Jumper

Diane Ragsdale on what the arts do and why

Who has access to ‘culture’? Who gets to define it?

Last week, I wrote a response to a blog by Judith Dobrzynski in which she asked, “Are we, as a country, defining the arts down?”  I essentially challenged her question. Responses to my blog varied, with one person calling my views ‘nonsense’. A few days ago, I happened to read a provocative new pamphlet by Counterpoint, the British Council’s think tank, called “Culture and Class,” which goes straight to the crux of last week’s conversation. Author John Holden describes a culture war being waged on two fronts:  the first concerns who has access to ‘culture’ (as traditionally defined) and the second concerns who gets to decide what ‘culture’ is, in the first place.

The director of Counterpoint writes in the preface to the pamphlet:  “… at a time when we know that the gap between rich and poor is at its widest, worldwide, and likely to widen as the economic recession deepens, we are entirely failing to address the direct role played by culture in perpetuating these distinctions.” Using the UK as a case study, Holden argues for a more democratic definition of culture as the first step towards a more egalitarian society.  

To achieve a more democratic culture, he asserts that two things need to happen in parallel: a shift from cultural exclusion to cultural inclusion and a shift from culture defined by a narrow elite to culture created by everyone. He then describes three different groups that affect the ability of people to participate in culture, as follows:

  • The cultural snobs are a small but still influential group, typified not only by their allegiance to certain art forms and periods, but by their insistence that only the already educated should enjoy them.
  • The neo-mandarins are ‘cultivated’ and are cultural enthusiasts who wish to share their enthusiasms with others. They believe it is patronizing to assume that anyone is incapable of understanding and enjoying culture and are keen to educate them in ‘high’ culture.
  • The new cosmopolitans respect, enjoy, and are knowledgeable about Shakespeare, Berlioz, and Fra Bartolommeo and the rest [but also] find cultural quality (meaning emotive power, intellectual stimulation, inventiveness and skill) in popular music, folk art, product design, Youtube uploads – and even in new media and film. The fact that some of these are readily embraced by masses of people and are ‘popular culture’ does not bother them. 

I was glad to see all three of these perspectives (and others) represented in the volley of comments to last week’s blog.  The conversation about how ‘culture’ (or ‘art’) is defined and who gets to define these terms is an important one; and “Culture and Class” is a stimulating text on the topic.

Somebody better call the art police.

AJ Blogger Judith Dobrzynski recently asked, “Are we, as a country, defining the arts down?” She questioned the quality of small-town festivals, the inclusion of “gastronomic arts” in arts education, and the merits of an exhibit at the Albright-Knox Gallery featuring photographs and videos of the local hockey team, the Sabres. I would respond to her question by first asking, Is it fair to categorically (and sight unseen) cite these activities as evidence of the lowering of artistic standards?

Just as you can find bad art in Manhattan, you can find great art in places like Fishcreek (WI). There’s a book by John Villani, 100 Best Small Art Towns in America, which highlights communities with terrific festivals, vibrant artist communities, or museums with impressive permanent collections.

And gastronomy? The study of the relationship between culture and food strikes me as a worthy pursuit for students and one that should not be assumed to crowd out appreciation for the “fine arts”. I also wonder whether its presence in schools reflects the reach of Slow Food — whose strategies for changing the relationship between people and food have been, in my opinion, more effective than those of the arts sector to “develop audiences.” (A topic for another day.)

Finally, while the 40th anniversary Sabres exhibition probably could be categorized as a “blockbuster”, is the reason the collection is assumed to be of low artistic quality because it has broad appeal, or because it was created as a celebration, or because we assume that photographs of hockey players and their coaches could never be artistic? 

I saw an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum called BAM! BAM! BAM! Catching the Next Wave for 20 Years, which was, essentially, a highlights reel celebrating a festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Did anyone question its merits? Of course, I watched the video while lying on a mattress inside a specially designed structure. Perhaps that’s what made it qualify as “art”?

Dobrzynski borrowed her question from a phrase, “defining deviancy down” in an article by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, which questioned whether increased crime was the result of the normalizing of deviant behavior. Beyond questioning her examples of “defining art down,” I guess I’m puzzled by the “threat” implied in Dobrzynski’s question; I’m not sure I understand who or what is harmed, exactly, by broadening the definition of art. 

I agree with Bill Ivey, who has challenged the perpetuation of a Western European artistic hierarchy in the US (in his book Arts, Inc.); or as I have taken to adapting his idea and saying—if we want to reach new audiences we may need to stop hammering so hard on the idea that Bach is intrinsically better than Björk, who is intrinsically better than my brother, who plays in a pro-am banjo club in St. Louis. Greatness can be found in the nonprofit, commercial, or amateur art realms. (And, of course, so can mediocrity.) Does it take anything away from Bach if I also consider both Björk and my brother’s banjo playing to be artistic?

PS – Sincere thanks to all who weighed in on my posts on dynamic pricing and economic impact studies and helped to generate some really interesting debates. If you haven’t checked out the comments posted by others, I encourage you to do so as they are well worth reading. 

Screaming woman image licensed from Shutterstock.com and modifed by DER.

Beware dynamic pricing dressed as “accessibility”.

Dynamic pricing is a form of price discrimination, commonly used by airlines and hotels, in which a firm changes its prices in response to shifts in demand. In recent years, it has been promoted in the nonprofit sector as a method to help arts groups fill seats, maximize revenues, and (drum roll, please) make programs more accessible. Evidently, it is already being used by many arts groups across the US. While I hate to be the one to rain on the dynamic pricing parade, I have concerns about this trend.

Let’s call a spade a spade. Dynamic pricing is a method for maximizing profits. The fact that an airline is willing to sell me a cheap ticket in January to some cold and cloudy city doesn’t constitute altruism on its part. Likewise, selling a cheap ticket for a seat in the nosebleeds, or to a show that isn’t moving, is not charity on the part of a nonprofit arts group when that seat would have gone empty at a higher price. I find it particularly odd that these lower priced tickets are said to be aimed at improving accessibility when organizations reserve the right to increase prices (higher than as previously advertised, even) if a show takes off at the box office.

Suddenly increasing ticket prices in response to high demand, and selling “premium” seats priced as high as people are willing to pay, strike me as questionable practices in a nonprofit organization. A soup kitchen could probably earn greater revenues (which it could plow back into making more soup) if it allowed those who could pay more to buy heartier soup or raised the price of soup on really cold days. However, doing so would not be considered ethical because it would entail discriminating against those least able to pay and taking advantage of people when they need soup kitchens most.

One of the differences between a commercial firm and a nonprofit should be that the former will seek to maximize profits and the other will not do so, even if it could. A nonprofit is expected to leave money on the table. Of course, as Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra has begun to demonstrate, one need not leave it there forever; if well-timed and well-executed, it may be possible to lower ticket prices across the board and then solicit a voluntary donation of that “consumer surplus”. 

But above all, I worry about the long-term effects of dynamic pricing in the arts. Such models work best in industries in which consumers are unlikely to change their habits. Despite the ridiculously high price, I’m still flying home for the holidays. Arts patrons, on the other hand, have an increasing number of options when it comes to allocating their leisure time and dollars. Can the arts really afford to risk engendering the feelings of mistrust and frustration that airlines seem to breed by engaging in similar pricing shenanigans?

Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing image licensed from Shutterstock.com

The arts have intrinsic value. If you don’t believe that, I have an economic impact study to show you.

"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others." Groucho Marx

In last week’s blog I relayed the story of attending a presentation by Randy Cohen of Americans for the Arts in Amsterdam and how it got me thinking about economic impact studies and arguments.  (Thanks to all who posted comments.)  In response to Cohen’s assertions that economic impact arguments are the only ones that seem to work with most politicians in the US these days, Arjo Klamer (the Chair of Cultural Economics at Erasmus University) raised his hand and said (and I’m paraphrasing from memory):  Economic impact arguments are the only ones that work because they are the arguments you have been making.  I would encourage you to work on strengthening your arguments for the cultural and social values of the arts. 

Cohen responded saying that, of course, Americans for the Arts also makes intrinsic value arguments with the audiences for whom such arguments work (which is, evidently, not politicians).  At one point, he made the analogy of a bow and a bag of arrows and recommended using whichever arrow (argument) will get the job done in a given situation. 

Practically speaking, I get the “use the arrow that works” analogy.  In point of fact, I was on a working group at a Salzburg Seminar this past February, Session 468—The Performing Arts in Lean Times, whose task was to discuss how to make more effective arguments for the arts.  (BTW, you can access the full report on Salzburg Session 468 here.)  Our working group concluded something similar:  there is no silver bullet argument; thus, make the argument that works in a given situation. 

However, I’ve recently been thinking about the relationship between the practical and the principled response and pondering whether practical and principled arguments can, indeed, live side-by-side in the same arrow bag and be used as suits the situation, or whether, over time, practical arguments undermine the efficacy of principled arguments? 

More to the point, if (for practical reasons) I make the case to a politician (who only wants to hear about the numbers) that the arts should be supported primarily because they create jobs for arts administrators, waiters, and babysitters, or because they bring tourist dollars to the city, have I not, in essence, forsaken the principle that the arts have inherent value and should be supported for that value? 

Photo of Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx is unattributed and in the public domain, and available at the Wikimedia Commons/Wikipedia.

All the economic studies, and all the economic arguments, can’t fix this

Humpty Dumpty CroppedLast month, at a conference in Amsterdam, Randy Cohen reported the findings from the National Arts Index, a Project of Americans for the Arts.  The report has some troubling headlines, among them:  While the number of arts organizations has increased significantly, one out of three has failed to achieve a balanced budget even during the strongest economic years of the decade; nonprofit arts organizations are losing their market share of philanthropy to other charitable areas, a decline that began well before the current economic downturn; and while personal arts creation and demand for arts education are increasing, attendance at mainstream nonprofit arts organizations within many sectors is in decline. 

The overall Index score for the 11-year period ending in 2008 is 98.4, down 4.2 percentage points since 2007 and down 7.1 percentage points since 1999.

Cohen ended a rather sobering report on the Index on a much more upbeat note by sharing the news from another Americans for the Arts report, Arts and Economic Prosperity III:  nationally, the nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $166.2 billion in economic activity every year. 

It’s an impressive number—one that can almost make you forget about the more worrisome findings from the National Arts Index.  

Cohen was quick to point out that having the data from the Arts and Economic Prosperity III (and other such reports) enabled Americans for the Arts to help make the case to Congress to include $50 million to the NEA in the 2009 stimulus package.  He went on to state (quite accurately, I believe) that economic impact arguments are the only ones that seem to work these days with most politicians in the US. 

I remember when these economic impact studies first hit the arts and culture sector.  They almost seemed like hocus-pocus (could that magical multiplier effect be real?).  We presented them as fact, but they felt like fiction.  And they were often the last resort, not the first, when we went to plead for support.  Now it seems we can’t make the case for our existence without them. 

I worry, however, that we may be building our case on quick sand. 

For one, many cultural economists (who were among the first to conduct economic impact studies in the arts) have become skeptical of the their use in the arts sector, in large part because they are often poorly executed and, thus, inaccurate.  Additionally, some economists have come to believe there are better ways to measure the value of the arts.

For another, economic impact studies may be working with politicians and others, for now, but one imagines that they could be turned against the nonprofit arts sector if the Index and some its indicators of industry health (notably audiences, contributions, and finances) continue to trend downward–that is, if we appear to be an industry that is in … um … economic decline. 

Finally, no matter how large the number, economic impact studies and arguments can’t fix a declining intellectual relevance problem, which it appears that more than a few organizations in the nonprofit arts sector may have.

William Wallace Denslow illustration of Humpty Dumpty is in the public domain, accessible via the Wikimedia Commons/Wikipedia.

Greetings from across the pond …

Diane RagsdaleSo I’ve recently made a few changes in my life.  In July 2010, I left The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where I had the privilege and joy to work in the performing arts program for six years, and moved to the Netherlands to marry a Dutchman and to work towards a PhD in cultural economics at Erasmus University in Rotterdam.  In addition to my role as a grantmaker, over the past couple years, I (along with others) have been writing and speaking on the larger changes in the cultural environment and ways arts organizations may need to adapt in order to survive and thrive in the coming years.  If you are interested, you can download a few things I’ve written in the aptly titled section in the right hand navigation bar of this page.

When I tell my arts friends that I’m now studying cultural economics they almost always say, “Interesting!”  This is often followed by, “What is cultural economics exactly?” and then the comment, “Oh, wait, does this have something to do with economic impact studies?”  The answer is “yes and no” (I’ll say more about the field of cultural economics in future posts).  

Given that economic impact studies and arguments are often associated with the field of cultural economics, and they are a somewhat controversial topic, I thought I’d use my first couple posts to share some reflections on them.  The first one appears today and the second will be published a week from today.

You can read a bit more about JUMPER by clicking on ABOUT at the top of this page.  I thank everyone who takes the time to follow my blog here and there; and I look forward to hearing your thoughts when you feel inclined to share them.

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