Visiting Grand Rapids

At first blush, my Arts in Crisis tour stop in Grand Rapids seemed ill-timed.

After all, I am touring all 50 states to discuss approaches for dealing with the current economic crisis; to discuss the mistakes arts organizations make when they reduce programming or play it safe in this environment.

Yet I arrived at the first week of ArtPrize, an innovative new arts project that has electrified the city and the region.

For those few who have not heard of ArtPrize, any artist was invited to create a work of art and show it at indoor and outdoor venues across downtown Grand Rapids. 1,262 artists installed works--from simple drawings to huge, elaborate sculptures. I was particularly taken with a series of portraits, silk-screened on perfectly formed mounds of salt. The public was invited to see the works and to vote on their favorites. More than 334,000 votes were cast and the winner received prize money of $250,000, an extraordinary sum.

To say that the region was consumed by ArtPrize is an understatement. Every person I met asked if I had seen many works, which were my favorites and whether I was voting. Venues were packed at noon on a Wednesday. Buses filled with school children were touring the city. Thousands of people turned out for a performance art event: 100,000 paper airplanes flown from the roof of a building. To those of us who believe that art has the power to inspire and enliven our communities, this was a glorious example.

ArtPrize is the brainchild of Rick DeVos. (For complete disclosure, Rick's mother Betsy is a Trustee of the Kennedy Center.) Rick has created an innovative, successful, energizing, arts project that was conceived of and staged during this great economic crisis. And not in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago, but in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a state that has felt this recession as much as any and where the state government slashed the budget of the state arts council by 71 percent the day before I arrived.

ArtPrize is the perfect example of what I discuss on my tour: arts organizations that do great work and market it well can thrive at any time - even during a major recession in a depressed state. There is a tremendous hunger for innovation and inspiration at this time. How else to explain the thousands of creative submissions, the hundreds of thousands of people registering to vote, and the many, many more who simply came to observe?

The mistake arts organizations make is to pull in their horns, limit creativity, reduce important programming, and play it safe. The public sees through this approach; they do not have money to waste on boring programming.

And arts organizations that become less interesting to their audiences also become less interesting to their donors. It is simple to blame 'the economy' for a lack of ticket sales or contributions but it invariably results in larger measure from a lack of quality programming and marketing.

The people running ArtPrize talk happily about prospects for the future and working to cope with increased demand in future years. Who would have guessed that the perfect lesson for coping successfully with a failing economy would come from Grand Rapids?

Comments

[MimiK]

When you give up on the arts, you give up on human creativity.
When you give up on human creativity, you give up your greatest single asset for changing the world.
When you give up on changing the world, you give up on the future.
When you give up on the future, you give up on life.

Arts for all and all for art is how we keep our passion for life alive.

[KC Girl19]

What a wonderful article. I am from Grand Rapids and currently live in Washington D.C. I had the privelege of working with for Michael Kaiser when I was an intern at the Kennedy Center. I am sad that I missed such a wonderful event like ArtPrize, Grand Rapids definitley needed a boost and this seemed like just the thing!

[MIvoter1231]

Grand Rapids was in its glory these last couple of weeks! Loved it all. Nessie, the table, the push pin faces, everything. It was wonderful and made me proud to have adopted GR as my hometown!

Let's hope this goes on for decades. Art doesn't just belong in NYC, Chicago or LA. It belongs where people get to see, touch and experience it. Even in towns the size of GR.

[Pandu-]

I'm also from Grand Rapids.
This turned out to be a monster -way more than anyone would have predicted. It brought so many people into the core city, people from small outlying towns who would not have normally come there and in fact were probably afraid to be downtown in the "big city". But I saw so many different kinds of people down there during the day and the night. Sunday morning the streets were literally full a people waiting for the airplanes to drop -many with their musical instruments ready to play the short piece of music copied onto the planes.

ArtPrize brought art to people in a way that was such fun and had such excitement around it. Rick Devos said he wanted to "start a conversation about art" and exactly that happened. Hooray for art!!!

[John Zanella]

ArtPrize.......

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=artprize
http://www.artprize.org/home

[littleirishgirl]

I, too, am from Grand Rapids and to say that I was inspired is an understatement. I am not an artsy person and all, and I couldn't stay away from ArtPrize. I haven't seen this kind of excitement or energy in Downtown Grand Rapids in, well, I don't know how long. I never really paid much attention to art before ArtPrize. I guess you could say I didn't understand it. But there were so many amazing pieces in this competition that everyone could decide for themselves what type of art to appreciate. I am so excited for next year and really sad that this inaugural year is over.

P.S. If you want to see photos of the art and the event, check out the ArtPrize Flickr Pool. http://www.flickr.com/groups/1098071@N23/pool/

[Dots]

Wow! This is exactly the kind of thing people are wanting.
I hope it lasted more than a week.

[progressivegreg]

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! I live in Grand Rapids and you captured the feelings that ArtPrize generated perfectly. I have NEVER seen Grand Rapids so invigorated, the streets were filled with people in the evenings in the middle of the week. Everywhere you looked was magical. It was magnificent. I'm very happy the art world recognized it too. There was a bit of concern that we might look like a "bunch of hicks" if we voted for kitsch instead of art, but those fears turned out to be unfounded. Grand Rapids never looked better. Thank you for the wonderful article.