The Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America

A recent article from Florida, one of the few recent growth zones for the arts in this country, further indicates the struggles facing arts organizations and the art infrastructure that underpins and supports organizations and artists in this country.

In the April 3rd edition of the St. Petersburg (FLA) Times, an article by John Fleming called “In troubled times, arts funding teeters” describes the current desperate budget situation in that state and the likely looming fallout for the arts. The Florida state legislature is dealing with a shortfall in tax revenue that may reach $3-billion, and “naturally the state’s arts programs were among the first times on the chopping block.”

The Republican House Speaker declared at one point that the whole Division of Cultural Affairs may have to be eliminated, marking a “new extreme” according to the article. “Not even in the uncertain economic conditions after 9/11 did anyone suggest doing away with arts funding entirely.”

And while it seems savvy arts advocates were able to lobby to have the Speaker’s proposal curtailed, cuts to the arts in Florida are projected to be between 30 and 75 percent of the most recent budget (to between $3 and $8 million), and this after a 61 percent arts budget cut in the budget from two years ago. The article concludes:

We’ve fallen far from 1990-91, when the division gave out $19-million in grants, making Florida a leader in underwriting the arts and its peer review evaluation system a model of smart administration…. Scapegoating the arts — which employs roughly 156,000 people in Florida, according to a study released last year by U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat — is no way to strengthen the economy. It doesn’t make any sense, even while acknowledging that the state has huge budget problems

But since when did sense have anything to do with what happens in Tallahassee?

The Belfry Center, which calls itself a “radical Social Center in Minneapolis,” and cites as its mission “to foster democracy and build community through the arts, activism, media, and education,” has claimed in a recent myspace bulletin that it is under attack by the city of Minneapolis.

They claim: “We have been ordered to cease nearly all all of our events because we do not have entertainment or food licenses… When we reached the office that issued our letter we were told that the zoning of our location makes getting those licenses for all intents and purposes impossible.”

If you’d like to help the Belfry Center, you can check out the list of donations they’re seeking on their wishlist, you can inquire about donations, volunteering, or membership here, or you can email them regarding support at belfrycenter(at)gmail(dot)com.

Here’s the full bulletin: 

A recent story by Scott Russell called Setting standards, cutting funding for arts education that appeared in the online news aggregator Twin Cities Daily Planet reports that once-vaunted local arts education standards are currently being threatened. 

For many Minnesota art students, the author writes, “arts seem to be a thinning palette.”

This is because while Minnesota state standards in education focus on the value of art in the curriculum, the actual requirements for art, starting this year (and perhaps due to the No Child Left Behind laws) in a student’s education are minimal: only one art credit is needed to graduate from Minnesota high schools.

“Unlike reading, math and science,” Russell writes, “there is no high-stakes state arts test. Each district sets its own measure of art success. If students pass the art class that could be enough to meet the graduation requirement. That means arts can get the brush-off in the budget process, as schools focus resources on reading and math where success is measured by highly publicized, quantitative test scores.”

This means that statewide, according to Michael Hiatt, director of professional development and research at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, in “traditional schools” art teachers are “getting stretched to cover more and more students.” “It is more of a case of the haves and have nots,” in arts education, he said. “The gap is widening.”

Mary Schaefle, executive director of the Minnesota Music Educators Association, studies equity in arts education. From 2000-2006, she found, the number of “public school students dropped 1.5 percent” while the number of “public school music teachers dropped more than 11 percent”–indicating a drop-off in quantity of music lessons provided. In addition, the story sites the replacement, over this time period, of regular school arts instruction with more supplementary guest artist programs. “Obviously it saves some schools some money,” said one such instructor, “rather than hire a full-time teacher.”

One high school art teacher suggested that currently in Minnesota arts funding is “hit and miss, depending on what district you happen to be in, what part of the state you happen to live in, what the resources happen to be at any given moment.” The results, predictably, are a decline in talent levels among kids as they move through the education system, an ongoing deterioration in equipment and facilities for the arts in schools, and a resulting deterioration of interest among students in these subject areas.

Before I complete my thoughts on one Minneapolis artist who is currently skirting the abyss, a few more words on the topic of how poorly Minneapolis treats its arts community and its less fortunate despite its entrenched self-image (and deep amounts of supporting propaganda to support the image) as a place particularly enlightened and progressive on these issues.

A few weeks ago I quoted a local artist who had blogged that Minneapolis was not all that friendly to artists. After my post, the blogger responded with this: “Minneapolis shouldn’t feel bad about not supporting artists. Lots of places can’t support their artists. But Minneapolis should stop making out with itself in the mirror and take a look at itself instead.” He also wrote: “I think this place is a fine spot for a middle class, well adjusted, creative person with a descent backup plan to get a good start. I believe that I have personal issues that keep me from realizing my goals, specifically in this place.” And he vowed to leave Minneapolis soon: “Come 8/31, there’s nothing keeping me here. Unless I start a fun dance band, or find my calling in middle management, or give myself a labotomy, I’m moving.”

Barbara Ehrenreich, in her exposé about the working poor in America, Nickel and Dimed, famously exposed Minneapolis as being among the least friendly places for people without money. In Minneapolis, the ”living wage” was calculated to be $11.77 an hour, and Ehrenreich got a job at Wal-Mart paying $7 an hour. Because of the poor layout of the city and the inadequate public transportation, she had trouble getting to work on time (she went carless for the duration of her experiment). And because of the lack of affordable housing, she could not find a decent apartment and had to stay in a barely adequate rattrap motel—like many of her co-workers. While she wondered at first how her co-workers could even think of paying $40 to $60 a day for a dive of a room (totaling up to $1500 a month), she soon realized that low-wage earners had to deal with a double-edged sword—they could not afford to pay the large sums (a full month’s rent, plus a down-payment, plus bills, etc) needed to rent a more cost-effective apartment and so had to live in more expensive, less suitable conditions.

Earlier today, meanwhile, the artist Combs made final preparations for walking away from his modest apartment—writing on an artist forum: “i quit existing on paper soon. hidden place in which to land and radiate art, incognito in society, unseen and silent… i feel like moving like a shadow down between the cracks of society and back again. lost and unlost. whole and broken hearted. pulling something out of the self that has craved the foreground, albeit bringing a new lonliness with it…”

I once quoted the Minneapolis gallerian Thomas Barry on how he felt about the city after running a gallery there for nearly thirty years: “In general, [local support] is nowhere near what is necessary to make it a vital place for showing and making art….It was better in the Eighties, most definitely. Art was a fashionable thing and people bought into it….But it’s pretty much been flat for a long time now. A lot of talented people can’t continue to make art because they can’t afford to.”

Were Minneapolis a better place for the working poor—be they artists or non-artists—it might be easier to forgive the place for patting itself over and over for its wonderful self-image. But in addition to the fact that the poor can barely survive here, and artists (who come from all over the region to be in the place that constantly extols itself as an artistic Mecca) often flounder here to get established and to thrive, as I described in 2006, in reality, at best, Minneapolis/Minnesota ranks below average nationally as an art center. Among the failings of Minneapolis in the art realm: in 2003, budget cuts of 30-60 percent decimated the State Arts Board, and while much of the budget was restored for the current biennium (after four years of struggle among arts orgs and artists), that money is likely to go the way of the dodo yet again next year—owing to yet another brutal state budget deficit; arts employees in Minnesota are generally paid 30-50 percent less than their counterparts in other places, leading to large rates of job attrition in the arts worker corps; neither Minneapolis nor St. Paul has a cultural affairs officer, a public arts plan (though St. Paul has a modest non-profit public art org), a functioning arts and culture plan, a cultural tourism initiative or plan, or any of the other features of other cities/regions serious about their arts community; and, of course, all of these factors trickle down and lead to continuing despair and hopelessness among the artists on the ground.

When downturns happen, when people are shocked out of their regular ruts, when the bombing starts and buildings are knocked down–whenever something bad happens on a large scale in the country, the arts are the first thing that goes out the window.

Case in point for today (March 4, 2008), as the collective economic hand-wringing mounts to a deafening pitch:

• Critic Sasha Anwalt, on the NAJP blog, yesterday pointed out that the L.A. Times is canning its long-time dance critic Lewis Segal. Anwalt writes, “this signals a gigantic disconnect between the people and press…. and his loss is worth protesting on many fronts.”
• Last week, Douglas McLennan wrote on the same blog about the Hartford Courant’s buyout of its television critic. McLennan also posted, a few days ago, an analysis of the ongoing failure of newspapers in this country.
• Andrew Taylor, on his Art Journal blog on arts management, wrote about the need for nonprofit mission-driven organizations to consider when to close their doors. (This relates to a story CAFA has been following out of Boston, where the Boston Foundation has suggested that the directors of “struggling arts groups” should perhaps begin seeking “exit strategies.”)
• The arts & architecture blog of the Guardian Unlimited recently posted about the inevitability of suffering for artists, and, appropriately, about the British Arts Council’s painful upcoming funding cuts to arts organizations.
• And, to top it all off and tie it all together, a recent story in the New York Times examines the quaint American habit to eschew all things intellectual. To quote the main subject of the story, Susan Jacoby, author of several books on this subject of American anti-intellectualism: “Now… something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way. Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.”

Be wary of walking under windows, lest you be hit in the head with all the art and culture we’re tossing out.

Things are really beginning to get bad for the arts these days. So bad, that even our enlightened and genteel northern neighbor, Canada, has undertaken an American-style slash-and-burn approach to spending on the arts in its current budget. According to the Globe and Mail online edition:

In short, yesterday’s budget, in the name of maintaining what Finance Minister Jim Flaherty called “strong fiscal management,” seemed to duck virtually every concern that the Canadian cultural community has been voicing in the past five years.

According to this story on the CBC’s website, arts groups are bitterly disappointed in the budget’s disregard for spending on arts and culture. “Cultural investment generates economic activity,” said one artist representative, “provides opportunities for performers and other creators and generates high-quality Canadian programming and films audiences want to watch… In tough times, that’s exactly the kind of investment government should be making, but they’ve failed to act.”

Meanwhile, not to be outdone by Canada’s new-found “Americanness” in regards to the arts, it appears our very own lame-duck president’s parting policy shot will be to eviscerate an arts community already deeply struggling to survive. According to a story called “National Endowment for the Arts budget cuts should be met with outrage, not complacency,” from the Louisville Courier-Journal, Bush is attempting an arts funding end-around in the last budget that he’ll ever sign off on:

Tucked away in the thousands of pages covering $3 trillion worth of proposed expenditures was a $16.3 million cut in support for the National Endowment for the Arts. That would reduce its operating budget from $144.7 million during fiscal 2008 to $128.4 million in 2009.

You heard right. Barely two months after signing off on a $20 million increase in the NEA’s budget — the largest in the endowment’s history — our nation’s chief executive quickly shifted into fiscal reverse. In budget-speak, this is called a “rescission.” In plain-speak, it’s an outrage.

An inevitable result of any widespread economic downturn in America are rumblings and stories of politicians and policy-makers seeking to cut arts funding in their state. Never mind that the arts take up a rather miniscule part of any given state’s budget, and that diversion and distraction (in the form of the arts) are often what we most need in times of economic downturn, the great American impulse is: when the pocketbook constricts, it’s time to kill off the artists.

And so we’re seeing such stories start to roll out over the virtual transom:

• In New Jersey, which faces $32 billion of accumulated debt (and a $2.9 billion project budget gap this year), Gov. Corzine has announced plans for “deep cuts to higher education, health care and the arts…,” as well as to state employees’ jobs. This despite the fact that New Jersey’s art budget makes up only about $40-$50 million of an annual $33.5 billion state budget.
• Indianapolis, meanwhile, is facing its own budget woes and so is looking to cut the $1.54 million the city distributes to 75 local arts organizations. This has resulted, understandably, in a lot of nervousness among Indy’s arts community.

CAFA will continue to monitor these budget-cutting developments as more stories are published.

Arts and culture critic Terry Teachout has, today in a great Wall Street Journal essay, coined a new term that describes the tendency of certain successful artists to fail: importantitis. Touching on the careers of Leonard Bernstein (post-West Side Story), Orson Welles (post-Citizen Kane), and Ralph Ellison (post-Invisible Man)—all of whom struggled because they were “strangled by self-consciousness” in trying to make, after their initial success, the next great work of art.

In the article, the author proposes Teachout’s First Law of Artistic Dynamics: “The best way to make a bad work of art is to try to make a great one.” The Chronicle of Artistic Failure humbly proposes its own corollary to the First Law of Artistic Dynamics: “The best way for an artist to fail is to live in America.”

OK, so I’d intended to write a follow-up post on the issue of artistic competition by now, but, as it turns out, I’ve been distracted. Maybe I have a decent enough excuse—today was my birthday, after all, so there was that to attend to. But whatever the case, I apologize for the delay, and promise to have something for you by tomorrow.

In the meantime, here’s a song about an artist growing old. It’s by self-taught artist and folk musician Daniel Johnston, whose work was included in the last Whitney Biennial. Compelling stuff, methinks. Hope you enjoy (until I can get back to the blogstone).

by Daniel Johnston
Listen up and I’ll tell a story
About an artist growing old
Some would try for fame and glory
Others aren’t so bold

Everyone, and friends and family
Saying, “Hey! Get a job!”
“Why do you only do that only?
Why are you so odd?

We don’t really like what you do.
We don’t think anyone ever will.
It’s a problem that you have,<
And this problem’s made you ill.”

Listen up and I’ll tell a story
About an artist growing old
Some would try for fame and glory
Others aren’t so bold

The artist walks alone
Someone says behind his back,
“He’s got his gall to call himself that!
He doesn’t even know where he’s at!”

The artist walks among the flowers
Appreciating the sun
He does this all his waking hours
But is it really so wrong?

They sit in front of their TV
Saying, “Hey! This is fun!”
And they laugh at the artist
Saying, “He doesn’t know how to have fun.”

The best things in life are truly free
Singing birds and laughing bees
“You’ve got me wrong”, says he.
“The sun don’t shine in your TV”

Listen up and I’ll tell a story
About an artist growing old
Some would try for fame and glory
Others aren’t so bold

Everyone, and friends and family
Saying, “Hey! Get a job!”
“Why do you only do that only?
Why are you so odd?

We don’t really like what you do.
We don’t think anyone ever will.
It’s a problem that you have,
And this problem’s made you ill.”

Listen up and I’ll tell a story
About an artist growing old.
Some would try for fame and glory
Others just like to watch the world.

Before we get back to our regularly scheduled blogging about petty, self-defeating artistic jealousies and treacheries, here’s a recent news item from Minnesota Public Radio that bodes further ill for artists struggling to keep paying their rent.

According to the story, starting in 2008 artists may have a “hard time finding places to live and work for cheap” (as though it’s currently that easy). This is because a new IRS ruling says low-income artist lofts are not in compliance with federal tax regulations.

The IRS’ Section 42 Low Income Housing Tax Credit generally helps pay for anywhere between 35 percent to 60 percent of the capital costs of building or renovating a building that “serves the general public.” However, Section 42 says a building can’t qualify for the low-income housing credit if it offers housing only to members of “a certain social organization.” This appears to be the tax sticking point with artist lofts, and the IRS has now begun more closely scrutinizing such housing.

Of course, this conflicts with much of current civic policy, as, according to the story’s author, Marianne Combs, many cities across the country are “using affordable housing to attract artists, in the hopes they will bring with them urban renewal.”

Minnesota-based Artspace, a real estate developer that specializes in developing artist live/work spaces in blighted areas of America’s cities, is working to appeal the IRS’s determination process on Section 42. 

Bill Mague is portfolio director for Artspace. He says he doesn’t understand how after 20 years of financing artist loft developments, the IRS could rule that his organization isn’t serving the general public.

“All of our projects have people who fit every possible demographic - age, gender, religion, sexual orientation, primary source of income,” says Mague. “And so that’s why I don’t think we come even close to any of these concerns that the IRS is voicing. And I think if they were to prevail, it would significantly impair a very powerful federal housing tool.”