{"id":751,"date":"2016-02-03T22:20:11","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T06:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/?p=751"},"modified":"2016-02-04T11:04:54","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T19:04:54","slug":"we-asked-whats-the-biggest-challenge-facing-the-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/02\/we-asked-whats-the-biggest-challenge-facing-the-arts.html","title":{"rendered":"We Asked: What’s the Biggest Challenge Facing the Arts?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"biggestchallengetoarts\"<\/a>Last week we conducted our first ArtsJournal poll, asking readers: What’s the biggest challenge facing the arts? We had 3,191 votes, with the largest percentage – 37% – answering funding. Second at 24% was “relevance\/changing tastes” followed by “diversity” at 15% and “leadership” at 13%. Technology came in a distant fifth at 4%.<\/p>\n

I will admit that the results surprised me a bit. Over the past year issues of diversity have become more and more visible. In theatre and what plays get produced. Movies and who makes decisions behind the cameras. Universities and who gets to say what and how they get to say it. The Oscars.<\/p>\n

Then there’s\u00a0relevance. I would guess that a good half of all the stories I see about the arts these days have something to do with changing tastes and winning\u00a0the attention of an ever-more-saturated audience. So many arts organizations and artists seem to be turning themselves inside out (some happily, others not) to figure out how to appeal to overloaded people who seem to be expecting more than they’re getting.<\/p>\n

But funding? I get that it’s tough to balance budgets and keep the lights on. But “funding” seems like a small ball \u00a0answer. It smacks of not being appreciated enough, of unmet expectations, of entitlement not fulfilled. Americans spend a lot of money on the arts. The arts are a substantial industry with considerable assets. According to Americans for the Arts<\/a>, “nationally, the industry generated $135.2 billion of economic activity<\/strong>\u2014$61.1 billion by the nation’s nonprofit arts and culture organizations<\/strong> in addition to $74.1 billion in event-related expenditures by their audiences<\/strong>.” And just look at the billions of dollars in new museums, concert halls and theatres built in the past 20 years. And funding is the biggest issue?<\/p>\n

But look inside the answer. Funding might not necessarily be so self-interested. \u00a0Last week, the Atlantic published a story about the way the arts are funded\u00a0in America and offered a take on why the funding issue is really\u00a0a diversity issue<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The current state of the arts in this country is a microcosm of the state of the nation. Large, mainstream arts institutions, founded to serve the public good and assigned non-profit status to do so, have come to resemble exclusive country clubs. Meanwhile, outside their walls, a dynamic new generation of artists, and the diverse communities where they live and work, are being systematically denied access to resources and cultural legitimation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The piece paints a picture of cultural haves and have-nots and rising inequality, with public funding – now broken and overwhelmed by demand – able to do less with less to bridge the gap. Public funding, of course, makes up a smaller proportion of today’s arts budgets than it used to. But slippage of the arts from Americans’ lives is surely a bigger issue than a growing gap in public funding. Do we think that the non-profit arts are the publicly-subsidized housing of the larger American culture?<\/p>\n

ArtsJournal blogger Diane Ragsdale wrote a post Monday<\/a> in response to a question by the Irvine Foundation<\/a>\u00a0which has been focused for several years on engagement in the arts: “Is there an issue in the arts field that is more urgent than engagement?” <\/strong>Her answer, a resounding yes.<\/p>\n

While lack of meaningful engagement in the arts is indeed troubling, I would offer that a larger problem is that\u00a0the nonprofit, professional arts have become, by-and-large, as commodified, homogeneous, transactional, and subject to market forces as every other aspect of American society. From where I sit, the most important issue in the arts field these days may be that the different value system that art represents no longer seems to be widely recognized or upheld\u200a\u2014\u200aby society-at-large, or even within the arts field itself…<\/p>\n

Here we are in the 21st<\/sup> century and it strikes me that the nonprofit arts have become increasingly dehumanized\u2013which is ironic since arguably one of the primary benefits of the arts is that they stimulate the senses, awaken us to beauty, fill us with awe, connect us to others, and inspire us to be better\u00a0<\/em>humans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, but can you measure that (the “better humans” part)? I’m being facetious, of course, but it occurs to me that our frenzy to measure everything these days has made us bump up hard against the things that are, at least so far, unmeasurable. We’ve always measured art in one way or another. Those measurements haven’t been particularly scientific, accurate or objective. More critical and biased and personal. Messy. Like art.<\/p>\n

But because we can now measure the neurons and DNA and clicks and “micro-moments”<\/a>\u00a0that are a window on human behavior, we’re building new matrices of value and currency around them, and we’re struggling with the relevance of things we cannot yet satisfactorily quantify, the arts certainly among them. And yes, because of it, our value systems are changing.<\/p>\n

How many arts donors\/funders do we know who are more interested in the “impact” of the art they support than whether it’s any good? Somehow it no longer seems enough just to support something just because you like it. And foundations have gone from asking artists what are the cool things they’re doing that the foundation can support to asking how artists can serve a foundation agenda. But then, what does “any good” mean right now?<\/p>\n

So funding? Diversity? Relevance? My vote would be it all starts with leadership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week we conducted our first ArtsJournal poll, asking readers: What’s the biggest challenge facing the arts? We had 3,191 votes, with the largest percentage – 37% – answering funding. Second at 24% was “relevance\/changing tastes” followed by “diversity” at 15% and “leadership” at 13%. Technology came in a distant fifth at 4%. I will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cultural-issues","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/biggestchallengetoarts.jpg?fit=600%2C453&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ePZm-c7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1305,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2017\/02\/is-the-institutionalization-of-our-arts-a-dead-end.html","url_meta":{"origin":751,"position":0},"title":"Is The Institutionalization Of Our Arts A Dead End?","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"February 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In his essay looking back on Lincoln Center on its 50th birthday, Joe Horowitz suggests that the cultural citadel built optimistically\u00a0to be a launching pad for the American performing arts, might have turned out instead to be a box canyon. Perhaps the buildings are to blame: the Met theatre is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "culture business models"","block_context":{"text":"culture business models","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/culture-business-models"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/steelwool-458840_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/steelwool-458840_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/steelwool-458840_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/steelwool-458840_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/steelwool-458840_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":867,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/06\/dissent-on-afta-equity-statement.html","url_meta":{"origin":751,"position":1},"title":"Sorry – A (Respectful) Dissent On A Well-Meaning Statement On Arts Equity","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"June 6, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I would say based on the thousands of stories we sift through every day at ArtsJournal, diversity and cultural equity (along with funding) are right now probably the biggest issues being talked about in the arts community. And rightly so. It's astonishing to see article after article documenting \u00a0inequalities in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "cultural issues"","block_context":{"text":"cultural issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/cultural-issues"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/HappyNewYearFromAmericansForTheArts.png?fit=923%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/HappyNewYearFromAmericansForTheArts.png?fit=923%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/HappyNewYearFromAmericansForTheArts.png?fit=923%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/HappyNewYearFromAmericansForTheArts.png?fit=923%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1625,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2019\/12\/are-the-arts-to-blame-for-donald-trump.html","url_meta":{"origin":751,"position":2},"title":"Are The Arts To Blame For Donald Trump?","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"December 29, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"A few months ago I was at a conference of administrators of large arts institutions when a leading researcher in cultural trends made a bold claim: The election of Donald Trump is a result of the failure of the arts and culture sector.","rel":"","context":"In "arts and politics"","block_context":{"text":"arts and politics","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/arts-and-politics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/trump-1350044_640.jpg?fit=608%2C640&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/trump-1350044_640.jpg?fit=608%2C640&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/trump-1350044_640.jpg?fit=608%2C640&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1135,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/09\/so-what-exactly-is-a-quantitative-measure-of-the-arts.html","url_meta":{"origin":751,"position":3},"title":"So What Exactly Is A “Quantitative” Measure Of The Arts?","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"September 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Arts Council England says it will use a standardized assessment system called Quality Metrics\u00a0in evaluating the arts it it considers funding. The system has been developed over several years and is an attempt to create a matrix by which arts experiences can be measured and evaluated. Here are the criteria:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "cultural issues"","block_context":{"text":"cultural issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/cultural-issues"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/success-1513746_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C583&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/success-1513746_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C583&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/success-1513746_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C583&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/success-1513746_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C583&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/success-1513746_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C583&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2511,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2021\/10\/2-five-observations-about-covid-and-the-arts-the-great-resignation-and-beyond.html","url_meta":{"origin":751,"position":4},"title":"#2. 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And we recognize that in hiring so many positions at once, we have a huge responsibility \u2014 and opportunity.\u201d","rel":"","context":"In "arts and business"","block_context":{"text":"arts and business","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/arts-and-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/image-g7801c9fae_1280-1.jpg?fit=1000%2C565&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/image-g7801c9fae_1280-1.jpg?fit=1000%2C565&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/image-g7801c9fae_1280-1.jpg?fit=1000%2C565&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/image-g7801c9fae_1280-1.jpg?fit=1000%2C565&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1196,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/09\/art-is-good-not-much-of-an-argument-for-art-is-it.html","url_meta":{"origin":751,"position":5},"title":"“Art Is Good?” Not Much Of An Argument For Art Is It?","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"September 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I suggested in\u00a0a post this week\u00a0that, based on the lack of any arts business before the 114th US Congress, that it appears that lobbying for the arts seems to be failing. 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