From today’s AP. Maybe we’ll start getting some decent television to watch now. — J.S.

A breakthrough in contract talks has been reached between Hollywood studios and striking writers and could lead to a tentative deal as early as next week, a person close to the ongoing negotiations said Saturday.

The two sides breached the gap Friday on the thorniest issues, those concerning compensation for projects distributed via the Internet, said the person, who requested anonymity because he were not authorized to speak publicly.

A second person familiar with the talks, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to comment publicly, said that significant progress had been made and a deal might be announced within a week.

The people did not provide specific details on the possible agreement. Major points of contention include how much and when writers are paid for projects delivered online after they’ve been broadcast on TV.

Full story . . .

Original post by John Stoehr

From the Times of London — J.S.

Do you like adolescent entertainment? Do you have the mentality of a teenager? Do you find Cézanne a bit overrated? If the answer is yes, yes and yes, then I don’t know what to do with you. You are a childish philistine literalist. Get down to Bonhams (one of the world’s oldest and largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques) next Tuesday for their first-ever dedicated sale of “street art” – this is the experience for you.

“Street art” means graffiti, comics-style stuff, spray-paint art, flyposting – the art of groovy youth. The stars of the street-art sale will include Banksy, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Antony Micallef, Adam Neate, Faile, Paul Insect, Space Invader, Swoon, D*Face and Shepard Fairey.

[. . . ]

“Street art” is adolescent. With the exception of Basquiat, the artists whose work is on sale at Bonhams next week are talented people in that area, but the area itself is of absolutely no interest unless you’ve got an arrested mentality. Its rise as something to take seriously says something about the weird state of art now. The core of art today is satire and gags and attention-getting stunts. As a society we all kind of know this but somehow we also accept that it’s a social faux pasever to mention it. Banksy being considered a “conceptual artist” is only a measure of how banal and feeble the “concepts” of contemporary art are, and an indication of art’s slide into all-out philistinism. To appear tuned-in we now have to pretend that a literal crack in the floor at Tate Modern means global unease (the latest commission by Tate Modern in its annual Unilever series), that a lot of real people standing on a marble plinth means “humanity” (Anthony Gormley’s proposal for a new work on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square) and that Marc Quinn’s new sculptures at White Cube of foetuses are “influenced by Michelangelo”.

Full story . . .

Original post by John Stoehr

From Harper’s . . . .

“The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus, the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it? And so he resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures on the spirit than its own.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Transcendentalist (1842) first published in: Nature; Addresses and Lectures (1849)

Original post by John Stoehr

For those interested in analysis of the National Endowment for the Arts, you might spend some time with Michael Lewis’ piece this month published in the conservative monthly Commentary. He reflects on the past and possible future of the National Endowment for the Arts.

“In brief, the NEA has withered in a matter of decades from a self-styled instrument of world peace to a cautious dispenser of largesse whose one inflexible principle is that no grant must ever redound to the administration’s embarrassment. Whether it can regain its early ambition—or whether it should try to—is an open question.” Rather than fund contemporary artists again, Lewis suggests that NEA might do better to “steward America’s artistic patrimony by supporting museums, exhibitions, and performances of works validated by the cumulative consensus of time.”

Original post by John Stoehr

There are lessons here.

I used to joke with a friend who wrote about religion that she dealt with crazy people. She saw it differently. As an arts journalist dealing with artists and their temperamental ways, I was the one dealing with the crazies. She had it lucky.

There’s some truth to it. Artists are indeed passionate about what they do and they are protective, too, knowing how fragile art can be in post-industrial America. Even institutions built as monuments to art and cultural heritage face uncertain futures especially when the time comes to change policies, attitudes, missions.

As the arts reporter for the Savannah Morning News, I had occasion to witness an institution’s change of attitude, a process that was somewhat painful for those involved. The Telfair Museum of Art, the cousin of the Gibbes Museum here in Charleston, embarked on a search for a new director around the same time that it had to acknowledge that it was responsible for its own public image.

See, the Telfair was seen by many to be a bastion of whiteness, the preserve of Savannah’s upper crust, a gentleman’s club for for gentlemanly blue bloods.

Not that surprising. Ask any institutional leader if they have a public image problem and he or she will say, yes, who doesn’t? That’s the nature of being involved in these large, complicated, nonprofit entities. It’s a messy business.

Ask the same people who’s responsible for that image and they’ll say we are. It’s the institution’s job to do two things: 1) make programs, events, etc. available to the public, to serve the public and 2) make it crystal clear that these programs, events, etc. are available by way of aggressive efforts at education and outreach.

More and more, you see art museums devoting more resources to education and outreach. They have to. Much of their funding comes from public coffers. To justify the use of that money, they have to not only open the doors, but send out invitations.

The Telfair didn’t understand this, at least its former director, Diane Lesko, evidently didn’t. She was adamant in denying the Telfair had a public image problem, especially among Savannah’s majority (nearly 60 percent) black population. In an Oct. 7, 2006, op-ed piece, she said “it appears there are those who perceive us to be less than inclusive. Since perception is often confused with reality, I believe it is critical for the Telfair to set the record straight.”

Not the kind of language you’d expect from a top administrator. But then again, Lesko wasn’t known for her tact, much less her political savvy. After the Telfair opened a new $25 million facility, a spectacular facility designed by starchitect Moshe Safdie, she was pushed out of her job, according to sources close to the Telfair’s board of directors. I was told more than once in private that she took too much credit in interviews with me for getting the new center built.

Even so, the Telfair’s board faced a bigger problem — how to pay for the new center. It was going to cost $2 million in fund-raising from the ground up every fiscal year “just to survive,” I was told. That meant getting as many people through the doors as possible and that meant becoming as open and transparent and accessible as possible. With Lesko being the face of the museum, the face that denied its image of exclusivity and elitism, it was time for her to go. So she did.

I wrote the following piece during the board’s search for a new director. I was not a popular person after it went to press (incidentally, this kind of story is why some thought I was “universally despised,” and so on). Even so, I still feel it had a positive impact on the museum and its search for a new director.

Steven High, who was selected this time last year, told me straight away in our first interview that it was his and his museum job to address the image problem, a statement illustrating a huge change in attitude and policy at one of the South’s oldest museum.

TELFAIR MUSEUM OF ART AIMS TO CHANGE ITS IMAGE
Stung by charges of elitism, it is undertaking programs that reach out to the community as a whole

Late last year, Mayor Otis Johnson and Savannah City Council did something that sent shock waves through the Telfair Museum of Art.

They decided against underwriting two of the museum’s community outreach programs, “Four Free Weeks” and “Family Sundays.”

Aldermen questioned whether the programs were a good use of taxpayer dollars. It was unclear to them if the programs were effective in reaching disadvantaged African-Americans, especially adolescents.

More than $61,000 was tabled pending further review.

The move signaled a vexing issue for the 120-year-old museum: how to combat a public image as an elitist institution - exclusive, high-brow, inaccessible, anti-democratic.

It’s an issue that plagues art museums across the country, said Barbara Archer, a former curator at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

Museums that do not acknowledge the problem and move to overcome a troubled public image can expect to continue alienating those who perceive them as elitist, she said.

“There are a handful of people who support museums in a serious way,” Archer said. “If they don’t fix the problem, then all those wonderful exhibits will never be enjoyed by most people.”

The Telfair’s problematic public image may come in part from its history.

Mary Telfair, who bequeathed the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences to establish a monument to Western art and culture, came from a powerful, privileged Southern family whose holdings made them one of the largest slave owners in Georgia.

Her family owned more than 600 slaves. For many, that fact alone makes her gift not a legacy to creativity, community involvement and civic responsibility, but a memorial to cultural separatism, white power and black disenfranchisement.

Recent developments have served to compound the problem.

The opening of the $24.5 million Jepson Center for the Arts in March and news of an endowment now exceeding $23 million have perhaps deepened the image of the South’s oldest art museum as the preserve of rich whites rather than poor and middle-class blacks.

RECOGNIZING THE PROBLEM
As the new president of the Telfair’s board of trustees, John G. Kennedy III has said his goal is to boost membership to 5,000.

So far, membership, spurred by the Jepson’s opening, has doubled since the beginning of the year to 3,600.But Kennedy, whose tenure began this spring with a search for a new executive director, is aiming higher.

He wants the Telfair to have the level of community ownership the public library system has. Tens of thousands of Chatham County residents have library cards, he said. With all the Telfair has to offer, including the new center for the arts, he sees no reason why it cannot successfully make the case that it exists to serve the community.

But to achieve this, he said, the Telfair’s image problem must be addressed.

“We need to market the museum to be viewed as inclusive, not exclusive,” Kennedy said. “The big push is to make the community aware of what we have to offer.”

That the leadership of the Telfair acknowledges the need to do more to convince people, especially the African-American community, of its openness and egalitarianism signals a change in policy, one likely to impact the museum’s search for a new director.

Diane Lesko announced in May she was resigning as executive director at the end of October. One of the “critical issues” the new director faces is the ability to “energetically engage in aggressive outreach” to city and county officials, schools, the Convention & Visitors Bureau and businesses and organizations around the city, according to a document compiled by the search committee called the “director’s description.”

Another key need, according to the document, is “the ability to energize a widely diverse community while building a positive image and lasting relationships with the TMA.” Moreover, it’s essential the new director be able to “work in politically sensitive situations.”

“This institution reflects the values of our time,” Kennedy said. “Just one look at the Jepson tells you it’s open and welcoming.”

FINDING SOLUTIONS
Part of the Telfair’s awareness-raising campaign was convincing City Council of its merits.

The museum paid out of pocket for the first two Family Sundays (there are four annually). But by summertime, when the third Sunday was scheduled, museum officials feared having to cancel the program for the first time in more than 20 years. The Telfair doesn’t make money during its free programs; in fact, it loses it, because tourists pay nothing as well.

Walter O. Evans, a member of the Telfair’s board of trustees and one of the most prominent collectors of African-American art in the country, lobbied hard to convince City Council that the museum’s prolific outreach programs and exhibits are indeed attracting diverse audiences.

City Manager Michael Brown corroborated the claim in a June report showing nearly 4,700 African-Americans - more than half of the total number of patrons - took part in “Four Free Weeks” in 2005. (3,438 were white; 252 were Asian or Hispanic.)

Without fanfare, City Council voted to reverse its earlier decision, restoring the money before a July 6 council session.

Harry DeLorme admits the Telfair is undergoing a transition of leadership as well as establishing a persona of egalitarianism.

But as the museum’s curator of education for the past 18 years, he insists the transition has been happening for a long time.

The Telfair reached about 6,000 schoolchildren last year and expects to bring even more in to the Jepson Center’s classes, workshops and seminars.

“We’ve always offered programs to provide greater access and opportunities for education,” he said.

Still, some changes are a direct result of City Council’s early skepticism.

In response to the city’s desire to see more programming for adolescents, Telfair curators are creating a Teen Advisory Council to help design educational programming and exhibits intended to appeal to teenagers.

The museum is poised to launch a quarterly film series for children that DeLorme said he hopes will gain enough traction to be presented on a monthly basis.

It has also streamlined its 2007 proposals for city funding to be more collaborative with other city-sponsored events, such as the Savannah Asian Festival and the Black Heritage Festival.

One indirect solution to the image problem is the formation of the Friends of African-American Arts, an auxiliary board to the Telfair’s board of trustees.

Chaired by Shonah Jefferson, a lawyer with Hunter Maclean, the group makes its official debut during the Oct. 11 opening of the Telfair’s retrospective on the work of Sam Gilliam, one of the country’s leading African-American artists.

“Our mission is to raise awareness of the importance of the Telfair to the African-American community and the importance of the African-American community to the Telfair,” Jefferson said.

“Given that Savannah has a more than 50 percent black majority, it’s important to know the Telfair is everyone’s museum.”

Savannah Morning News
September 4, 2006

Original post by John Stoehr

From an interview I did a while back for the Sacramento News & Review —J.S. |

After nearly 40 years of composing, performing and recording masterpieces of the American music canon, jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock is unquestionably a singular icon, a living legend.

Hancock was a pianist for five years in one of the great jazz ensembles, the Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960s. He emerged post-Miles to be a groundbreaking force in ’70s fusion. More than a decade later, Hancock has continued to explore uncharted territory in funk, soul, African and, most recently, electronic music.

But what defines greatness?

Perhaps we can look to musical achievement–the sophistication, cleverness and emotional impact a composer brings to a listener. Maybe widespread acclaim is the sole maker of giants–the fame gained through skill, hard work and sheer grit.

Hard to say, perhaps, but Hancock suggests there’s more to greatness when he talks about Miles Davis. There’s awe in his voice, as if Davis embodies things still left unexplained. Though it’s been 30 years since Hancock worked with the Dark Prince, he remains transfixed by Davis’ genius.

Last summer, Hancock, along with trumpeter Roy Hargrove and saxophonist Michael Brecker, celebrated the 75th birthday of Miles Davis, along with that of John Coltrane, by launching an international tour. The trio’s gift is a truly innovative approach to the Davis/Coltrane catalogue.

Hancock’s main concern was honoring the spirit of Coltrane and Davis.

“My greatest challenge was to have the courage to trust my instincts and not be so concerned about doing something that would gather applause [but rather] concentrate more on the shaping of the music,” Hancock says about last summer’s tour, speaking by phone from his Los Angeles home.

“Miles always said he paid us to come up with new things. He said not to worry about mistakes. ‘If things don’t work out,’ he’d say, ‘don’t worry about that. As long as you’re working on something new, that’s what I want.’ That was his directive. That’s not an easy thing to do. He didn’t kowtow to just entertaining people. He wanted to create a musical environment that would be something we had not experienced before.

“You don’t find that kind of integrity in music these days. It’s very difficult to find.”

Given Hancock’s well-known enthusiasm for current music, it’s interesting to hear him raise this issue. One of his hallmarks has been embracing fresh trends, especially new technologies. Nevertheless, he expresses a longing to witness new, courageous movements toward the kind of depth he and Miles achieved together.

Problem is, Hancock says, most music nowadays is considered merely entertainment, a surface-level enterprise that cannot transform–and cannot better–the listener.

“There’s certainly a place for entertainment,” he adds. “But I know that’s not all music can be. For music to be solely entertainment would be a disservice to humankind. We’d miss part of our own creative expression.

“Very often things that are only entertaining only scratch the surface of our being; they are usually forgotten. You may remember you were entertained, but it wasn’t anything that grabbed you deep inside. I’ve always wanted, like many others, for my performances to awaken something inside the audience, so they feel better about themselves.”

Hancock seeks the spiritual center of music, pinpointing what drives him to continue innovating and creating. Jazz is the vehicle that takes him there.

He notes the parallels between the craft of jazz–the discipline, the hard work of expressing a discrete moment in time–and American Buddhism, the religion Hancock and other musical craftsmen like saxophonist Wayne Shorter (also a veteran of the Miles Davis Quintet) have practiced for the past 30 years.

“A lot of how we feel about music was inspired and supported by Buddhism,” Hancock says.

“I was talking to a guy who writes books and does seminars for SGI [Soka Gakkai International], the Buddhism we practice,” he continues. “I told him about the virtues of jazz. He said all the things I mentioned are at the core of Buddhism. Then he suggested Buddhism is the jazz of religion, which makes a lot of sense. Jazz is very humanitarian. It’s about sharing rather than competing. It requires a lot of trust, a lot of courage. It welcomes and encourages the exploration and expression of being in a moment. And it welcomes and encourages teamwork. There are lots of parallels between the two.”

Hancock suggests that beyond notoriety, artistic acumen and the limitations of the music itself lies the real source of greatness, the making of a legend: a respectful search for the unknown.

And this search gives Hancock hope for the future of jazz.

“This absolutely keeps me going,” he muses. “This drive comes from life itself. The appreciation and respect for life and the qualities of human life. The older I get, the broader my vision becomes. My whole vista is a lot broader than it used to be.

“There are people out here looking into the future of jazz, creatively reexamining all the conventional aspects of jazz to work toward creating a more open approach to expression that can really lead us into the music of the 21st century. In that regard, [jazz] looks very healthy. People are still coming to concerts and hearing things they haven’t heard before. It touches them in a place that hasn’t been touched before. They can’t explain it and they don’t know why they feel this way.

“To them, it’s awesome,” Hancock notes. “To me, that means there’s something really going on.”

Sacramento News & Review
March 27, 2003

 

Original post by John Stoehr

From a March article I wrote about how young people are increasingly turning to old music and old-time instrumental styles. On reflection, it’s interesting (and logical) how this trend is unfolding in light of the music industry’s scramble to renew itself and in light of the growing conversation about how mass media and mass culture are splintering (due to the rise of culture on demand), resulting in more and more young people following their own paths, not the paths laid out for them.

When Mark Holladay started taking his 5-year-old son, Ryan, to bluegrass festivals, he saw a lot of other people like himself: parents taking their children to hear the traditional music mom and dad loved.

Within a short time, though, he noticed something different.

“After a couple seasons, we saw all these kids carrying instruments,” Holladay said. One of those people is his son. Now 14, Ryan is a phenomenon in the bluegrass world with a CD on the Skaggs Family Records (that is, country and bluegrass icon Ricky Skaggs) and an appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s “World’s Most Talented Kids.”

“I don’t want to stray too far from the original music,” Ryan said. “I’m just doing it because it’s interesting and creative and fun. I think it’s cool that so many young kids are trying to pick up instruments. The banjo is cool.”

Banjo? Cool?

There once was a time when no self-respecting teenager would say such a thing. Guitar, yes. Bass, totally. But banjo? That’s for hillbillies, right?

Well, no more. We are now amid a resurgence in traditional forms of music. From country to jazz, from blues to bluegrass, the next generation has deemed traditional music to be cool, and the musicians performing at this year’s Savannah Music Festival know they ain’t just whistling Dixie.

“One day this boy’s daddy asks me if his son can play few songs for me,” recalled Marty Stuart, who performs Friday. “Darned it he don’t sound just like Earl Scruggs.”

The teen’s name was Trey Hensley. His age? 15. Stuart invited him to play on the Grand Ole Opry. The youngster has since made three records for Hog Holler Records.

“Right there’s a case in point of the tradition being alive and well,” Stuart said. “Go to bluegrass shows. Those kids can really play banjos, sing lead and write songs.”

‘Hordes of kids’

Bluegrass is an elastic art form. It has its purists, like Ralph Stanley. It also has its mavericks, like David Grisman, Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer, who add elements of jazz, blues and even classical music into their high, lonesome interpretations.

Mark Holladay believes the flexibility of bluegrass attracts creative youngsters. One of the genre’s leading exponents is mandolinist Chris Thile, who has won over young audiences with his innovative blending of bluegrass with other styles. One can see why young people would be attracted to Thile. He’s young, hip, good-looking and exceptionally gifted.

But why traditional bluegrass? That, Holladay said, is a bit harder to explain.

“I don’t think bluegrass will ever become mainstream,” Holladay said. “But I can’t remember a time when there have been so many young people into it. There are just hordes of kids.”

‘Trad is rad’

The return to traditional music has been most intense recently in old-time music. A rash of string bands, including Uncle Earl, which performs at the music festival tonight, has closed the gap between old-time songwriting and a rock ‘n’ roll sensibility.

Perhaps the trend can be summed up best by the Mammals, a young folk-rock quintet. Their motto, much repeated in old-time and bluegrass quarters, is “Trad is rad.”

But the trend is happening everywhere, said Gary Nunez, leader of Plena Libre, a Puerto Rico dance ensemble that performs at the music festival Saturday.

Youngsters are tired of what they find on the radio, he said. They are searching for something beyond pop culture and commercial radio.

“Part of this is a reaction to what the major labels are doing,” Nunez said. “People are tired of these formulas. They want something that tastes different.”

There’s a reason sales of old music are stronger than sales of new music, said Brian Stoltz, guitarist for the New Orleans funk band Porter-Batiste-Stoltz, which performs at the music festival Friday.

That reason is authenticity.

“Young people are searching out music with roots, for music that comes from a somewhere,” he said. “They are starving for something real, so it’s natural for them to check out Ralph Stanley, Muddy Waters and ‘Mississippi’ Fred McDowell.”

Moreover, there’s something about live music passed down and added to by generations of musicians.

“It stays alive as opposed to computer-generated music on the radio,” Stoltz said.

The power of access

Bemoaning the state of popular music is popular among performers of traditional music. When pressed, they concede that a lot of popular music is indeed good and worthy of attention, praise and reinterpretation (as evidenced by classical pianist Christopher O’Riley’s reworking of Radiohead, Elliott Smith and Nick Drake, for instance).

So traditional music’s resurgence must have other causes.

One might be a reconnection with native culture.

According to Anoushka Shankar, who performs at the music festival Thursday, there is a new generation of Indian-Americans hungry for the authentic sounds of Indian classical music. “In dancing, they are returning to the utmost classical form far more than they are even in India,” Shankar said. “It is becoming their own beautiful way of connecting to their culture and they do it with so much authenticity.”

Another reason for traditional music’s reprise might be technology. Young people are now accustomed to downloading an infinite array of traditional music from any number of online music retailers, such as iTunes.

“Ninety-nine cents and boom. They have all they need,” said John Pizzarelli, a jazz singer and guitarist who will perform on March 31. “If I mention a guitar player to a student doesn’t know him, he can go back to his computer and find out everything he wants to know. It’s amazing.”

In the past, the only place to buy music was a record store. If you were going to buy jazz, which was stored in the back, you typically had to know what you were looking for before you bought it.

With greater accessibility, Pizzarelli said, youngsters are more conversant in jazz, but that’s not all.

“They’re becoming more proficient on their instruments sooner,” Pizzarelli said. “They’re becoming influenced by more than just Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery (two of the more well-known jazz guitarists). They’re starting to find those third-line guys.”

How classical music is changing, too

Accessibility might be why another kind of traditional music - classical - seems to be experiencing a kind of resurgence, though it remains to be seen whether it’s a resurgence among young people.

When the BBC made available Beethoven’s nine symphonies for free in 2005, there were 1.4 million downloads in two weeks. Online sales of classical music were up 23 percent on iTunes last year, according to Nielson SoundScan.

Organizations like the Philadelphia Orchestra are banking on Internet sales to show that classical music’s problem for the past decade has been about delivery, not the product.

“I believe in the music utterly,” James Undercofler, president of the orchestra, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I believe that it is simply a matter of getting it to market.”

But even if Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is online, where most young people get their music, the masterpiece of romanticism still sounds the same to the average person.

“Bluegrass has evolved,” Mark Holladay said. “But classical hasn’t changed.”

Ryan Holladay, who performs Friday with his dad, agrees.

“Music needs to change,” he said. “Classical’s always been the same.”

Classical music’s move online may be that very sign of change.

“All responsible organizations are doing what art museums did, adding cafes, shops and audio guides,” said cellist David Finckel, who is co-director with his wife, pianist Wu Han, of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York. “They need to provide young people with context, to pay attention people’s experience of the music.”

Finckel and Han perform a recital Sunday.

“If you look around, the next generation of performers knows how to talk to audiences,” Finckel added. “It is the first generation that knows it is responsible for bringing in new audiences.”

Daniel Hope, who performs numerous recitals at the music festival, said composers of new music are also heeding the call, citing Mark-Anthony Turnage, whose composition, “A Slow Pavane,” the violinist will perform with the Beaux Arts Trio on March 31.

“This is the kind of music that is taking over,” said Hope. “You are seeing more and more highly erudite composers unafraid of melody being embraced by audiences. Their writing grabs people’s attention immediately. That’s how classical music is changing.”

Original post by John Stoehr

The day after Christmas Day, President Bush signed an appropriations bill that includes $144.7 million for the National Endowment for the Arts.

The amount is over $20 million more than NEA funding for 2007: $124.562 million.

According to this report by the Akron Beacon Journal, this is the largest increase the once-bealeugered federal agency has seen in 24 years.

The highest level of NEA’s funding was $175.9 million in 1992. But after the fall-out from the taxpayer-sponsored Piss Christ, it seemed the NEA would forever be aligned by social conservatives with urine and the bullwhip lodged firmly in Robert Mapplethorpe’s ass.

It’s taken us nearly two decades, and mountains of change led by NEA Chairman Dana Gioia, a poet and former corporate executive, but it’s finally happened — the conversation about the arts has grown up. In other words, we’re no longer stuck with poopy jokes.

Perhaps the testimonials by leading artists and administrators like Wynton Marsalis had some impact on the minds of Congress and the President. But it also possible, perhaps more likely, that the United States has just gotten savvier when it comes to the arts.

Some writers, like Artsjournal’s Doug McLennan, have talked about the rise of an arts culture. But there’s also the enormous amount of research that has gone into studying the arts as they relate to medicine, psychology, education, urban renewal, and quality of life.

Perhaps I’m being a bit of a Pollyanna in thinking that we’ve turned a corner of some kind. Maybe we can set aside the deleterious notion that the arts have to justify themselves somehow — lately, with reams of paper devoted to economic impact studies. Maybe we can embrace the assumption that the arts are a good thing unto themselves.

Original post by John Stoehr

Lee Rosenbaum, the ever-vigilant cultural journalist and author of CultureGrrl, wrote today about the new 990 tax forms, released on Dec. 20, that all nonprofit organizations are required to submit to the Internal Revenue Service.

The new forms, as Rosenbaum notes, come as Congress is investigating abuses by top administrators at the Smithsonian Institutes and the National Museum of the American Indian.

As one prominent commentator, nonprofits tax attorney and accountant Jack Siegel, has already observed (see below), this increased transparency and accountability will make nosey reporters like me happy.

Indeed, it’s true.

The old 990 forms were structured in such a way that all manner of cooking the books could be hidden from view. As a daily reporter covering arts and culture for a Georgia newspaper, I was more than once stumped when it came time to corroborate claims made by arts organization with the paperwork they submitted to the federal government.

Establishing accountability, moreover, could be very problematic. Does the administrator have the final call or is the board of directors, members of which are often selected by the top administrator, ultimately responsible? More transparent federal documents therefore would go a long way in revealing accountability.

The public has a right to know how a nonprofit is spending its money, especially if that money comes from public coffers. The public also has the right to know where money comes from. Many of the country’s wealthiest one percent of the top one percent are using arts nonprofit as a tax shelter. So new, more transparent tax forms are indeed a boon to nosy journalists. But they are good for everyone, including arts organizations that rely on credibility and philanthropy.

Original post by John Stoehr

Here’s a version of a June report I wrote about the specious nature of “economic impact” studies for a daily newspaper in Georgia. I hope you find it edifying. I wrote it when I was beat reporter covering arts and culture — everything from puff pieces to annual fiscal reports to the intersection between arts and medicine.

The article came after the Americans for the Arts released its survey, finding that Savannah saw an arts impact of nearly $50 million in 2005, a huge, and dubious, number for a metro area of over 300,000.

In this article, I put findings by American for the Arts side-by-side with a study by the RAND Corporation that found “noteworthy weaknesses” in studies like the one applied to Savannah (and for that matter, Charleston).

The RAND study makes a fairly convincing case that arts organizations stop emphasizing art’s quantitative aspects — i.e., that the arts are good for business — and start stressing art’s qualitative aspects — i.e., that art is inherently good, that it is important to literate, civilized communities, and that it promotes quality of life.

What I found most intriguing about the RAND study was its creation of a dichotomy: supply-side thinking and demand-side thinking on the part of arts organizations.

In other words, instead of spending oodles of money creating free concerts, performances, etc. (what economists would call “supply”), why not spend that same money encouraging people to value the arts vis-a-vis arts education and outreach (that is, “demand”)?

Such thinking would go a long way toward achieving long-range, not short-term, goals.

On a more philosophical note, this is the similar dilemma that early scientists faced when they sought evidence of God’s divine providence in their studies of the earth, human anatomy and outer space. The more they looked to the material world, the more reason they found to doubt their faith. By Darwin’s time, faith has become something you couldn’t prove, because the evidence keeping pointing to the contrary.

At the same time, even though faith couldn’t be proved, it also couldn’t be disproved. For some (though perhaps not many), having faith in a power larger than oneself became something good for its own sake.

Same with art. It’s good for us. We don’t have to prove. We just have to make a successful case for it.

Or as one source for my article, the president of an arts organization and lawyer at a high-powered law firm, put it: “You can always back up requests for funding with statistics. The experience of the arts is very subjective. Sometimes you just have to say that this is the right thing to do.” —J.S. |

A Washington-based advocacy group’s survey reports that Savannah realized more than $46.6 million in arts- and culture-related spending in 2005.

Arts groups, according to the study, spent more than $21.8 million. Audiences here spent more than $24.7 million.

Americans for the Arts issued “Arts & Economic Prosperity III” Wednesday, the third in a series of detailed reports tracking the economic impact of nonprofit arts and culture organizations in communities across the nation.

The report includes data from arts groups in Savannah, such as theater companies, dance troupes, arts festivals and musical ensembles. It is the first attempt in over a decade to provide evidence of what city officials, residents, patrons and consumers materially gain from their investment in arts and cultural organizations.

Arts organizations, the study suggests, created more than 1,600 full-time jobs or their equivalent. More than $2.8 million in local tax revenue was generated.

Nationally, more than $166 billion in economic activity was recorded during the same period, including nearly $30 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue.

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology examined data from 156 communities - 116 cities and counties, 35 multi-county regions and five states - to measure industry spending. The report asserts that the arts are a cornerstone of tourism.

“When a community attracts cultural tourists, it harnesses significant economic rewards,” the report states.

All this sounds good to Savannah city officials who allocate money every year to various arts organizations, especially those in the “cultural tourism” category of public funding. For 2007, Savannah City Council provided more than $978,000 for arts groups, including $150,000 for the Savannah Music Festival and $50,000 for the Savannah Film Festival.

Reframing the debate
Although such studies are good for advocates and politicians, they don’t facilitate good research, according to a 2005 report by the Rand Corporation called “Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate about the Benefits of the Arts.”

Among dozens of surveys reported in recent years that attempt to measure the economic impact of the arts, most of those surveys suffer from “noteworthy weaknesses” and “holes in the evidence” because of the data used, the Rand report states.

Such studies claim benefits that are inherently difficult to measure. They assume money generated by the arts is a net addition to the local economy, when it’s more likely to be a replacement for other kinds of spending.

Moreover, by focusing on the economics of the arts, they do little to help the long-term goals of arts groups, namely, to create a public that values the arts.

The Rand report recommends that arts advocates stop emphasizing the quantitative aspects of the arts, such as economic rewards, and instead focus on individual experiences, including enlightenment, emotional reflection and personal well-being.

Rand researchers made the case for less supply-side thinking - putting on shows and exhibits, for example - and more demand-side thinking that would lead to renewed efforts in public school and community arts programs to cultivate new audiences.

What’s the real impact?
To see evidence of the arts’ economic impact, said Patricia Miller, president of the Tybee Island Fine Arts Commission, people need to simply open their eyes. Many cities have revitalized their downtown neighborhoods because of the arts.

“I’m definitely on the side of the arts being an economic engine,” Miller said, citing Douglasville, Statesboro, Brunswick and Savannah as success stories.

Ken Carter, executive director of the Lucas Theatre and a Georgia Council for the Arts panelist, said economic impact studies do have an upside, but they also have a downside: replacing the inherent and traditional value of the arts with a notion that cultural activity is merely good for business.

“These studies reinforce the notion that the value of the arts is economic, when it should be seen as the ability to change lives and raise the level of community engagement,” he said. “That is the primary attribute of the arts.”

Shonah P. Jefferson, chairwoman of the Friends of African-American Arts, a group affiliated with the Telfair Museum of Art, said that as a lobbyist, she would use economic impact studies to make the case for arts funding. But ultimately, she said, the issue is qualitative, not quantitative.

“You can always back up requests for funding with statistics,” Jefferson said. “The experience of the arts is very subjective. Sometimes you just have to say that this is the right thing to do.”

The results of the study, as they apply to Savannah, are scheduled to be presented July 19 to the Savannah City Council by a representative of Americans for the Arts.

Original post by John Stoehr