Smithsonian & "The Hill". . .another Culture War brewing?

At this point, I think most of you are aware of the situation that is happening/happened with the removal of a so-called "offensive" video from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.   This is from a few days ago, but read this article to see how this firestorm was sparked.

http://washingtonscene.thehill.com/in-the-know/36-news/7223-boehner-and-cantor-call-for-closing-of-smithsonian-exhibit

Quotes to think about when discussing this issue:

• Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said, "Smithsonian officials should either acknowledge the mistake and correct it, or be prepared to face tough scrutiny beginning in January when the new majority in the House moves [in]." 
• "When a museum receives taxpayer money, the taxpayers have a right to expect that the museum will uphold common standards of decency," said Cantor. "The museum should pull the exhibit and be prepared for serious questions come budget time.”
• In response, a spokeswoman for the Smithsonian noted that federal funding is not used to pay for exhibits, only infrastructure, curating of works, and staff.  The exhibit itself was funded by a group of donors and foundations.

*Note that the last quote shows that many people, and most obviously (very conservative) Congressmen Cantor and Boehner do NOT understand how taxpayer money flows to the museum, and the arts in general.  I should also note that this video has already been taken down, with a mediocre and apologetic response to the public by the Smithsonian.

Also, read some of the responses below the article.  I, for one, like this one:
"Now what was it exactly that the Tea Party was yelling about? Oh, I remember, the loss of our freedoms."

Can anyone spare a million or two?

Read this article from the L.A. Times

Americans for the Arts names top 10 companies that support the arts

 Do you think that any of these companies would support your newly developed (faux) arts organization, and if so, how would you approach the company/companies specifically?  Are there any companies that you think might latch on to your organization's mission more than others and why?

 

And PS: Have a great Thanksgiving break!  Gobble gobble! -Anna

Is "LIVE!" better than live?

We all know about the Met's LIVE! series that streams in opera performances to ballparks, cinemas, and theatres across the country.  Read this article about how the L.A. Philharmonic is jumping on the bandwagon.  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-la-phil-live-20101109,0,548456.story

"Much like a simulcast of a rock concert or a boxing match, the orchestra's concerts will be heavily produced affairs, shot with multiple cameras and overseen by directors who specialize in live production. Viewers seated before 50-foot screens will see close-ups, medium and long-range shots of Dudamel and the orchestra's musicians, views of Disney Hall and the audience, as well as glimpses of the backstage action. Live interviews, and question and answer sessions will round out the transmission package."

"Transmission package?"  We, meaning Americans, are so used to things being 'packaged' for us, filmed at the very best angles, directed by the very best directors, etc.  It seems like I could get a better seat and more for my money by watching this "LIVE!" instead of buying a seat.  Will these "LIVE!" 'packaged' events ever give actual live experiences a run for their money, or do you they they drive people INTO the theatre, opera, orchestra performance, etc.?

 

Get Out Your Pitchforks for the NEA

 Read this post from a blog called "Sticks and Drones."  Thoughts?  

      - Mike

Kill The NEA

November 03, 2010 | Bill Eddins | 

I try to keep politics out of this blog but I think it is time to declare a revolutionary idea: kill the NEA.

The National Endowment for the Arts is a wonderful institution dedicated to promoting art in America, by Americans, and for Americans.  It is also a whipping post for a rabid minority in this country who fear freedom of expression and believe to their core that government should not be supporting artistic expression, let alone any subgroup of the population who tend to lean towards the political left.  Never you mind that every 1st world country continues to support and nurture their homegrown arts and artists on the federal level.  Never mind that the USA would become the artistic laughing stock of the world by becoming the only industrialized nation to turn our collective backs to our own artistic legacy.  That’s not the problem.  The problem is that we have much bigger problems than the NEA and I, for one, am damn tired of these “politicians” using it as a whipping post to hide the fact that they haven’t the first clue what to do once they grab the reins of power.  So kill the NEA.

Here’s why:

• Those of you who are musicians with jobs in well-paying orchestras – look around you.  In any given city you probably represent less than 5% of the people making, or trying to make, a living at music.  How much do you pay for health care?  It’s probably covered in your contract, but I guarantee you that the rest of your colleagues out there are struggling to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars just to have the privilege to have access to a health care provider.  If they don’t have a full-time faculty job then it’s out of pocket.  I bet many, if not most, of them can’t afford it.  That’s more important than the NEA.
• Those of you in theater with well-established companies – when you come out of rehearsal do you look at your environment?  How many record years of temperatures, how many colossal oil spills, how many freak storms and upside-down weather patterns will it take to make you realize that we have a much bigger problem than the staging in Act 2, Scene 3 of The Scottish Play?  And if we don’t, what about our children?  That’s more important than the NEA.
• Visual artists everywhere – how are your retirement accounts doing?  I hope you’re not planning on living off of Social Security because we know, and we have known for three decades, that the SSA cannot fund its mandate.  The solution, according to those just elected, is to give your Social Security to the people who caused the biggest financial disaster this side of the Great Depression.  Does that sound like a good idea? That’s more important than the NEA.

I could go on and on but there’s no need.  The raw numbers are even more damning:

• NEA budget for 2010 is $161 million dollars.
• The total budget for the USA for fiscal year 2010 is $3.5 TRILLION dollars!!!
• The NEA’s budget is .046% of the overall Federal budget.
• The endowment for the Boston Symphony is over twice the amount of the NEA’s current fiscal budget.
• Current USA budget deficit – $1.4 trillion dollars.
• Mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and interest on the national debt this year – $1.5 trillion dollars.
• Defense budget this year – $660 billion dollars.

Everything else is in the multiple billions, whether it’s the Department of Labor, Education, Veterans Affairs, Energy, whatever.  But the whipping post is the NEA! Ever since the early ’80s the NEA has served as a rallying cry for those people for whom freedom of thought is a scary idea.  The  cycle of  scandals – remember Robert Mapplethorpe? – have served as wonderful distractions from infinitely larger issues that this country faces.  And now, after these historic 2010 elections, I turned on the TV and one of the first things I heard from one of these “Tea Party” candidates was – “and we’re going to KILL THE NEA!!!”  Needless to say there was a colossal roar from his rabid supporters.

So enough already.  Kill it.  Stop blaming the NEA for all the problems in this country. Save your .046% of the budget.  So what if we become the artistic laughing stock of the 1st world?  We’re already the laughing stock in so many ways. So what if huge orchestras lose a $400K grant?  The NEA has been to gun shy to fund anything remotely interesting for almost three decades now, and funding another Mostly Mozart Festival at some orchestra isn’t going to make any difference.  Maybe those humongous institutions will make a little room at the trough for the artists who don’t have that high paying union contract job.

And once the NEA is gone then those rabid politicians and their slavering wannabe supporters will be faced with the real questions: do we as a people deserve affordable health care, and if so how are we going to pay for it?  Do we as a people deserve to retire like our parents did, or will we have to work until we go to our grave just to make ends meet?  Do we as a people deserve to pass on a living viable planet to our children, or will we remain mired in a fossil fuel economy and planet warming denial?  And, Mr. and Mrs. Deficit Hawk – how are you going to balance your budget?

These questions are infinitely more important than the NEA.  These issues effect every artist everywhere.  They impact every human being! These are our lives we’re talking about.

Kill the NEA.  Kill it now.  Take away the whipping post.  Goodbye, and Rest In Peace

Give us our art back!

Skim (and I do mean skim) this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/arts/29iht-loot.html?ref=arts


Now here's my tangent. . .if you were a museum collections manager, curator, or director, and were approached by a family/country that wanted its artwork back (I say country because of all of the works stolen from national collections in WWII), and the provenance (history of the work's location) proved it to be truly from this family/country, what are some reasons you would NOT give it back?  We're playing Devil's Advocate here.  And note, there are plenty of works in American museums that have been stolen from other countries, but possibly unknowingly to the museum. 

Image from the blog "Stolen Vermeer"

http://stolenvermeer.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

Arts Organizations creating a "cash crop"--where's the line?

Santa Rosa Art Foundation Raises Funds With Medical Pot 

Read the article here: http://www.ktvu.com/news/25386184/detail.html

"Funding was challenging,” said Kaechele. “The current economic climate has been terrible, so it seemed like a creative way to address funding the arts."

What does this fundraising activity have to do with the organization's mission?  And please, this is NOT a legalization conversation.  Just simply, does this funding strategy match up?   And does it have to?  Will this turn off potential patrons/donors from the organization?

High Profile Arts School Goes Under

Read this article from the New York Times.

If this school produced artists who "have appeared on Broadway and in feature films" and is so high profile, why could no one afford to save it?  It was, obviously, mismanaged, but why don't schools that are in danger like this reach out to artists they've produced and celebrity connections (assuming that they have some, this is a very high profile school. . .) to be "saved?"  Or did it deserve to go under because of its mismanagement?

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

In 1985, Jane Henry led Shukrani Brown, Hussain Walker and Malik Lewis in a violin class at the Harlem School of the Arts.

 

DC Arts Funding Cut

Here's something that hits close to home.  Who here works/interns for an organization that receives grant money from the DC Commission on the Art and Humanities?  If you don't work for one, you certainly know one. . .or 50.

I work for an organization who applies and receives around 5 or 6 grants from DCCAH each fiscal year.  We just got out of the heat of grant application season for this agency, so it's just an exciting waiting game right now until we get some kind of notification about the respective grants.  Our outreach programs rely heavily on this funding, and we've already planned the programs that this grant money will potentially fund. 

But, I got some alarming news from my friend Rob of DC Advocates for the Arts --  he sent out a message saying this:

"On Monday October 4th, Mayor Fenty took action to prevent increased deficits ordering immediate 10% reductions in the majority of agency budgets. The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities is one of the agencies affected. The DCCAH FY 11 budget, which was $4,940,310, has been reduced by $444,421 to $4,495,889. The Commission had budgeted for and accepted grant proposals for a majority of the FY 11 allocation already, and many of us have been waiting on those grant letters.

What does this new 10% cut mean for pending grants?
Will grant programs be cut, and/or awards reduced?" 

Oh, how easily money can be taken away.  That's $444,421 that DCCAH was planning on giving away to DC arts organizations that now won't be given out to us.  If you were working at the DCCAH and you had to be a part of the decision-making process after this blow, what would you suggest? 

Give the grants to a fewer number of applicants?    

Give the grants to the same amount of applicants as you normally would, but give each a smaller amount of money?

Thoughts. . .

Who creates value?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFbmuEUdwI&feature=player_embedded

Watch the video.  Have a snack or a drink and let its languid pace start you thinking, not just about museums, but about all the arts, especially the ones you want to manage.  Who creates value?  How?  What is the role of the arts manager (perhaps more than you might think?) in creating value and 

in deciding what we want to remember and what we want to forget?

 

--Mike

When in doubt, make a plan

Michael Kaiser, President of the Kennedy Center, recently said this in his Huffington Post article,  The Planner vs. the Entrepreneur:

"I have spent much of the last two years trying to convince arts organizations to plan their art four or five years in advance. I believe that this time frame gives the organization the time it needs to find resources, create excellent art and attract an audience. Virtually every project we mount at the Kennedy Center was planned five years before it is on one of our stages." 

Jennifer Edwards, another contributor to the Huffington Post, posted this rebuttal in her article, In Times of Crisis: Saving Art:

"Planning ahead is important, but if art is truly in crisis we need to step back and see the whole picture before promoting future spectacles. I think it is safe to say we need more leaders thinking about realistic options for artists and arts organizations. I would like to begin conversations about what 'saving the arts' might look like. Let's start by individually and collectively deciding what we are trying to save: the act of making art? The idea of what it means to be an artist? Or the non-profit arts structure we currently have."

Do you think such early planning for programming is realistic for all arts organizations?  If not, which disciplines/types of organizations would have a more difficult time planning four to five years ahead?