you know that they recently joined with the Oregon Bach Festival in sponsoring a commission for a major new “Messiah” oratorio with texts taken entirely from the King James Bible?

August 17, 2009 | Filed Under Interviews, Culture | 1 Comment 

Music in the real world

“[The flute] takes me to another world that is far away from here, a more beautiful world. Because it is not a beautiful place here. It is an ugly place.” - Dalia Maukarker, age 16

Wow. One could hardly find a more compelling illustration of the value of music in a “real world” environment, where freedom, safety and financial stability are threatened. I highly recommend the 5-minute NY Times video A Crescendo in the West Bank addressing music in the lives of students in the region. My heart goes out to kids like Dalia Moukarker and their teachers - You are blooming where you are planted, friends, and it is beautiful indeed! You are inspiration and hope!

June 4, 2009 | Filed Under Culture | 2 Comments 

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