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At long last, Madison, Wis., is poised to get a new central library branch.  Although the current building dates only to 1965, it's a pretty bleak, worn space.  I'm glad to see the city move ahead with this, especially in a tough economy.

But there's one aspect of the planning that's uncertain and quite troubling.  A mural by the regionalist Aaron Bohrod, a former WPA artist whose work was also featured in the pages of Life, Time and Look magazines, is in danger.  It's unclear if and how it will be preserved when the existing library is demolished.

For details, see Jay Rath's Nov. 13 article in Isthmus, "Will the Aaron Bohrod mural at the downtown Madison library survive?"  As Jay notes, a John Steuart Curry work elsewhere in town (on the UW campus) is being preserved amid construction.  Curry's gig as artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (in the College of Agriculture, no less) was the first time any university had set up such an arrangement.

It would be a great shame if, as Madison moves ahead with one worthy cultural goal, it lets another one--preserving our heritage--fall by the wayside.

Who couldn't use a little good news these days?  With that in mind, here's a smattering of positive arts news from Wisconsin, albeit an incomplete one.  Feel free to share your own good news in the comments area below.

• The Milwaukee Ballet recently received a $1 million gift from the Dohmen Family Foundation, and its school has become fully accredited by the National Association of Schools of Dance.
• Spring Green's American Players Theatre, a classical repertory company, opened its second stage this year.  The 200-seat, indoor Touchstone Theatre now complements APT's main stage, a 1,148-seat outdoor amphitheater.  Ticket income for the 2009 season was up 1% over the previous year, despite a smaller patron base of just over 101,000 attendees.  Some Touchstone shows were so successful (like Jim DeVita's one-man show, an adaptation of Ian McKellen's Acting Shakespeare) that extra performances were added.
• The Wisconsin Book Festival, which took place in Madison Oct. 7 to 11, was once again a splendid event.  Presenting authors ranged from Wisconsin residents with national profiles (Jane Hamilton, Lorrie Moore) to comix legends Harvey Pekar and Lynda Barry to thinkers like Wendell Berry.  Events are typically packed by grateful audiences--all events are offered to the public free of charge by our state humanities council.
• While the Madison Repertory Theatre folded earlier this year--very sadly, in the midst of its fortieth anniversary season--new professional companies are starting up in an attempt to fill the void.  (While Madison has dozens of community theater companies, the Rep's closing left a hole in the professional sphere.)  One I'm excited about is Forward Theater Company, which will stage the first production of Christopher Durang's Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them outside of New York.  As Jennifer Uphoff Gray, Forward's artistic director, told me in a story for Isthmus, "We reached out to Chris Durang directly. He actually responded the next day and was really supportive. He said, 'Oh, I had heard about the [closing of the] Rep,' and he was really upset about it."  We need timely, provocative, professional theater here, and I'm glad there are people willing to fill that need.

Using a box of Froot Loops and some Go-Gurt as props, Michael Pollan--looking natty in a sportcoat and tennis shoes--spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of about 7,000 people last week at the University of Wisconsin's Kohl Center.  Not too shabby for a weeknight author event.

 

Yet I wasn't surprised in the least by the turnout:  here in Wisconsin, food matters.  As Pollan noted, the state has been on the leading edge of current issues surrounding food, and he wasn't just trying to curry favor with us cheeseheads.  From farmers' markets to urban farming (like Will Allen's Growing Power) to CSAs to larger debates about food policy, people in Wisconsin care about food, even if we don't all agree on the best way to produce it.

 

As one of the speakers introducing Pollan noted, about 10% of Wisconsinites work in agriculture-related jobs.  While no one in my family farms anymore, my grandparents (now both deceased) raised hogs and Angus beef cattle.  My aunt and uncle ran a family dairy farm and still live on that land.  As for me, I don't even garden and hay makes me sneeze like you can't believe--but I'm truly proud of the farming my family members have done.  Farming is physically demanding and financially risky.  If you like to eat, you should appreciate what farmers do.

 

But back to Pollan:  part of what I appreciate about both his book and his talk at the UW is the way in which culture has not been left out of the equation.  In fact, one of the big drivers behind Pollan's Madison visit was the UW's Center for the Humanities.  I believe they had already lined him up as a speaker for their "Humanities without Boundaries" series even before the UW at large selected the splendid In Defense of Food:  An Eater's Manifesto as the inaugural book in its new "Go Big Read" campus-wide reading program.

 

Just as food is a big part of Wisconsin's economy, it's a major part of our cultural heritage.  It helps us define who we are, from grass-fed beef and wholesome CSA produce to the more indulgent side of things:  brats, cheese and local beer.  While Pollan may tick off some food scientists and nutritionists (two professions he has taken to task), he does underscore a simple and oft-forgotten message:  before we turned food into a medical and scientific minefield, it was simply a part of life.  Kudos to Pollan for being one of the voices reclaiming food's rightful place as a part of culture and daily pleasure.

 

Local visual artists have also engaged in food-related issues.  I still remember an excellent show the James Watrous Gallery of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters did on the theme of farming in 2007, "Wisconsin's People on the Land" (my review is archived here).  And, timed to coincide with Pollan's multi-day stint in Madison this month, the local artists' group artsTRIBE exhibited at this year's "Food for Thought" festival, which also featured Pollan.

 

While I've never been completely disconnected from my food, Pollan has inspired me to make the extra effort to buy local food more frequently and do "real" cooking more often.  (Yet I'll never, ever, give up the occasional donut; life would no longer be worth living.)  It's not just about me and my health or quality of life--it's about being invested in this place where I live, in many senses of that word.

If you live in the Midwest--and especially if you live in Madison, Wis., as I do--one of the most curious things about following coverage of author Lorrie Moore is what that coverage reveals about attitudes towards this region.  Moore, whose long-awaited new novel just came out, has lived here since 1984, when she joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

I covered A Gate at the Stairs, the new novel, for this week's issue of Isthmus, Madison's alternative weekly, and this aspect of her critical reception is one topic I tried to address (with regard to her previous books).  In a nutshell, too many reviewers have cast her in the role of pithy, coastal intellectual trapped in a land of corn and slow-witted people.  (Just one example:  Ploughshares commented that "the predicaments of East Coast sophisticates landlocked in the Midwest" is a theme in her work, and implied it about Moore as well.)  This has become a cliché that Moore herself is tired of (see her quotes in my article).

 

It's that same sort of attitude that led my co-bloggers and I to somewhat sarcastically call this blog "Flyover"--so you can imagine my amusement when Michiko Kakutani wrote unironically in the New York Times that "[Moore] gives us bright, digital snapshots of flyover country where nearly every small town has a local Dairy Queen..." (something Kakutani apparently finds exotic and noteworthy). 

 

Jonathan Lethem's piece for the NYT also touches upon similar territory.  Rather puzzlingly, he wrote that "Moore's class diagnostics are so exact she can make us feel the uneasiness not only between town and country in a single landlocked state, but between different types of farmers on neighboring plots."  This comment tells me more about Lethem than Moore.

 

Lorrie Moore certainly has her laser-like descriptive gifts, but being able to distinguish in a work of fiction between a Madison-like college town and a rural community is not an extravagant feat.  The differences are obvious, as are the ones between a boutique farmer of gourmet potatoes and a big commercial operation.  Would Lethem be impressed if someone could tell the difference between a yuppie-ish college town in New York and an upstate farming community?  (I won't even get into Lethem's description of Wisconsin as "landlocked," but he might want to look at a map of the Great Lakes.)

 

For my part, I found A Gate at the Stairs problematic and not entirely satisfying, even though there are plenty of things to like about it.  Not only are the differences between the fictional towns of Troy and Dellacrosse obvious, they're on the verge of hardening into stereotypes (as I wrote in Isthmus, "we're left with fairly stereotypical impressions of a hick rural hamlet and a navel-gazing, lefty college town").  I also thought, as one example, that Tassie's inexperience with things as commonplace as Chinese food--especially given her worldly parents and growing up near a college town--was implausible.  Do these people never go anywhere?

 

It's great when a Wisconsin writer--and after 25 years here, I think Moore qualifies as such--is also a writer of national and international stature.  There are a number of outstanding people here:  Jane Hamilton, Michael Perry, kids' author Kevin Henkes.  Just don't look so surprised, OK?

Kennedy Center chief Michael Kaiser stopped in Madison earlier this week on his "Arts in Crisis" speaking tour.  (For coverage, see my article for Isthmus, as well as pieces in 77 Square and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).  Artful Manager blogger Andrew Taylor (director of the UW-Madison's Bolz Center for Arts Administration) moderated the conversation.  For video of Kaiser's Madison appearance, visit WisconsinEye.

 

While there were many points that could be isolated for further discussion, one crucial theme was the need for arts organization to think big and not play it safe with their programming, despite the dismal economic climate.  "If we all do Phantom of the Opera and Cats, it will be incredibly boring," Kaiser chuckled.

 

In that vein, I was interested in what an online commenter had to say in response to Lindsay Christians' 77 Square story about the event.  (I encourage you to hop over there and read it, since I don't want to risk breaching online etiquette by re-running the whole thing here.)  This nugget in particular (from the commenter "Woody") leapt out at me:  "Ballet companies have succeeded in teaching their audiences that The Nutcracker is the only ballet in the repertoire and thus that ballet is only meant for kids."

 

This speaks to a larger issue:  when is something a beloved local tradition and therefore valuable, and when has it become stale?

In Madison, as in countless other cities, you're guaranteed to find at least one Nutcracker each holiday season, as well as a stage version of A Christmas Carol.  You could see this negatively as a tired re-hashing of the same programming each season (though, admittedly, good companies seek ways of freshening up the productions).

On the positive side, you could see this--especially where kids are concerned--as a natural, easy introduction to the world of the performing arts.  One might hope that families that have a good time at Nutcracker or Carol will seek out other performances on the season schedule.

 

In fact, the 77 Square commenter makes the somewhat contradictory point that Nutcracker winds up subsidizing the rest of a company's season.  So which is it:  Nutcracker drives people away with its mind-numbing repetition, or it's a popular, commercial success that helps companies remain stable enough to offer less familiar fare during the rest of the season?

 

What's your take?  Is there a place for an annual production of something as a beloved tradition?  Or is that regularity, that "oh-here-it-is-again" quality stultifying?

 

I come at the arts primarily from a visual-art background, where this issue doesn't crop up in the same way (yes, you have Biennials, Triennials, etc., but you're not literally showing the same art each time).  In the performing arts, do you feel that tradition is in conflict with innovation, or can they co-exist peacefully?

Now that the election is over, the object of my obsessing has shifted from presidential politics to the disarray of the global economy. From the macro to the micro, stories about the economy dominate the news. While I read quite a lot of personal finance stories and have an affection for the fabulously weird Suze Orman, I don't generally read actual, y'know, books on economic matters.

Yet I was intrigued by an interview I heard this past June on Wisconsin Public Radio (which you can stream online via this link or, if that ever fails, search the online story archives) with Nan Mooney, author of (Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class, which came out earlier this year from Beacon Press. Now, a few months later, I've finally gotten around to reading Mooney's book.

Mooney's topic will, I imagine, be of interest to lots of ArtsJournal readers since her focus is on the economic straits of what she dubs the "educated professional middle class." These are white-collar workers whose jobs require at least a bachelor's, if not a master's or PhD, and are in--as Mooney phrased it in her WPR interview--"professions that, oftentimes, got you more moral prestige than financial rewards," such as journalism, nonprofit work and the arts.

While Mooney has interviewed a large number of subjects of different ages, her perspective, as someone born in 1970, seems very much of a piece with the Generation X mindset. X-ers have had to come to terms with a climate in which the value of a four-year degree has shrunk, making it, in many cases, akin to a high-school diploma for previous generations.

Yet Mooney's central point is that the sharp rise in fixed, necessary costs such as health care premiums is eroding the already modest salaries of teachers, social workers and the like. While I found some of her anecdotes a little lacking (such as a Chicago couple with a combined income of $93K and a home purchased for $179K; that doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me), the book makes for interesting reading.

I'm also glad to see Mooney discard the tired "latte myth," one of those irritating little tidbits that seems to make it into every magazine personal-finance story (and which I heard Matt Lauer recycle just this morning on NBC's Today). The idea is that if you cut out your $3 or $4 latte every day and plunk the money into a savings account, a worthwhile amount will rack up by the end of the year. As Mooney writes:

This may be useful advice to some degree, but it's hard to imagine that saving a few dollars here and there will ever add up to a home of your own... The only thing this theory seems to accomplish is making us feel guilty for enjoying small pleasures, when we definitely can't afford the larger ones. Forgoing a fancy cup of coffee can't ameliorate the fact that wages have stagnated and the cost of most major items has risen.

I'm all for economizing and limiting frivolous expenses (I can't help it; I grew up in a middle-class but ultra-frugal family), but I think Mooney makes a great point. This trite latte example, which we've heard over and over, doesn't address the fact that the level of consumer spending hasn't really gone up since the 1970s, but fixed costs have risen and wages have stagnated. There's more at work here than occasional self-indulgence.

While I have quibbles with some aspects of this book, I think it's a useful counterbalance to the rosy picture painted by Richard Florida's much-hyped The Rise of the Creative Class, which made it seem as if the creative and well-educated were endlessly in demand and could write their own tickets in terms of where to live and work. I always found it strange that Florida lumped together hairdressers and more highly paid types like software developers. Income level was simply glossed over.

If these sorts of issues intrigue you, I recommend listening to Nan Mooney's Wisconsin Public Radio interview with host Joy Cardin or reading her book. While I'm sure some will deride her as a whiner (and I'll admit I found some of her interviewees unsympathetic), she raises worthwhile questions about how certain professions are valued and where we're headed in the future, especially for those with children. I'll close with another excerpt:

If we feel torn between money and values, imagine the pressures our financial anxieties will place on our kids now and in the future... How fully do we propagate those ideals that left so many of us disenchanted: the sense of entitlement, the idea that hard work and fair play will automatically get you somewhere, the virtues of meaningful work, generosity of spirit and a life of the mind? Much as we might relish having grown up in an era where possibility was the watchword, can we say we're responsible parents if we encourage our children to do as we did, bypass financial security and focus on following their dreams?

On Tuesday night, I had the pleasure of reviewing "Avenue Q" at Madison's Overture Center for the Arts.  It was a lot of fun and I was pleased to see that the house looked quite full, especially with younger audience members.  But, as well all know in this lousy economy, many things are not so rosy.  The Overture Center is dealing with financial difficulties precipitated in no small part by the stock market's gyrations, and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra's musicians are in a labor dispute with management.  (The WCO is one of several resident arts groups that use the Overture Center facility.)  While this has been going on for a while, I was reminded of it anew by the musicians picketing outside the arts complex Tuesday evening.

Performances have already been missed, and the WCO's upcoming Halloween concert has also been canceled.  Since I generally don't write about classical music, I don't have any particular commentary to add to what's already been written; I'm blogging this simply to bring it to the attention of ArtsJournal readers.  So, to that end, here are some links if you're interested:

"WCO musicians and management engage in bitter public battle," Wisconsin State Journal, 10/23/08

Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra official site (with statements from management)

WCO musicians' blog, with commentary on the strike

Wow. It's hard to get back into blogging after an unexpectedly long hiatus. But, since fall is a time of renewal (at least for me), I thought I'd jump back in. The first leaves are starting to turn red and gold here in the Great Lakes region and I'll admit it's hard to truly focus on the arts with the looming election and global economic crisis. But I'll give it a shot...

One of the biggest cultural happenings is the opening of a new George Segal exhibition at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA). The show, organized by MMoCA, heads to Dallas, Kansas City, Mo., and West Palm Beach, Fla., after its run here ends in December. The show represents quite a coup for MMoCA in that a cast of "Depression Bread Line," which Segal did for the FDR Memorial in Washington, will head back to Madison and join the museum's permanent collection after the show is over. For preview coverage, see Isthmus, 77 Square or the Wisconsin State Journal. My review will appear in Isthmus later this week. I've been told the show will also be covered by the Wall Street Journal and Art in America, but I'm not sure when those articles will appear.

Madison's only professional theater company, Madison Repertory Theatre, opens its season this week with Becky Mode's "Fully Committed." The Chicago actress Amy J. Carle, who has performed with Madison Rep before, stars. I'm looking forward to seeing her again, since she was one of the best things about Madison Rep's production of "The Diary of Anne Frank" this past January. "Fully Committed" looks like fluffy fun, but we'll see.

This 40th anniversary year is an important one for Madison Rep. Former artistic director Richard Corley's contract was not renewed near the end of last season. While it sounds as though he and the board made a mutual decision to part ways, I can't help but wonder--and this is my own personal musing here--if he was blamed for not getting enough butts in seats. Which begs the question, who really is getting enough audience members in these tough economic times? And how will Madison Rep's direction change under its interim artistic director? The season's choices seem pretty safe (including well-known fare like "Bus Stop," "True West" and "My Fair Lady"), but of course the proof will be in the pudding.

Under Corley's tenure, I saw a few shows that I'd file in my "all-time most memorable" category, such as "I Am My Own Wife" starring David Adkins and "Permanent Collection" with a more local cast, including UW-Madison professor Patrick Sims.

About 45 minutes west of Madison in Spring Green, classical repertory theater American Players Theatre is winding down its season. I had a chance to catch a Sunday evening show of George Bernard Shaw's "Widowers' Houses," which didn't knock my socks off but was still enjoyable (as far as Shaw goes, I preferred APT's production of "Misalliance" two summers ago). APT is an outdoor theater in the woods and, when the weather cooperates, it's fabulous. Other times, it's, um, challenging--as it was Sunday. Light rain started almost as soon as the show did and got heavier throughout the play. Luckily, I had a tacky-but-useful plastic poncho so the rain didn't faze me too much, but it did halt the show temporarily at one point. That, coupled with two intermissions, broke up the flow of the play, but there was a sort of camaraderie between the audience members who stuck it out and the actors. In its own weird way, it was a fitting and fun end-of-summer experience--rain, swooping bats and all.

I had to laugh out loud when, after a brilliant "Daily Show" segment on Sen. Barack Obama's speech on race, Jon Stewart dropped the yuks for a moment and said (to paraphrase): "And so it is that a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race as if they were adults." Stewart hit the nail on the head. Although I haven't had a chance to watch Obama's speech in its entirety yet, from what I have seen, it was an honest, direct and nuanced attempt to grapple with a complex problem.

All of this leads me to something I had meant to blog about a couple of weeks ago, when I saw a preview performance of Madison Repertory Theatre's current show, Thomas Gibbons' "Permanent Collection." The show blends art-world and racial politics as Sterling North, a black corporate exec, takes on the directorship of the Morris Foundation, which houses a priceless collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, as well as some little-displayed African art. North's desire to incorporate more of the African pieces into the displays rankles the museum's white director of education, and controversy ensues.

After the preview-night show, I felt invigorated in way that, frankly, I rarely do when leaving the theater. Sure, there are good plays to be seen in Madison, but this seemed to me an almost perfect blend of entertainment with meaty ideas. The production was fiery, at times funny and offered characters with real moral complexity. It's a play on race and culture that treats the audience as if they were adults, capable of seeing the merits of each character's position from shifting angles.

I was previously unfamiliar with this play, and I'm glad Madison Rep chose to make it a part of its season. Madison is a changing city but its older generations - you know, the people who are more likely to go to professional theater - are largely white. We like to think of ourselves as an enlightened, progressive place, and to a good extent I think Madison is, but anyone who doesn't believe that they have blind spots regarding race is probably fooling themselves. In that way, I thought Madison's Rep choice of this play was especially well suited to its community. Being entertained and being made to think - in equal measure - is, for me at least, a perfect night at the theater. And if art, as well as political speeches, can move forward our national dialogue on race, I think this is the sort of play that can accomplish that.

For some local reviews of Madison Repertory Theatre's production of "Permanent Collection," see Isthmus, the Capital Times and the Wisconsin State Journal. The show runs through March 30 at the Overture Center for the Arts.

Tomorrow, March 5, is Arts Day here in Wisconsin. It's an annual event organized by Arts Wisconsin, a statewide arts advocacy group. Although it works closely with our state Arts Board, it is an independent organization. Part of the goal of Arts Day is to get Wisconsin's artists, arts administrators, educators, etc. together with state legislators. Legislators are unlikely to fund what they don't even know about, and they need to know about what their constituents are doing. Arts Day is spearheaded by the vocal, passionate and determined Anne Katz, and I've asked Anne to do a guest post one of these days to talk about the role of arts advocacy from her perspective.

Arts advocates have had some recent successes here in Wisconsin, one of which is the passage of tax breaks for films (and other forms of entertainment) made in Wisconsin. While the knee-jerk liberal in me typically views any sort of corporate tax break with suspicion, I think this is great news. We've lagged behind nearby states in this regard, losing potential business to them. The first major film to be shot here, after the tax incentives took effect on Jan. 1, is "Public Enemies," based on Bryan Burrough's book about John Dillinger and starring Johnny Depp, Marion Cotillard (whee!) and Christian Bale. UW-Madison graduate Michael Mann will direct.

According to the AP, the film company plans to spend about $20 million in Wisconsin and will earn about $3.9 million in tax credits.

While Wisconsin's Arts Day will no doubt touch upon these sorts of large-scale economic issues, the overall vibe is much more local and grassroots, and the arguments put forth in favor of the arts are certainly not all based on dollars. Rather, it's a time for anyone who cares about the arts and arts funding to have a say based on what is most important to them -- and it's a challenge to all of us to try to become arts advocates in some form throughout the year, not just one day in March.