What The Country Needs Is A New Message About The Arts

The Fine Arts Fund should be commended for trying to re-frame the discussion of the relationship of arts to community quality. From a PR and messaging standpoint, changing the discussion is a long-term process because it entails persuading people to adopt new reference markers (i.e., changing their perception that arts equate with entertainment).

I think the Fine Arts Fund's findings are incredibly valuable for our field. I don't agree with the conclusion that we therefore need to change these truths: arts are seen as entertainment, they are not a public responsibility, and they are low priority. It is an incredible challenge to change the perceptions of an entire country. What if as leaders of organizations we simply accept these constraints and ask ourselves, "How do we run our organizations to succeed in this context? What offerings do we create that work in this environment?" We can spend an incredible amount of money, time, and energy trying to change perceptions ("Got art?") or we can serve the real market that is out there, and win support by creating experiences that are valued.

Jim

If even museum trustees tend to ask museum directors to sell artworks to support supposedly-vital museum programs, you can just imagine politicians' skepticism toward directors requesting more government funding in the face of current public attitudes ably documented by the Fine Arts Fund. Perhaps a new message will indeed change those attitudes, but that bet's both risky and remote for museums boards across America that now face nearly universal cutbacks and the prospect of rapidly rising closures.

In fact those programs truly are vital, but you can't blame the trustees and politicians for wondering a bit when the professional associations insist that death with dignity is far preferable to deaccession and dishonor -- a point the need for your arbitrated deaccessions plan illustrates.

So far FASB 116 and uncapitalized collections have mostly kept a lid on debates over existing government support for the arts, but if politicians and the public widely knew what trustees already know about all the money that's sat in basements for years without seeing the light of day, much less the enormous fortunes hanging on the walls, you might see some pretty strong sentiment for cutbacks. These days those appropriations might better head off hunger and disease than ennui and alienation.

Rather than hoping the right spin will increase the arts' share of declining public and private discretionary budgets, museum trustees and directors need to decide whether their programs are worth saving right now with financial value held idle in their mortmain model. If a few deaccessions can make the difference between survival and death for a museum, mobilizing the collection's financial value more fully could fund a substantial increase in programs -- spending that could help the national economy.

If growing museum programs now meant a lot of deaccessions, a survival diet would make more sense. But these days partial title systems like the Maroney plan and my own Coaccession method can let a museum have its Monet and money, too. Generations of philanthropists have endowed major art museums with some of the best financial investments of the past century, turning them into repositories of a significant share of the national wealth as well as its culture. Mobilizing that financial value in this cultural crisis doesn't risk our cultural heritage nearly as much as does leaving it idle while hoping, perhaps vainly, for better attitudes and better days.

Museum directors like the fundraising argument that exposure to the arts and sciences stimulates the innovation that enhances the nation's wealth and wellbeing. Why, then, doesn't the impetus for financial innovations that can strengthen our cultural legacy come from inside our museums? Artworks can support the arts, so why do the arts lack support? Those allocating public moneys may ask.

Dr. Mark White -- Coaccession - at - gmail.com