{"id":1053,"date":"2007-06-07T09:02:46","date_gmt":"2007-06-07T16:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2007\/06\/whats_not_to_love_about_amateu\/"},"modified":"2007-06-07T09:02:46","modified_gmt":"2007-06-07T16:02:46","slug":"whats_not_to_love_about_amateu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/whats_not_to_love_about_amateu.php","title":{"rendered":"What’s not to love about amateurs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

John von Rhein offers a lovely little essay<\/a> in the Chicago Tribune<\/i> about the strange disdain the professional cultural world has for ”amateurs.” These are people who play for the love of the music, he says, adding the barb: ”How many ‘professional’ musicians truly delight in the music they are paid to produce?”<\/p>\n

Well, a lot, actually. But he makes a larger point. The rise of the professional arts in the past 50 years seems to have downgraded those who play for the love of it, rather than for pay. Perhaps the emerging professional nonprofit industry needed to distinguish itself from the community groups that came before. Perhaps our high ideals about what ”high art” was supposed to be in a cold war era made us a bit hyperbolic. <\/p>\n

Whatever the reason, the gap between the amateur and professional is one of the most troubling and damaging elements of our current cultural landscape. And fostering that gap is one of the dumbest moves for an industry struggling to reclaim relevance, connection, and meaning. Says von Rhein:<\/p>\n


\nMusicians who play for love rather than money can teach even jaded ears something vital about what it means to make and experience music. They are one reason classical music remains a living art.
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John von Rhein offers a lovely little essay in the Chicago Tribune about the strange disdain the professional cultural world has for ”amateurs.” These are people who play for the love of the music, he says, adding the barb: ”How many ‘professional’ musicians truly delight in the music they are paid to produce?” Well, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}