Let the Arts Help Rebuild the Economy

Hopes are soaring that President-elect Obama's new public works program will help generate the jobs that have been catastrophically lost in recent months. His plans awaken memories of the New Deal, when President Roosevelt led an unprecedented investment in the nation's infrastructure.

The big WPA projects, like the dams that brought electricity to rural areas, focused on the needs of the day. At the community level, the WPA built schools and libraries and parks.

This time, Mr. Obama and the new Congress should include cultural institutions in the infrastructure program. They have a unique power to generate jobs, stabilize communities, build the tourist industry and stimulate the creative economy that our technology-driven world increasingly depends on.

After September 11, when New York was trying to recover its balance and momentum, the Alliance for the Arts established an effort called The Arts Rebuild New York. We learned that the arts were an engine of recovery, not just another needy sector. When commercial construction stopped, cultural projects like the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Children's Museum went forward. In the 2003-2005 period, New York cultural institutions spent $1.4 billion on capital construction, generating more than 10,000 jobs over three years.

It's time now for a campaign called The Arts Rebuild America.

Despite the recession, cultural building will take place in many cities because of already committed private and local government funding. In New York City, for example, the Department of Cultural Affairs currently has dedicated nearly $1 billion for hundreds of active projects.

The Obama administration should devote a portion of the new jobs program to matching this local investment in the arts infrastructure. The immediate gain in jobs will lead to the long-term benefit of stronger communities.

Creating jobs is the present reason to invest in culture but there are many others. No other institutions have a greater capacity to instill pride in communities or to foster understanding and tolerance in a diverse society. The United States can lead not just by regaining its prosperity and extending that to all Americans, but by being an example of openness to the cultures of the world.

Investing in America's cultural infrastructure will stimulate the economy and build the society we dream of.

Comments

[alimarcus]

In 1956, Dizzy Gillespie was sent on a State Department tour of the world by Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (D-NY). In the midst of the Cold War, Gillespie and his band became American ambassadors in a kind of cultural diplomacy matched only by Woody Guthrie.

Guthrie is well known for his Depression-era body of work " he invented a position in our country for an ambassador to ourselves.

The Department of the Interior hired Guthrie to write songs about federal building projects " namely, the Bonneville Power Administration"s Grand Coulee Dam ; that work has become synonymous with the greatest American economic and cultural revival of the 20th century.

Reagan called the W.P.A. "one of the social programs that was most practical in those New Deal days." F.D.R. created jobs for artistic professionals while simultaneously breathing life into American culture.

It is important that the current administration is mired in the immediate crises in the banking, credit and automobile industries. That the transition to an Obama-Biden administration involves close collaboration on rescue efforts is a given. However, bailout attempts are only part of the issue. A failure in industry, a failure in finance " these things contribute to much more than the ledger numbers in our worst nightmares. The time is now to invest in America"s belief in itself. Unleash the cultural diplomats where they are needed most " right here on American soil.

[WorldGriot]

When we speak of art, we inevitably think of paintings, sculptures and tangible representations. And those are important. however, the vast majority of our citizens know nothing about the valuation of art beyond the prices pieces command. When theater artists talk about their art, it inevitably boils down to theater spaces or opera houses. But none of these edifices inspire the kind of hope that a viral piece of musical theater can or a well written and acted dramatic might. (Here I include both comedy and tragedy as dramatic opposites unlike the common usages of comedy as the antonym to drama.) Well woven words delivered with imagination is precisely how hope is transmitted. Hope is ephemeral and is conveyed on the wings of the ephemeral arts. to the extent that paintings transmit hope is merely in the imaginative rendition of the story being told by the artists that is only tangentially connected to the the canvas. So if we are going to use the arts to stimulate a robust confidence in our capacity for greatness, we shall have to focus on the ( Wall Street frightening) intangibles of art. the commodification of art is what brought us this close to our knees right now. I for one am prepared for an arts renaissance. thanks bill

[jonahbokaer]

Feast of St. Phiala
2008

A national arts initiative of this kind would require long-term, integrated investment in the arts from local, state, and national officials, as well as President-elect Obama's new administration. When arts revitalization is hosted in conjunction with education, health, economic development, safety, community cohesion, and more, economic conditions for the arts can and must improve over time, in a reinforcing cycle.

Too often, perceptions of arts as a national economic force have been dominated by the observation of urban decay, and skepticism about possibilities for progress. The reality is far more interesting and hopeful: in the past decade, the artist population of the nation has grown nearly 30 percent, incomes have risen twice as fast as the nation as a whole, and homeownership has climbed, while poverty and urban crime have declined.

Using this context in mind to speak practically about the arts in Obama's administration, improvement for the arts on a national level would mean the following:

1) applying a comprehensive lens for arts funding, with state agencies involved, and subsidized.

2) working on the few social interventions that have the greatest potential to stimulate further change in economic development.

3) establishing permanent and sustainable arts SPACES in each county through petitioning, rezoning, designing, and developing new facilities.

4) forming ACTUAL spaces for the arts can only strengthen economic catalysts in a given area. That impacts the economy: developers know this, and harness it, as do state funders.

[listeningpost]

To amplify a bit on Christian's comment below.
The corporate models adopted by Arts Organizations tend to redirect funding towards administration and capital improvements and away from arts practitioners. How many of the 10,000 jobs mentioned in the article went to artists and how much of the 1.4 billion went to the development and construction trades?
According to a national survey by Americans for the Arts, administrative and staff expenses were more than double the amount paid in fees to artists.
Many of the ills we see on Wall Street, banking, and insurance industries are symptomatic of a a pervasive mindset in which administrators and technocrats shape their enterprises to conform to the interests of the stock holders rather than the products or customers. In the not for profit arts world this would be the private and public funders over the arts (seen as an expense rather than an asset) and the audience (the public). The artists are asked to do more and more for less and less while administrative and managerial ranks swell, so-called infra structure.
Arts organizations need to adopt the new transparency that we are now going to require of the financial sector.
The WPA paid artists to create works, visual, literary, and performance, across the United States; the Carter administration did so successfully as well with its CETA program.
Art comes from artists, not organizations, we should watch where the funding goes.

[beaupritchard]

I like this idea ... since I was in the sevice every town I visit for any length of time I make a point of going to the art museum. Art museum say a lot about a community ... I mean just the fact that they have one means something.

[Christian]

I have been creating oil paintings for galleries and commissioned portraits for 35 years, never did anything else for a living. The art market for the mass volume of painters and other artists working alone in their studios around the country, dried up over a year ago and currently the gallery industry is frozen dead. We can't get unemployment when this happens, many are on the streets now. Still, getting government involved will not help us guys in the trenches, it will go to art organizations and they do not help us bring good art products to market. It would only be welfare for the arts, not the artists. I'm for intervention in the automotive industry and for most times when it will effect the markets directly, but giving money to the arts will go to a few big art organizations like orchestras and museums and community art clubs with projects. Better to spend the money in the school system and bring back art for students. This is about products and sales, that is what gives the artists the freedom to be an artist. Government can only help by giving us a booming economy unless you know a better way to get people back into the art galleries and buying art.

[carrieanna]

Right on! Whenever I walk through the State Fair of Texas grounds in Dallas, I see the amazing architecture and painting done by WPA projects during the Great Depression. The beauty and handiwork would not likely have been paid for by a regular corporation, only interested in a quick, cheap building. And it is a way for me to connect with an older generation's ideas.

Now would be a great time for our citizens to imbue our roads and buildings with our concept of beauty for future generations.

[ndem]

Can we please have a Dept of Culture like every other country in the world?

[Shaddup]

The re pugs don't believe in culture.