I finished Bill Ivey’s Art Inc. last week, after a long, drawn-out battle with the text. Part of the challenge was my personal circumstances — as I was changing day jobs — but another part of it was the denseness of the text. It helped that I wenty away last week to my wife’s family’s fabulous(ly quiet) cabin, and, with loon’s crying in the background, I was able to kick up the feet without distraction for a change and finish the book. (I didn’t log in once — which, of course, explains the brief CAFA hiatus…)

I’m still somewhat processing the data, information, and suggestions of Ivey in relation to “how greed and neglect have destroyed our cultural rights,” and I am currently pondering writing something more extensive about the book in future weeks—perhaps connecting this text to a book someone bequethed to me, ironically enough, just before I left my previous job: John Frohnmayer’s Leaving Town Alive. But for now I’ll just post a few quotations I found interesting and insightful from Art Inc., and encourage you all to read this intriguing, timely, and important book (note: Ivey’s take on Ronald Reagan, referenced briefly below, actually somewhat changed my view of this president, of whom I’d never had a very positive opinion):

• “…since the 1960s our cultural policy has pretty much been about bringing more fine art to the American people. Increasing supply made sense in 1960, but this single-minded agenda has made it too easy for self-declared arts leaders to avoid engaging the breadth of America’s unique cultural system, focusing instead on a couple of narrow issues — arts education and expanded funding for nonprofits.”

• “Back when I was a sophomore living on the third floor of the University of Michigan’s first coed dorm, I asked an artist friend who lived down the hall what his parents thought about his choice of career. I’ve never forgotten his answer: ‘Every family wants a Picasso hanging on the wall, but no family wants one standing in the living room.’ He’d hit the nail on the head; we Americans love — even worship — our artists from afar, but once the curtain comes down or, as Bob Dylan says, ‘the gallery lights dim,’ we’re just as happy if they quietly leave the stage. Americans don’t take artists very seriously.”

• “One sign of our lack of respect for artists is the persistence of evidence that artists have too much trouble piecing together an income for an appropriate level of long-term material well-being; another sign is the difficulty Americans have accommodating the special vision, knowledge, and insight of artists as leaders in public life. After all, we’ve only elected one real artist to high office, actor Ronald Reagan, and his artistic pedigree discomfited his supporters…”

• “If, as Freud argued, maturity is measured by the capacity of an individual to hold contradictory ideas at the same time, then the maturity of a society can be judged by it ability to simultaneously honor multiple aesthetics. Our individual expressive lives are enriched as we take in more examples of the nature of the human predicament and as we experience different approaches to the representation of cultural values and different attempts to convey universal truths.”

• “Back when I was chairman of the NEA, I made a point of handing a dollar to every street entertainer I passed. ‘It’s my job,’ I’d half-joke with friends. ‘I’m the head of the U.S. agency that makes grants in the arts; this is the least I can do.’”

• “Today, inflation-adjusted funding by state, local, and federal arts agencies is less than in 1992, and arts grants as a percentage of total foundation giving have also declined; foundation giving to the arts actually decreased slightly in 2006. Finally, as Americans for the Arts recently reported, modest recent gains in overall giving to culture disguise the fact that the percentage of overall philanthropy devoted to the nonprofit arts — the sector’s ‘market share’ of all giving — has declined by nearly one-third since the early 1990s.”

• “As media scholar Philip Napoli observes, cultural policy ‘has never resonated or developed in the policymaking sector as an explicitly defined and institutionalized field of government activity.’ We’ve paid a price: public policy in matters of culture has been poorly aimed, limited in scope, and astoundingly tolerant of incoherence and unintended consequences. And the absence of public-interest priorities in intellectual property law, trade in cultural goods, creative education, and access to heritage has allowed an unrestrained marketplace to cobble together an arts scene that serves narrow commercial interests.”

• “… at some point public policy must take on the challenge of leveling out or even turning back the relentless growth in the size of the nonprofit sector; a healthy twenty-first-century nonprofit arts system may require some culling, especially among unendowed midsized operations. Today the challenge for nonprofits is not to expand seasonal offerings or build new arts centers but rather to facilitate the downsizing or even the graceful demise of some institutions on the edge of survival in order to free up resources to allow stronger museums, orchestras, and dance companies to exercise greater creativity.”

Lisa Boyle, the owner of the 4-year-old Lisa Boyle Gallery, has just announced on the Bad at Sports blog that she’s calling it quits.

“Why is it so GOD DAMNED hard,” she writes, “to sell a piece of art around here? I can’t help asking myself this as I soon join the ranks of civilians outside the Art World proper and close the doors on my [gallery].”

Boyle acknowledges that she’s in good company, as “a handful of my compatriots are shutting down near the same time. 40000 last December, soon Navta Schulz, Gesheidle and others. Closings here, closings in New York, even my friend in Boston are hanging it up.” This leads her to ask, as many have, “Whose fault is it?”

She ponders the oft-cited local (Chicago) presumed reasons–lack of collectors, lack of critics, lack of museum support, nepotism in the market, competition from LA and NY–and then she comes to a realization:

…here’s the big bad bald truth, people: I’m just not that good at running a gallery. No, thank you for your support and encouragement, and I truly appreciate your assessment that I have a “good eye”, I do! It’s just an unavoidable truth to me that we’re being flushed out of our excuses, me and all the other quitters, by the simple fact that there are a few people out there who have been able to sustain important programs and be happy running a successful gallery in Chicago and certainly elsewhere. In other words, it can be done, so there’s no use in talking about how hard it is to do it… Making a life (if not a living) out of selling arbitrarily priced objects that no one needs is a very competitive venture. Not as easy as it looks. You have to want it. I mean really super bad. If you are going to create a successful system of supporting artists, connecting with institutions, and staying happy and successful as an art dealer, you have to want that more than a lot of other things. Like more than a paycheck, for example. More than every single Saturday for the rest of your natural born life. More than healthy exposure to the sun. You have to welcome payment in the form of some awkward social cache rather than in money, and you have to not mind being chained to a desk between four white walls for years, with the exception of those times you pack up your wares, like a traveling salesman, and take the show on the road. All of these things have to be fun and exciting to you…

Lisa added that she’s going to be working, part-time, in an academic office at Robert Morris College–no doubt relishing a new sense of sanity and stability, even as she gets a regular paycheck. I will add it’s refreshing to hear someone actually come out and speak truth in this matter of artistic failure–in this case, of just one gallery; though her word could just as well be applied to the entire system of arts in this country.

To her words I will add my own: As it happens, I too have just announced I am giving up, in much the same way and for much the same reasons as Lisa, my own three-year quixotic (dayjob) pursuit of a life and career of support in the arts (to go to work in a more stable workplace, associated with academia, that is closer to my home).

Attached below is a piece, recently published on mnartists.org, that describes a public forum I attended on “The State of the Arts in Minneapolis.” In the essay, I attempt to dig a bit further beyond the usual propagandistic platitudes and oft-repeated old saws about art here in frozen Minnesota to examine what things are really like for artists and small art organizations here.

COMMENTARY: What is the State of the Arts in Minneapolis?

Commentary by Michael Fallon

Or, “The Future’s So Bright, You Gotta Wear Blinders:” arts administrator and critic Michael Fallon comments on the recent panel discussion about the state of arts in Mpls and makes a case for candor in our civic conversation on the subject
On the evening of June 12, the Minneapolis Arts Commission, “a volunteer body that oversees the city’s public art and promotion of the arts,” invited a panel of arts leaders (from a handful of the city’s most influential arts organizations) to participate in a discussion at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts with the aim of taking stock of “the current state of arts in Minneapolis, and how to move it forward?” The commission’s website describes the night’s agenda as follows: “Minneapolis has enjoyed an arts explosion in the last few years, but how do we use that momentum and continue to build Minneapolis’ reputation as a leader on the national arts scene?” mnartists.org asked arts administrator and critic Michael Fallon to attend the event and report back with his impressions on the evening’s conversation.

IF YOU HAPPENED TO MISS THE FIRST FIFTEEN MINUTES of the recent panel discussion on “Minneapolis’ artistic future,” sponsored by the Minneapolis Arts Commission, you didn’t miss much. In what best can be described as an excruciating exercise of intensive local arts spin, early attendees to the event were treated to a host of thought-terminating clichés from Minneapolis City Council President Barbara Johnson and from representatives of the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Minnesota Orchestra, Loft Literary Center, Guthrie Theater, and McKnight Foundation.

Just to give a taste, the event began with a vague (somewhat desperate-sounding) appeal from Johnson to the scattered 65 or 70 audience members: “Please know the city views the arts as an essential part and great promoter of our community.” The panelists then unanimously echoed their convictions about the significance of the local arts community. “We’re in great shape,” said Jennifer Komar Olivarez, an associate curator at the MIA (filling in for the previously planned speaker, the Institute’s new director Kaywin Feldman). “Compared to other cities, Minneapolis is very impressive in terms of art,” agreed Philippe Vergne, chief curator at the Walker Art Center. And thus followed a succession of many of the same, shop-worn old saws that local arts advocates are prone to tossing off (usually without supporting statistical proof) when asked about the arts here. This is just a sampling of the glib, oft-repeated claims that were reiterated in the night’s opening remarks: Minneapolis is the “most literate city in America,” has the “most theater tickets sold per capita outside of Broadway” and the “widest array of artist service organizations in the country,” not to mention the “deepest sources of philanthropic support of the arts anywhere.”

It would be a fine thing if the vaunted art-city status that Minneapolis grants itself were provably true, and if the lip-service served up regarding support for local arts actually had the solid basis in fact that people claim. Unfortunately, the truth, as it can be empirically shown, is less sunshiny than I’m guessing any of the evening’s panelists are willing to admit. Minneapolis—unlike many cities around the country (including its neighbor, Saint Paul) and, notably, unlike most other cities with a reputation for arts friendliness—actually provides little practical support to the arts. Minneapolis offers almost no city funding to arts organizations and artists (beyond the requisite occasional public art project) and has no staff dedicated to overseeing arts development or planning. But, as was not the case with the optimistic spin offered up at the recent panel discussion, you don’t have to take my word for it. This bleak assessment of the lack of practical arts support by the city of Minneapolis actually comes from scholar and economist Ann Markusen, author of a national study investigating how various cities support the arts. Here’s what Markusen uncovered about Minneapolis in her 2006 paper, “Cultural Planning and the Creative City”:

In Minneapolis … the City Council abolished its Department of
Cultural Affairs in the 1990s, leaving only a small Office of Cultural
Affairs with responsibility for public art and publicly supported arts
programming, moved under the umbrella Community Planning and
Economic Development Department. There is also a separate City of
Minneapolis Arts Commission, but it has few powers and little
political clout, and is in general ignored by the more powerful arts
institutions in the City [this has important ramifications, as explained
below]. Cultural affairs departments and offices have suffered
relative resource losses in recent decades as taxpayer revolts and
higher priority placed on everything from public safety to
economic development have squeezed their shares of the public purse.

Markusen further explodes the myth of Minneapolis’ abundant arts support through a point-by-point comparison of urban arts policies around the nation. As opposed to the other, more truly arts-friendly cities—Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, and several others—revealed by Markusen’s research, Minneapolis has no dedicated arts funds to support local arts activities, no central planning mechanism or agency to manage arts development activities around the city or region, and there is little sympathy for the arts reflected in urban planning and economic development initiatives. It’s telling that, unlike what you’ll find in some cities, for the City of Minneapolis, cultural policy has little standing. There are few formal avenues for interaction between arts organizations or artists and city planning departments with regard to the management of land use or the city’s zoning laws, which do not permit the mixing of commercial and residential use. Such restrictive policies about urban zoning make it needlessly difficult for artists and small organizations to survive in the region; specifically, these sorts of policies tend, over time, to foil artists’ and small arts organizations’ attempts to create affordable live/work spaces. Further, Markusen explains, in Minneapolis, it appears that “larger arts and cultural institutions have garnered the lion’s share of city commitments in terms of land, parking garages, and support from state bonding funds.” Generally, allocating such a large proportion of civic resources to a few big arts institutions further leaves small organizations, neighborhood arts centers, and individual artists out in the cold. (It is important to point out here that the bulk of the panelists work for just such large organizations which have been among the few beneficiaries of the city’s narrow arts policies, and that may help explain their allegiance to the group-think about local arts.)

If you are beginning to feel your blood pressure rise upon reading all of this, you will begin to get a sense of how I was feeling after the first round of statements by the panel. Fortunately for my health and yours, however, it was at that precise moment that the panel moderator, Fox 9 news anchor Robyne Robinson, stepped in to begin directing panelists toward a more measured assessment and constructive discussion about how the city is doing regarding the arts. “We can sit here and repeat over and over how great things are,” Robinson said, “but then you hear these constant complaints from artists. If things are great, why is the discontent there? Do we just have too many artists and are unable to feed everyone?”

McKnight Foundation program director for the arts, Vickie Benson’s response to this question—voicing her particular concern about the well-being of individual artists locally—represented the first genuine moment of the night, and her remarks elicited an outburst of loud applause from the audience. “We can’t forget,” Benson said, “about the artists who live with poverty, who have no health insurance, and who face a lack of retirement money. We can’t forget about the artists who bring so much vibrancy to our community.”

Other panelists, at first, weren’t quite so willing to immediately validate the local artists’ disgruntlement. “We cannot please everybody,” said Philippe Vergne, slightly testily. “We make choices and, by nature, this is discriminating. Discontent of this sort is not just present in Minneapolis. It happens in L.A., it happens in New York. It is in the nature of what we do.… Desire is important. We need desire or art dies.” Jennifer Komar Olivarez of the MIA agreed: “If you look at the broader picture, our role is to set a certain standard, a bar for local artists to aspire to. We can’t be everything to everybody.” Still, Robinson, to her credit, persisted in asking about the city’s role in supporting smaller organizations and individual artists. She kept dancing around this point throughout the next hour or so of discussion, digging for a more human, more specific response, asking for panelists’ assessments of the current state of affairs which might go beyond feel-good spin. And, as a result, over the course of the evening the discussion grew increasingly realistic about the state of the arts in Minneapolis and about its immediate prospects in the current times and near future.

In short order, Robinson asked whether there were inflated expectations for large Minneapolis arts organizations as a consequence of the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of expansion many of them have undergone in the past five years. (Some panelists admitted there has, indeed, been some tension and growing pains in the wake of recent redevelopment.) Robinson also asked about the potential for large locally-based businesses—which have given tons of corporate money to support these expansions—to exert undue influence on arts programming at the organizations on the receiving end of their largesse. (Most panelists sidestepped the question, instead arguing about the relative merits of “blockbuster” shows. I feel compelled to point out here that I suggested evidence of such corporate influence on arts programming was already beginning to emerge in an essay I wrote more than two years ago.) Robinson—again, to her credit—pressed the point, asking if the panelists’ organizations ever worry about “selling out” in the wake of their recent expansions (which the panelists again, for the most part, side-stepped). Then, she followed up with a question about whether the small organizations in town have suffered from competition with the large institutions (ole!).

As the discussion progressed toward its conclusion, and these expert panelists became less and less able to answer the hard questions about the struggles of the larger art community in Minneapolis, I could tell that Robinson was beginning to circle the truth. When she asked about the financial challenges facing the arts community in the current economy and, specifically, about whether the big organizations had contingency plans to deal with the difficult fiscal realities of the times, the panelists all—to a person—gave grudging nods. “We talk a lot about it,” admitted Vergne. “It’s a very constraining moment…. We’ve been much fatter in the past, but at the moment we are on Weight Watchers.” The other panelists spoke about the various ways that their organizations have been readjusting their activities to cope with declining support and increased costs, even as they grapple with the high expectations that a tapped art public has for these highly visible (and expensive) institutions. Then Vergne continued: “We have to change the way we operate and change our rules of engagement. If we don’t, we become dinosaurs and die.”

And so, the curtain had at last been lifted, revealing a reality beyond our blind faith in the region’s art supremacy. Now, perhaps, a real discussion can begin.

Addendum re: Minneapolis’ Failing Arts Future (June 24): The New York Times noted today that the Dia Foundation has announced the hiring of noted Minneapolis arts booster Philippe Vergne to take over directorship of the struggling foundation. Vergne’s departure marks the fifth high-profile Minneapolis arts leader to leave the city within the past year. Others include former Walker director Kathy Halbreich and chief curator Richard Flood, state arts board director Tom Proehl, and Minneapolis Institute of Arts director William Griswold.

A recent story in the Mpls Star-Tribune, Hope flickers out for Oak Street Cinema, describes the impending doom, after three years of struggle, of a beloved repertory theater.

After two years of speculation and a public battle over its future, cherished art-film theater Oak Street Cinema is expected to be sold after the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) ends May 3. Its most likely fate: Demolition to make way for a housing and retail development.

The issue at hand appears to be the financial status of the small nonprofit arts org, Minnesota Film Arts, that owns the theater. The Oak Street Cinema was founded in 1995 by a group that renovated a 92-year-old theater near the University of Minnesota. Minnesota Film Arts, which has run the successful MSPIFF for more than 30 years, merged with the Oak Street Cinema several years ago. In 2004, new management at MFA allowed debts to run up–leading to firings, staff resignations, and a cycle of ever-deepening red ink.

Since the spring of 2005, the doors of the Oak Street Cinema have only periodically been open and staff remains in flux. In January 2006, MFA’s board said the theater might need to be sold, triggering a public protest by Oak Street founders and others. Still, the last public tax filing by MFA, in 2005, showed a standing debt of $145,000, and selling the theater was considered the favorite option to clear the debt and pave the way for a reorganization of MFA (so it could refocus its energy back on MSPIFF).

“The festival carries the long tradition of film in Minnesota forward,” said the current board chair of MFA. “We want to continue to focus on that tradition.”

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: 

Sorry, fans of Failure, that I’ve missed a few posting days this week.

Part of it is I’ve been swamped 24-7 of late putting together a fundraising event for the little art organization I direct as my day job. Don’t let anyone ever tell you (ever) that fundraising, no matter for what amount (even for small-town nickels and dimes), is easy… Oh man, is it anything but easy.

By the way, the auction we’ve put together is pretty awesome, in a small-town Minnesota kind of way (with at least two world-renowned artists)—in case you happen to be one of the rare people at present in this country who are flush with cash.

The other part of my absence is I’ve been following the self-destruction of a young artist here in Minneapolis named Gabriel Combs. Combs has known for a number of weeks now that he’s going to be evicted from his drug-den urban-core apartment in the infamous Stevens Square section of Minneapolis. Here’s what he wrote (unedited) to a local artists’ forum back in early February, during the coldest part of what has amounted to the coldest winter in Minnesota in the past 15 years:

looking into renting a weekly room for awhile. luck seems to have run out. was inevitable i suppose. strange how i can’t get a job. i’ve always been curious as to what my character would become reaching complete desperation… what i will be reduced to doing, simply to survive a little longer… my instinct to survive is mercenary at rock bottom.

I should back up a bit.

I first met Gabriel Combs in 2003 or 2004. I had been writing for a website in Minnesota run by the Walker Art Center and funded by the McKnight Foundation called Mnartists.org, which also had—in an effort to connect the local community of artists—established an open forum for artists. I, of course, with my interest in community affairs, my Gen-X lack of online savvy, and my infernal optimism, have been a regular contributor, participant, and watcher of the Forums since they were mounted.

I also, in 2002, founded a local arts writer association called the Visual Art Critics Union of Minnesota, and, around 2003, I set up with the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts a lecture series called the Trialogues, in which we connected a local art critic/writer with the artists exhibited in each of the MAEP’s exhibitions.

Long story short, I met Combs at one of my favorite venues (a bar) after an early Trialogue event—back when I was pushing the events to any and all comers. I remember him as being smallish, but strong and wiry, full of the angry energy of a disciple of the Juxtapoz movement, and I’ve had a kind of ongoing “connection” (for lack of a better word) with him through the online forums ever since. As I recall, he had brought a small drawing (of a techno-beetle done in graphite on paper), that he made a point of passing around the bar table to see how the critics would react. (I kept my cards to my chest, as I was the nominal organizer of the event and had to remain political; but let’s just say here and now that I’ve never really been much of a fan of the acolytes of Robert Williams…)

Needless to say, Combs and I haven’t always gotten along. Let’s face it, I’m an opinionated arts writer, and he was an artist struggling to get noticed in a market overflooded with artists. It was inevitable that I’d eventually be the target of his frustration—if only because I stupidly kept myself in proximity. At one point, after something I wrote that only indirectly concerned him ca. 2006, Combs wrote the following gut-clenching diatribe against me on the mnartists forums (which I post primarily because it reveals, I think, something essential about the artist):

I think you need to be called on your shit. So far, i’m up to Sam Spiczka, Ben Olson, and John Grider whose comments could’nt be posted on your blog, which you say you did’nt pull down in a hissy fit, yet I think we all know better. The hypocrisy of how you complain about artists whining about not being noticed is sad, and at times a blot on the (or clot in the) scene. In contrast, a general rule i’ve heard repeated over the years has been that it takes around ten years for many collectors to acknowledge artists. Judging by the time you arrived in MN, got in the MIA’s foot in the door show, and then bailed from showing your visual art, you are what? At one third of that time? Another example of your long history of not getting what you want and getting negative. I would’nt bring these things up, but you insult other people who refuse to give up. You speak of artists harassing you for attention in your columns, which I have personally witnessed, but you asked me for images from the Inkala, Grider, and Combs Caffetto collab show, at which I was first hesitant, but gave in on your *second* request. You proceeded to hack it up in reality, again dismissing the “Juxtapoz” movement, which you’ve been unable to correctly set in history in any way, raising suspicions of yet another acidic kickback from your weaknesses. Your bashing of Olsons’ work was pathetic, (especially in contrast to the glowing and truthful review by Mark Wojahn on mplsart.org, (and you are both VACUM)) with an even more pathetic attempt at tying into a supposed overall flaw in art history. I would call it basic disrespect. Insult without a backup. Your blog came down again after a criticsm by myself, and a statement made by Spiczka on mnartists.org forums that was dismissed and dodged. True, you have given your hand to some decent (not great) writing on the arts the last few years, but also have undermined your own work better than any artist “attack” could by your general bitterness laden with venoumous hypocrisy, child-like behaviour, and your thinly masked pen-names. You’ve alienated the audience, the core peoples who would back you up.

Without you, we exist.

Without us, you do not.

There were worse comments along the way about things I’d written in print. I didn’t take offense (after a locally well-known and respected printmaker wrote, in a letter to the editor, that he’d like to smash my head in with a brick, I long ago stopped caring what local artists say about me for what I’ve written as a critic). I never responded. So why, you wonder, would I even care about such an erratic and unstable artist now—now that he’s about to be out on the street, primarily due to his own choices?

Well, if I don’t care about the self-destruction about one lowly artist in one insignificant American backwater town, then who will?…

TO BE CONTINUED…

A guest column by Roger Valdez in the Friday, January 25, edition of the Seattle Times tells a story familiar to artists (and to CAFA readers). Arts organizations there are getting squeezed out by a callous market and an uncaring local community.

Over the past decade, several local arts organizations, … have folded because of space issues. Today, tenants of the Odd Fellows Hall on Capitol Hill are struggling with the possibility of rent increases that will make it impossible for them to do business.

The crisis faced by small- and medium-sized arts organizations in Seattle comes down to two words: real estate. How to acquire, renovate and maintain one’s own home isn’t something taught in art school. Arts organizations produce art, not facilities plans.

The story follows a familiar path. A local arts organization without much money finds space in an older building where the rent is reasonable. The owner is willing to allow the group to knock out a couple of walls, make as much noise as it wants, and start doing what it does: art.

The owner isn’t interested at that time in selling the underutilized property for high rise-condos or other development, and the arts organizations, taking heart, sign or extend leases.

But, the day comes when the economic lure becomes too great, or family dynamics change, and the owner decides to sell. Faced with a changing use of the property, the arts tenants put out a call for help, but it’s too late.

Does it have to be this way?

Some arts organizations in Boston recently, on January 13, staged a “die-in” in response to a report on the arts economy of Boston published by the Boston Foundation. Called “Vital Signs,” the report, which was released on December 19, suggested that the directors of “struggling arts groups” should perhaps be seeking “exit strategies.” According to the study, while large institutions such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Museum of Fine Arts remain healthy, smaller groups are “losing audience and struggling to balance their budgets.” The Foundation suggests that an organization “whose vision has either dissipated or lost its resonance with its audience or supporters” should consider shutting down.

Apparently, at the “die-in,” which took place in an alternative gallery space in Cambridge, a self-proclaimed group of “artyrs” drank Kool-Aid as a symbolic protest to the report. According to Boston Globe reporter Geoff Edgers, leaders of Boston’s small arts organizations had a lot to say to the Boston Foundation.

“The report takes a very naive position in the end,” said Jurgen Weiss, executive director of Snappy Dance Theater. “What I take from it is, ‘Look, here are these big organizations. They’re big. So they must be good. And all these small organizations are having trouble keeping afloat. So by some kind of Darwinian process some of them should die off.’ ”

Kathy Bitetti, an installation artist who heads the Artists Foundation, [said]:

“They don’t fund us, they never have, and they have no sense of who we are… Unfortunately I think this report does more harm than good. They’re looking at a corporate model. Instead of spending money on these reports, they could actually be funding organizations.”