The Lehrer News Hour recently ran a piece on the arts industry and economic stimulus.
The piece discussed a New Deal-type plan that has been a popular topic in the arts community. We discussed the topic in the December article, Should Washington Give $6 Billion to the Arts?
The liberatian magazine, Reason, also published an interesting contribution to the discussion this month, I’m So Bored With the NEA by Greg Beato. The article is resolutely against not just any federal handout for the arts, but also, as the title might suggest, the very existence of the NEA.
From the article:
Today, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson would no doubt be pleased to see how enlarged—swollen, in fact—our access to artistic creation has become. We produce more novels, more slasher flicks, and more neo-classical lawn sculpture than any other civilization in the history of the world. According to the League of American Orchestras, there are 1,800 symphony, chamber, collegiate, and youth orchestras in the United States. Theater Facts, an annual overview of the not-for-profit theater world, reports that the 1,910 nonprofit theaters it received data from in 2007 gave 197,000 performances of 17,000 productions that year. The American Ballet Theater is still going strong, and tickets can be had for as little as $26 a piece if you’re willing to go to Wednesday matinees, sit in the cheap seats, and commit to at least three performances. Also, there’s this thing called the Internet.
In such a competitive, oversupplied environment, is a lack of funding really the primary reason that not every Midwestern dance troupe is thriving? Will throwing money at highbrow entities suddenly make people less interested in American Idol and YouTube and more interested in Alvin Ailey? At this point, it might be more beneficial for the kinds of arts the NEA has traditionally funded to create a federal agency that spends $150 million a year snipping cable hook-ups, sabotaging iPods, and paying modestly talented environmental sculptors not to create. That way, we might actually have some spare attention to give new orchestral works and accordion festivals.
Despite an obvious antipathy for opera, ballet, symphony, theater and other “highbrow entities,” the article has a few articulate points including this one about the economics of the arts industry.
It’s clear now, even to a non-economist like me, that the world economy circa 2006 had grown to a level that was largely fabricated. Investment professionals, insurance companies and slow-moving, dim-witted federal regulators hardly even knew what they were creating before it blew up in their faces. Now it appears as though some percentage of the world’s wealth has just disappeared. Poof.
How many theatre companies, jazz clubs and performance spaces opened their doors in the past 10 years and catered to the growing wealth? How much of the arts industry’s economy was also fabricated? Are there too many arts organizations in the U.S.?
As the Beato article alludes to – even without the recession – musicians are 10 years into an awkward, never-ending transition in the music industry brought about by CD burners, mp3 players, home entertainment systems and internet entertainment – not to mention Garageband, iMovie and other software that makes self-creation so much easier. I’m reminded of an article in the New York Times during South by Southwest that discussed, among other things, the declining audience for mainstream media. As the article stated, “…It was obvious after a few days here that the people formerly known as the audience were too busy making content to consume much of it…”
If this is the case – if the arts industry has become too large to sustain itself through capitalism – should we be bailed out by the government with a New New Deal? Or should arts organizations be allowed to fail?
What do you think?
David J. Hahn
David J. Hahn is a Broadway conductor and keyboard player. He co-founded MusicianWages.com with Cameron Mizell in 2008. Visit his new project, Songwriter.fm and sign up for his songwriting newsletter.
Another great topic, Dave! Here are my thoughts:
Arts organizations should be allowed to fail. If, as you mention, much of our perceived wealth in the last 10 years was illusory, why should we now have to prop up houses that were built on sand (or, more appropriately, a bubble) in the first place?
I can imagine various potential answers to that question, each of which I hear on a regular basis from artists of all stripes:
1) Because people will lose their jobs.
Implicit in this argument is that people have a right to a certain job, which I don’t agree with. If you have a passion for producing something nobody wants, why should people be forced to pay you for it?
2) Because the arts are important.
Yes they are, but if the government stops throwing money at them altogether, will they die? Did art exist before subsidies?
Admittedly, allowing organizations to fail would change the landscape of the arts industry. I think we’d start seeing a lot more amateur artists filling in cracks where professionals left. But isn’t that what we’re seeing anyway: people “making content instead of consuming it”? It seems that accessibility has spawned the same beast that tough times and a lack of funding would have. 12 of one, 1/2 dozen of the other.
One of the reasons I like this site is that it treats musicians as businesspeople, rather than as a privileged elite with a birthright to their trade. I think this attitude would be impossible in a world in which no jobs could be lost and in which no organizations (arts or otherwise) were allowed to fail.
This comment may apply less to the high-brow, classically trained virtuoso and more to the starving artists & musicians of the indie world, but the entire discussion of money for the arts brings up an interesting situation in my mind. When the money dries up and times are tight – whether that means that venues close around a city, or a sculptor loses his stipend, or labels start to fold – you find less people sticking around and keeping at it. There’s no monetary pay-off, so what you’re left with is a group of people who create and perform art simply because they MUST. It’s a passion. It’s a first love. And from these types of artists, the art is most pure: it doesn’t aim to please anyone, because money hasn’t muddled the goal of the art, which is pure expression.
Then, a really amazing thing will happen – people will be drawn to that art, they’ll have to have it, hear it, see it, own it (steal it?) and money comes back into the picture the way it was meant to, as a form of people exchanging work for desired goods, art, and experiences.
A broader question: if arts like ballet, symphony and other “fine” arts are not funded, will they simply cease to exist and, more importantly, are they worth preserving in some way?
These are pretty complicated questions because it could be argued that through recordings (video and audio), they are being preserved much like art in a museum and that might be enough.
I, personally, hate the “if they are dying because people don’t care, they should die” argument because, frankly, people are often pretty stupid when it comes to great art. Many of America’s most revered jazz and blues artists died in poverty, but without them and the small percentage of their work that was preserved, we wouldn’t have the artists everyone fills their iPods with today.
There is an important place in our society for artistic works that need preservation just as we need to preserve national monuments, historic homes, important original works of art, etc. Just because they aren’t turning a profit doesn’t mean they don’t have intrinsic value that can’t be measured in downloads or sales numbers.
I don’t know what the solution is for preserving this work, but simply walking away from it and ignoring it seems to be a bad choice. Entire languages and cultural art forms have been lost to history as a result of us ignoring them. I’d hate to see that happen to the art we are still able to enjoy today.
As a professional classical musician, I agree with James; keep the arts free from government intervention and funding. Liberty and capitalism are not only economic models for large corporations, but are moral positions which emphasize the rights of the individual. A man should be able to keep the sweat of his brow, and spend it on whatever art (even none) he deems fit.
Let me try out a simple equation:
Government, last time I checked, is WE THE PEOPLE.
We are funding OURSELVES to create ART that is indigenous and indicative of the myriad cultures of this country. If we cut off funding, we are cutting off funding to ourselves. And where’s the money gonna go? To more assault weapons? So we can now enter our national parks locked and loaded?
…I’ve ALWAYS wanted to own an AR-15…
Tell you this much; it’s NOT going to go to re-build our roads. Or our public schools.
Look at the Europe model. Orchestras are still thriving there, and there is healthy underground full of creativity and vigor. Quite simply, it is HONORABLE to be a musician or a painter or a sculptor in European countries. Unlike this country, where if you’re not hot and singing absolute gibberish written by a record exec who wouldn’t know music if it kicked him in the groin, you’re nothing. No, less than nothing. Sorry for the cynicism.
Excuse the generality but any amount of money for the arts is much more useful than the exorbitant amounts of money spent for a missile system that never has nor will ever work in anyone’s lifetime ever. Instead of investing the money in the child that will become the next Mozart, Beethoven, or Keith Jarrett, we want to “spend” (more like flush) money to CEO’s whose bonus is in jeopardy.
Ok. I will stop now.
1) arts funding (i.e. govt. $ for an exhibition/play/concert; for arts programs in the inner city; a grant to an artist creating ‘aberrant’ art, that leads to national discussions of ‘what is art’) can gestate an interest in the arts, which can lead to people becoming amateur creators, which can lead to becoming professional artists/musicians, etc.
2) if the banks are bailed out to the tune of 3 trillion, why not support the arts as well?
3) to quote that above article:
““Nonprofit arts organizations and their audiences generate $166.2 billion in economic activity every year, support 5.7 million jobs, and return nearly $30 billion in government revenue every year,” with “every $1 billion in spending by nonprofit arts and culture organizations and their audiences result[ing] in almost 70,000 full time jobs.”
Do the math on that one and the results are undeniably impressive: If we applied all $787 billion of Bailout: The Sequel to the arts, we’d create approximately 55 million new jobs!”"
arts funding is very negligible. most artists & organizations are pursuing their craft while holding down other jobs & other means of financing–fundraising, corporate sponsorship, ticket sales. the ‘financial payoff’, as only people not making art full-time don’t understand, is minimal.
also find it very strange that in the initial story, the author counts slasher flicks and neoclassical lawn ornaments as artistic creation. that in itself seems to argue for governmental support for the ‘finer’ arts (ballet, theater, etc.)
i have an idea. let’s tax religions (especially the evangelical corporate churches) and give that money to the arts.
Related topic: it would be interesting to look into the current trends of political thinking among musicians, and then compare it with the ideas musicians had during the rest of the 20th century. I just graduated from a major east coast conservatory with a masters in jazz, and there was a significant and extremely vocal group of musicians (mostly jazz and classical instrumentalists, mostly – but not exclusively – male, and mostly very, very accomplished) who strongly identified with libertarian ideas and Ayn Rand’s books.
It was surprising to me: in the scene I came from (the Midwest) most musicians identified pretty strongly with the extreme left and had no patience for the libertarian stuff. I thought traditionally that had been the case, especially with musicians who came up or were working around May of ’68, but perhaps that’s a mistaken assumption.
Anywas, thanks for having such an interesting site, David!
I’ve met musicians with all kinds of political views. Most seem to be liberal, but there’s no shortage of conservatives on the scene. It’d be difficult to compare beliefs today to those of musicians 60 years ago. Many legendary jazz musicians have died penniless, and we sympathize in those cases because their lives clearly impacted American culture yet they weren’t fairly compensated for everything they did. Now-a-days many musicians, especially those in college, come from middle to upper class families. Just because they study somebody’s music doesn’t mean they care about or could even understand that individuals political ideals. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not.