Happy New Year!
I hope that everyone who visits Dewey21C had a lovely holiday. Me? I went off the work grid for a good ten days. It was a nice rendering of a professional “flat line.”
So, now, it’s back to work in 2010!
David Byrne, musician, composer, band leader, music label entrepreneur, etc., posted a blog on his web site in mid-December taking a look at excesses in spending among major arts institutions and proposed that the government portion of support for such institutions go to arts in schools instead. Byrne also made a pitch for creativity in schools, while asking for arts education to be a little less tied to the canon of “great works.”
A $14 million bailout for the opera is coming from the county, as the
LA city government is called. The opry folks need that $20 million this
week… so, reach into your pockets, opera fans. What makes this
situation notable is not the amount of money — movies often cost a lot
more than $32 million to produce — but the fact that the audience will
be so small, and that the state is footing part of the bill.
However this mess ends up, my thoughts are that maybe it’s time to
rethink all this museum, opera and symphony funding — and I refer
mainly to state funding. A bunch of LA museums just got a bailout from
LA real estate king Eli Broad, and that’s great, but I suspect there
will be county money involved there somewhere too. I think maybe it’s
time to stop, or more reasonably, curtail somewhat, state investment in
the past — in a bunch of dead guys (and they are mostly guys, and
mostly dead, when we look at opera halls) — and invest in our future.
Take that money, that $14 million from the city, for example, let some
of those palaces, ring cycles and temples close — forgo some of those
$32M operas — and fund music and art in our schools. Support ongoing
creativity in the arts, and not the ongoing glorification and rehashing
of the work of those dead guys. Not that works of the past aren’t
inspirational, important and relevant to future creativity — plenty of
dead people’s work is endlessly inspiring — but funding for arts in
schools has been cut to zero in many places. Maybe the balance and
perspective has to be redressed and restored just a little. Plus, there
are plenty of CDs and DVDs of the dead guys out there already, should
one be curious.
It’s an interesting thought. Let’s get
take the government support for art by “dead guys,” and give it to
school systems for arts education.
I sense that in the long run there is a greater value for humanity in
empowering folks to make and create than there is in teaching them the
canon, the great works and the masterpieces. In my opinion, it’s more
important that someone learn to make music, to draw, photograph, write
or create in any form than it is for them to understand and appreciate
Picasso, Warhol or Bill Shakespeare — to say nothing of opry. In the
long term it doesn’t matter if students become writers, artists or
musicians — though a few might. It’s more important that they are able
to understand the process of creation, experimentation and discovery —
which can then be applied to anything they do, as those processes, deep
down, are all similar. It’s an investment in fluorescence.
This is another interesting thought, one that I have had myself from time-to-time. The problem is, it comes from a terrible position or culture of scarcity. Is this the best we can demand for our kids??
I wonder if Mr. Byrne is considering this proposal only for art museums, symphony orchestras, opera companies, etc., you know, the major cultural organizations. Has he also considered that many of the organizations that present him also receive government support?
The amount of government support for arts in America is dwarfed by support for public education. Let’s look at a couple of yard sticks: the stimulus funding for the NEA totals $50 million dollars; the stimulus funding for the USDOE totals $100 billion. The budget for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs is over $120 million; the budget for the New York City Department of Education is over $18 billion.
The tiny budget of the NEA or NYSCA, relatively speaking, isn’t going to do very much up against the vastly larger education budgets of our public school systems.
Making it an “either or” situation exposes a bit of a tin ear for Byrne when it comes to the relationships between cultural organizations and public schools. Cultural organizations are part of the fabric of arts education in schools across America. Setting up a situation where you take away money from one to support the other would place cultural organizations at odds with schools.
As for Byrne’s point about “dead guys” versus living artists, it’s a bit of a mixed message, as opera companies employ living artists and art museums also exhibit works by living artists I gather he’s talking about repertoire. Opera companies, performing arts centers, symphony orchestras, etc., also commission and perform works by living artists, although the amount of this activity is in the distinct minority of what they present overall.
Okay, enough of my thoughts on the substance of David Byrne’s most recent blog. You get the point.
I do have to say that I love his blog overall (just not this entry!). It’s a wide ranging, big opinion type of blog from one of the more interesting artists of the past 25 years.
It’s great to see him take up this issue, the issue of arts education I mean, and while he is clearly well intentioned, I do so wish he was just a bit better informed.
I would love to get a bit of time with him to talk about the issue of competing interests in K-12 public education and the ways in which his desire to advocate for arts education could hit the right instead of wrong notes.
12 responses to “David Byrne Throws a Curveball for Arts Education”
At last David Byrne reveals his inner and deep thoughts and his special secret-he is an idiot. Dead guys indeed.
Traditional arts presenters vs. arts education? Why ferment conflict? The fact that we don’t adequately fund arts education doesn’t mean opera should be cut. Use agri-culture price supports and ‘correctional industries’ budgets to fund arts ed.
David Byrne is a genius and I thank him for speaking his mind. I am in total agreement We need to invest and look to the future
Your comparison of the arts budgets and the many other area of government funding draws an important distinction. Since 1965, we have developed a habit of thinking of arts funding as separate from social, economic, or environmental funding. In fact, the arts play a role in each of these areas of development. A conceptual shift in the approach to public funding is needed and arts leaders should be prepared to argue their cases among these much larger realms of influence.
Welcome back, Richard. The problem with Byrne’s argument is the zero sum game theory…that there’s only so much $$ and therefore it’s an either/or situation versus an “and also” opportunity…there’s no point in cutting the appreciation of the arts (of one’s arbitrary choice)to make room for creating the arts (of one’s arbitrary choice) because you end up still hurting the arts…nonsense.
Byrne’s comments sound sensible at first hearing. But the problem is that art is not created in a vacuum. It does no good to foster “creativity” in the younger generation if one impedes or curtails (via cuts in funding) that generation’s access to older streams of human creativity (music, visual arts, literature)…for that simply means that the dominant “market-forces” culture that surrounds young artists becomes an even more all-pervasive influence. One can tweak the balance of funding from time to time, but a society cannot separate support for arts education from support for performing arts institutions or museums or theaters or the like.
Sounds like John Carey in What Good Are The Arts? (a very honest question by the author, not a sarcastic one)
I think Mr. Byrne has good points here, in that it’s much more vital for society to first promote participation in and first-hand understanding of the arts, with promoting participation in audiences for professional art being second on the priority list. They aren’t opposed to each other at all.
Of course the public school education budget is huge, the public schools are one of our three pillars of democracy (the other two being public libraries and public parks) it’s a huge country, and that budget includes pensions, health insurance, buses, social workers, buses, lawn mowing… But arts education in the schools are being cut everywhere, and that does not bode well for the future of the arts of any kind, at any economic level. If you grow up thinking of the arts as something only professionals and ‘geniuses’ do, you’re less likely to take an active interest in them – I think that’s the point here.
So if we were to equate his argument to other subjects taught at school, it clearly wouldnt make sense. Take history for example. “kids should learn less about history and learn to make history more.” Take science: “throw away the periodic table and have students just do experiments without any regard for the chemical properties we already know.”
While I agree that students are not creating as much as they should, stating that they should not learn about, or have access to, the artistic pioneers is irresponsible. So I think his argument has about a 50% value here. Its a good point, but to sacrifice the arts historical roots would only serve to make ignorant artists of the future.
But doesn’t David Byrne have a point that it’s outrageous that funding for arts education is zero for many children?
And doesn’t he have a point that educating children in the practical ways of making music, dancing dances, painting pictures and telling stories equips them for a lifetime of artful everyday living, not simply an arts-is-for-special-occasions approach?
Most of the funding for the arts is of a museological nature. David Byrne is merely suggesting that teaching our children how to be artists might be more valuable than treating the arts as collectibles.
But I agree that Byrne’s linking of arts funding and arts education funding is ill-informed. The two have nothing to do with each other.
Maybe David Byrne’s point is that maybe that should change?
Yeh David Byrne is a genius and I too thank him for speaking his mind. I am also in total agreement that We need to invest in it and look to the future
So we should ‘teach’ our kids to be ignorant?
David Byrne, like almost all pop ‘musicians’ himself is a musical illiterate. He doesn’t know how to read music or write it down on paper. Of course that didn’t prevent him from being successful in the marketplace, but they are two separate things,as he has always had a cadre of producers and arrangers to take of of those minor ‘details’.
Perhaps we should also stop teaching kids how to read and write altogether. After all, most authors are ‘dead guys’. The canon of mathematics and science too was almost all made by ‘dead guys’. In fact what is the point of the whole of human civilization, as it was almost all built by ‘dead guys’.
I have been a fan of his blog for some time now… I’m glad someone else reads it (and I’m talking about more than just this post… the whole thing is good!)
-DeAngelo