Obama, the Arts, and Soft Power
As never before, in this century of instant communication and the dissemination of information, it is the culture of a people, of a nation that projects its influence and its standing throughout the world. Yes, armaments and weaponry still count, as does economic might, but who we are and what are our values are will have far greater impact in the minds of friend and adversary alike. And it is our art, our culture of today, playwrights and actors, our song writers and musicians, our choreographers and dancers, our poets and writers, our artists and museum curators, our filmmakers and our art visionaries of every kind. This is the America the world is keenly interested in learning more about, hearing, seeing, feeling, experiencing. It is also one of our great strengths. This is a talented and gifted land with vast reservoirs of energy to create and dream.
And yet we have used this enormous potential of defining to others who we are only haltingly and too often with only the most reluctant advocacy. The role of government support for the arts in our society has always been an open question, debated but never fully resolved.
In Senator Obama's opinion it appears the arts have become essential to reengage our standing in the world. According to an article in Bloomberg, he is the first White House contender to include a far- reaching arts-plank in his platform. Quoting Robert Lynch, president and chief executive officer of "Americans for the Arts" a highly respected Washington based arts advocacy group, "no presidential candidate in recent times has addressed cultural issues in such detail." As early as the spring of 2007 Obama brought together a committee of arts and arts professionals including such luminaries as Hollywood producer George Stevens, novelist Michael Chabon, Broadway director Hal Prince, Museum of Modern Art president emerita Agnes Gund, to focus on this issue.
By contrast the article advises that John McCain has consistently voted for cuts in the National Endowment for the Arts (the NEA) budget, saying that funding for the arts is a local matter.
As a former member of the National Council for the Arts I have always been struck by the paucity of interest and support our government gives to the arts, potentially our greatest source of soft power. An example: our budget for the NEA in fiscal 2008
is $144.7 million dollars. France's Ministry of Culture at the same time has a budget of E3 billion or $3.75 billion. Our population is some five times greater than France's so that on the basis of French governmental support to its artists and art's community were we in the same proportional measure our arts budget would be $18.25 billion. France's Ministry of Culture's mission is understandably somewhat broader than the NEA's. But here we are not comparing apples to oranges. Perhaps oranges to tangerines. And not all examples from France are bad. Remember Lafayette!
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I have always thought of myself as a colorist/painter.
I am so happy to imagine those two beautiful black girls in that big white house.
It is through the arts that we, as a nation, express our souls. By cutting off funding to the arts, we are, indeed, stifling ourselves in more ways than just speech. We take the role of art and the artist for granted.
The kind of clothes, cares, homes we buy? An artist designed that. A song, a movie, a book that inspired us through difficult times? An artist was behind that! Don't forget it.
First off, When was it that the world LOVED the United States?
I don't think it's ever happened, even after WWII, so getting back to there shouldn't be a problem.
Second, I think the words GOVERNMENT and ART should never go together.
Do we want Government sponsorship of the arts?
If yes then how do I get my hands on some of that Government gravy train money?
We spend $144 million a year on Government art?
My god, what a waste!
Imagine a world without publicly funded art.Think about this carefully.
No museums. No orchestras. No public art, including sculpture in honor of our veterans. No opera. No ballet. No community theater. How often do you go to concerts or movies ? Do you know what inspires great songwriters or filmmakers? The work of other artists. Many of which are publicly funded. Those songwriters and filmmakers who are inspired by public art, generate millions of dollars in tax revenue for our ailing economy.
Maybe you don't enjoy things like museums or orchestras. That's fine. But, I pay for other things that you may enjoy, like sports. How much money does the government spend each year on sporting arenas, on stadiums? More than $144 million. Being a citizen means paying for services that you don't use. For example, I don't have children but my tax dollars pay for the construction and maintenance of playgrounds.
Art is what makes life worth living. If not then we are all just drones shuffling back and forth to our jobs, without art to provide us with entertainment or to stimulate our intellect.
My problem with Government sponsored art is the Government part.
HOW do they decide who gets this money?
We have multi million dollar museums filled with Government sponsored crap and no mistake.
If you think we should spend over $100 million bucks a year on arbitrary "art", I think you are a fool and once again HOW do I get my hands on this multi million dollar gravy train?
This "art" black hole is just ONE area that our Government blows money stupidly. I could make a real LONG list of Government waste with our cash.
Can't you?
Thanks, Strawberryjulius. I am a Dem living in NC, and can tell you that this is the most boring, uninspiring places I've ever lived - a place where just the mention of the words "art" or "artist" is looked upon with so much suspicion, that a famous international artist was run out of town for proposing to build a rather innocuous public fountain that the locals couldn't agree on. Basically, Right-wing Christians think that all artists except for Norman Rockwell should be done away with. Welcome to Nazi Germany circa 2008! Aaarrrgh and ZZZzzzzzz!!!
strawberryjulius
Right on!
"We spend $144 million a year on Government art?
My god, what a waste!"
$223 million of Federal money for the Gravina Island "Bridge to Nowhere" that was then kept by Alaska for other programs.
$325 million in public financing by the city of Arlington for the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium (thought I'd throw that in for comparison
over $1 Billion of Federal money wasted by Bush on abstinence-only education that has proven a dismal failure.
$144 million doesn't seem so bad now, does it?
Bravo, Emmory, I couldn't have said it better myself (although I tried; see my post above)
This is the first reason I'm happy to see the Bush Administration go. They hit me where I live.
support of the arts would be a welcome breath of desperately needed fresh air. a chance at long last to express our humanity, instead of the inhumanity of the past eight years.
fdr's support of the arts through his wpa project produced some of this nation's greatest music, literature, plays, poetry, architecture, painting, every conceivable form of artistic expression. it allowed us like no other time to create a national voice, and discover ourselves as a people.
how wonderful for us to be able to do that again. as a classical musician myself, i am speechless with happiness at the prospect of this. if we can manage to reconnect with each other through art, just imagine all the wonderful things we can do as a nation, together, to reconnect with the world at large.
Yes, I htink Obama will be good for the arts and agree with you. Hopefully there will be some money left out there to support the arts.
Apart from Jimmy Carter's poetry, I have not sensed any serious interests in the arts in the White House since Jacky Kennedy hung out with Pablo Casals. The result is that we are now even farther behind in the arts than we are in health care, education, technology and infrastructure. The problem is always finding the right mix between the middle-brow culture types, the commercial arts/entertainment types, and artists who are doing serious new work in music, theater, dance and visual arts media, including (dare I say it) people who might be considered avant-garde. If orchestras that play Beethoven are dying for lack of support, they certainly need and deserve it. If Hollywood types (and guess what? I'm one of them) are the best cultural ambassadors, then they should probably have a role. But let's not forget supporting the creation of new work by young artists with new things to say, and let's give those young artists a forum to bring their work to the public domestically and internationally. Sometimes one gets the feel that the NEA and NEH have tastes similar to the 50-year-old plus art-consumer demographic. Hopefully Obama will bring some new blood.
Two things:
1) If you see a post that is wildly off-topic and blatantly provocative, consider that it just MIGHT not be sincere.
Don't let your buttons get pushed!
2) Mr. Learsy, I couldn't agree more. I'm a Zen poet in Washington state. The annual stipend for our state poet laureate is less than what I got from Employment Security as a laid-off house-painter: $200/week. Is that some kind of sick joke?
Our national poet laureate gets a stipend of all of $35K a year. 'Nuff said.
as an artist based in the US I have had to earn a living in Europe as a composer because there is no financial support or interest for incubating the arts here.
The US is slowly choking off meaningful and interesting culture yet exports Hollywood tripe in boatloads.
Sad that we impoverish the creators and reward the war mongers.
We have the choice between an Obama Nation and an Abomination. ..........
http://the
Thanks for the thoughtful article.
What strikes me is that the memory of Lafayette didn't help to keep Kerry safe from the French Fries assault.
Well, let's just call it a day and be glad that all the swiftboating in the world won't make any of the 'patriotism' charges raised by McCain stick. Just so lousy.
Sorry for New York artists, by the way. Tough times ahead with the buy-side laid off.
Hey! Whatabout the artists in Maine.....
We have the same famed light as the French Riviera, that inspired the Impressionists.
( NO fries) & across the rest of the country
Ouch! I had forgotten about the Freedom Fries embarrassment. Had those Congressional 9compoops never visited Yorktown not too far down the road from the Capitol?
The way I saw it, since they replaced the French with Freedom I figured that it meant
French = Freedom. It is the French who have as their official mantra
egalite', fraternite, liberte' (forgive the spelling) which means equality, community and freedom.
Let's not forget the Statue of Liberty!
The decline in American interest in the arts has been paralleled by an overall coarsening of our society. We, as a people, lack grace and subtlety.
Lack of grace, subtlety is an understatement. American culture of the past 50 or so years has been the playground of what Frank Zappa called "the reasonable well-groomed consumer ameoba", trained in schools that funnel children toward becoming uncreative drones, corporate cannon fodder.
Support for the arts must include hands on education and restoration of all the school programs that were cut and replaced with gym classes- my 5th grade daughter in public school has art and music once a week (lucky to be in a school system that still has ANY art and music) but gym three times a week.
Will actual musicians take back the entertainment industry from the belly button pierced aerobic boys and girls who 'sing' through autotune and have spent more time in one day at the gym than in their entire lives practing an instrument? Stay tuned!
I am appalled that the funding for the arts always seems to be the first thing to go. This is so important in our culture as a rounding of the person. I was delighted when I visited my granddaughter's elementary school and saw that the walls of every corridor were lined with drawings, compositions and evidence that these kids weren't being taught everything by rote. They participated in an amazing drama project where a troupe from Montana came into Las Vegas, selected the students who would act in a play about Robinson Crusoe and his guy Saturday, not Friday.
In one week these kids learned their parts and put on a great little play. They are looking forward to the one for the following year. Please don't forget the importance of the arts -- it helps to create thinkers, not sheep.
For more of my humorous, irreverent comments on politics and just about anything you can think of, visit http://mys
'Nuff said. Sally Straight ---MyComments2
It's always this way with the fascists who have no respect or knowledge of art and its role in our culture and in our emotional and mental health. It is art that sets the soul to soar, even in, no, especially in difficult times. It elevates us and speaks to our finer selves. That is how Obama seeks to lead us out of this dark time in which we find ourselves.
He just keeps getting better.
For years I've been ranting about the short-sightedness of over-looking the arts. There are many virtues to the arts that have been touted for a long time: a richer culture, the arts improve cognitive skills, provide outlet for social interaction, etc. Well-worn claims, but still valid.
There is another angle on benefits of Governmental prioritization of arts programs, that is seldom mentioned. In the context of a world that has been overwhelmed by greed, a richer culture provides people with another source of wealth. I can only speak for myself, but as long as I have enough for the necessities, and as long as I have enough cultural activity in my life, I consider myself quite rich.
The short-sighted view is to see only dollars and cents: "How could any administration actually consider funding something as trivial as art when we are already in the middle of a financial crisis?" I won't pretend that there is no such crisis. But I do believe, and the recent credit crisis/bank bailout confirms this, that the issue is one of priorities. Wanna have a trillion-dollar war? They find the money. Wanna bail out the banks? No prob. The truth is, if the govt wanted to better/adequately fund the arts, they could. Sadly, they just don't, usually for political reasons.
How great would it be to have a President who realized this and did his (or her) best to foster the arts in a profound way?
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