Jumper

Diane Ragsdale on what the arts do and why

On artistic leadership and aesthetic values in a changed cultural context: A new keynote address

Last week I had the privilege, pleasure, and honor to give the keynote address at the Canadian Arts Summit–an annual gathering of the board chairs, executive leaders, and artistic leaders of Canada’s major cultural institutions. It was a terrific conference all around. Here is a link to a transcript of my keynote address. The talk was also live streamed and, as I understand it, a video will eventually be available for download.

Following a preamble (which highlights some of the key themes that I’ve been circling around for the past decade), the talk is divided into three parts:

Part 1: Can we talk about our aesthetic values? 

Do aesthetics get discussed at your own arts organization? If so, who is involved in the discussion?

  • The artistic staff?
  • All senior managers?
  • Board members?
  • Box office staff and front of house?
  • The janitorial staff?

Generally my experience has been that it is actually quite difficult for arts leaders, staffs, boards, and other internal and external stakeholders to talk about aesthetics, honestly, in this changed cultural context; but I think we must.

Part 2: Can we talk about how a season comes together? (Hat tip to David Dower at ArtsEmerson …)

How does a season, or a collection, come together? What’s the relationship between the economics, ethics, and aesthetics of our organizations? What’s the mutual dependence between judgments of artistic excellence; the non-negotiable principles that uphold organizations’ core values; and the willingness for particular bodies to pay? What holds everything together? Dare we ask?

Part 3: What does responsible artistic leadership look like? What’s the work in 2018?

The subsidized arts not only can—but must—play a vital, humanizing role in any society but to play that role, in these times, we must regenerate individual arts organizations. What does that work look like? (I share a few ideas.)

Many thanks for reading and sharing any thoughts!

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On playwrights attempting to be in the driver’s seat: my experience at Dominique Morisseau’s “Pipeline”

I’ve recently starting working as an assistant professor and program director for a new MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship (MA AME) at The New School. If you don’t know it, The New School is a progressive university based in New York City. Social justice is a core value of the institution and it ranks quite high on various dimensions of diversity. The MA AME is distinguished from other MA in arts management or administration programs in that it is intended for practicing performing artists only. When they apply, students are evaluated based on their artistic portfolios as much as their social goals or propensity for entrepreneurship; and while in the program students are required to maintain their artistic practice (and receive credit for this).

One of the things we tend to say about the program is that it is aimed at putting artists in the driver’s seat, so to speak, of their careers, the projects they develop, and the enterprises they found. I have been thinking about this programmatic aim in light of a recent experience seeing the play Pipeline at Lincoln Center Theater and last week’s announcement of its author, playwright Dominique Morisseau, as recipient of one of the Ford Foundation Fellowships for Social Change in the Arts.

While it is Ms. Morisseau’s powerful scripts that have, no doubt, earned her a spot on this prestigious list, I am equally interested in another area in which I see her as an agent of social change: Morisseau has made it her business to call out the cultural and racial biases embedded in taken-for-granted notions of what constitutes appropriate behavior at the theater.

To wit, in December 2015 Morisseau penned a candid, courageous, and unabashed article for American Theatre magazine called “Why I almost slapped a fellow theatre patron, and what that says about our theatres.” In it, she recounts a troubling experience at a theater performance–one in which she is confronted with a series of race-based microaggressions. Perhaps as a result of experiences like these, Morisseau created a program insert called Rules of Engagement for Lincoln Center Theater’s recent production of her play, Pipeline.

I attended Pipeline in the late summer. The play revolves around a young black man, who is facing challenges at the (almost entirely white) private boarding school that he attends, whose parents are divorced, and whose mom teaches in an inner city high school in New York City. As critic Jeremy Gerard noted in his review, the play’s title:

… refers to two different kinds of institutionalized segregation. In the first, “gifted and talented” students are culled from the public-school crowd and given accelerated classroom experiences. The second refers to the schools-to-prison syndrome that plagues poor, mostly inner-city, and mostly African-American families.

It’s perhaps worth mentioning at this point in the story that I had purchased discounted tickets for the show, as a member of Theatre Development Fund, for myself and a friend.

I didn’t actually notice Morisseau’s Rules of Engagement insert as I arrived at the theater just before curtain. What I did notice as I sat down was that my friend and I were the only two white people in the entire house right section, which was filled with black adults (young and old). And vice versa, after settling into our seats, we glanced around the room and saw a three-quarters sea of predominately white people. I gathered from the Q&A that among those seated in my section were some high school or college students attending with their teacher or professor. Whether the result of an ill-conceived seating policy (or the lack of any policy at all), the failure to integrate the recipients of “outreach” or “discount” tickets with the rest of the audience struck me as an embarrassing and serious gaffe–particularly given the themes of the play.

The show started and the students in our section appeared to be quite engaged: they were leaning forward, laughing, occasionally vocalizing, or snapping. At the end of the program there was a Q&A and all of the actors came out to participate. A majority of questions came from a small group of students seated in my section of the theater. At one point a student asked (and I’m paraphrasing):

So, is there a subtext to this play? Or is it essentially about “the pipeline”? I mean, is there another subtext besides the pipeline you are all playing as actors? I ask because I’m studying acting now and we’re talking a lot about subtext.

I thought it was great question given the socio-political nature of the piece. There was a long silence and then a black actor*** responded  (and I’m paraphrasing from memory):

I am going to put that question aside for a moment. I want to say something else because backstage we were all talking about this. It was incredibly challenging for us tonight because of all the snapping that you all were doing. I don’t know if you noticed the scene in which I looked at all of you like (and here the actor looked at the students with a raised eyebrow), but it was really distracting. And one person would start snapping and then someone somewhere else would start snapping. The playwright has given us her Rules of Engagement. You need to understand that we could hear you and that your behavior was incredibly distracting. And I’m here to tell you, there is no snapping in the theater! That does not happen.

I sat there a bit in shock. Remember, I had not opened my program. I had not seen the Rules of Engagement insert.

My first thought was: “Wait! This play opened with an actor speaking to the audience as though they were the students in her classroom. The fourth wall was broken by the production itself; and now the students are being chastised for, essentially, going with the convention???” I then became perturbed at the cultural implications. I turned to my friend and whispered heatedly, “How is snapping in the middle of a scene any different than people clapping when a star walks on stage?”

I had no idea what “rules of engagement” the actor was referencing; but in the context of the finger-wagging I began to think they must have been some sort of “rules of etiquette” that had been passed out to all the school groups. I felt sad for the American theater as it had just reprimanded one of the more engaged audiences I had witnessed in a long time. I left the Q&A shortly thereafter.

I got home and found Morisseau’s Rules of Engagement in my program. Reading this list one is immediately struck by the generous (and perhaps conflicted) spirit and aims of the piece.

On the one hand, the piece is clearly intended to invite (or protect the possibility of) more engaged participation by audience members. And on the other hand, Morisseau is also clearly trying to safeguard the actors from being obstructed by unruly behavior. Testifying is allowed but not so much that it is thwarting to the actors. As such, I immediately wondered whether or not she would agree with what had happened at the Q&A? Whether she would be more sympathetic with the actors, or the students?

This etiquette issue can be a hot-button topic for those who work or regularly attend live performance. In 2016 I moderated a rather feisty debate at the International Society for the Performing Arts on the question: Is there a correct behavior in a live performing arts venue? The debate was exploring whether, in the face of dramatic cultural, technological and demographic changes, the general rules of etiquette and other behaviors that are taken for granted at live performing arts venues also needed to change? Or whether there was still value in maintaining audience-performer conventions, most notably the expectation of reverent silence? At the heart of the debate was the growing recognition that historically white institutions have made it a policy to “open their doors to everyone” but have quite often been unwilling to allow the etiquette at the theater to evolve in light of the changing demographics of their communities (and therefore audiences).

As I continued mulling on the Pipeline experience I began to see another side. The actor was not incorrect. By-and-large, let’s face it, snapping is (still) not condoned by the institutionalized American theater. And if the actor wanted these students to be welcomed in historically white theaters in the future this finger wagging may have been an attempt to do them a favor by setting them straight.

I showed the program insert to a friend and relayed my experience. In response he asked, “I wonder how and when this insert emerged in the production process?”

It is a great question.

I interpret Morisseau’s Rules of Engagement as an attempt by an artist to be in the driver’s seat. By giving explicit permission for audiences to engage in certain culturally specific behaviors, Morisseau poked and prodded at longstanding, taken-for-granted norms about what is and isn’t appropriate at Lincoln Center, or other regional theaters generally run by and generally serving a white, educated, upper middle class crowd. In an interview for TheaterMania, Morisseau is described as taking “a breath when describing the pamphlet” and then saying:

My shows that have been programmed at theaters across the country have predominantly white audiences in their subscriber base. I have seen the sprinkle of audience members of color who have a conflict of engagement with those white audiences. Or maybe, those white audiences have a conflict of engagement with those audiences of color. There are moments I’ve noticed, repeatedly, where the people of color think they are guests in the space. They hush as though they’ve broken the rule of the space, instead of engaging with my work the way I think my work demands, which is with a little bit of an audible response. … What I’ve asked for is space for the community to respond to my work.

There is another recent, and quite high profile, example of a playwright seeking to influence how audiences can respond to his work–but with a financial penalty rather than an insert. This past summer playwright David Mamet (Oleanna, Speed-the-Plow, Glengarry Glen Ross, and many others) had the theater world up in arms because, as this Guardian article states, “the licence to stage a Mamet play now includes a clause that prevents producers from staging official debates within two hours of a performance. Any violation risks the loss of the licence and a fine of $25,000 for every post-show talk.”

While some interpreted this as short-sighted, diva behavior I found myself wondering if this didn’t arise from Mamet (who has made a public conversion from liberalism to conservatism) seeing his plays interpreted through a predominately liberal institutional lens at post-show talkbacks? Theaters are up-in-arms because they feel they should have a right to foster public discussion. Mamet evidently wants audience members to have the chance to make up their own minds about the work. It would be great to see an actual debate between some writers and some theater producers on this issue. Anecdotally, it seems that many playwrights abhor the post-show talk-back trend but are disinclined to say so publicly.

Returning to Pipeline, I would love to know how other performances went and how various audiences, Morisseau, the actors, and the theater felt about the insert and its effects. Ultimately, while I sympathize with the actors who evidently felt distracted by the snapping the night I saw the play, I remain troubled by the fact that these students were called out publicly for their behavior at the Q&A. That they were chastised even while holding a slip of paper in their hands–from the playwright–whose subtext, spirit and intent, seemed to be: “It’s OK. Snap. Say Amen. Be in the moment with this play rather than sitting and worrying about whether you are doing the right thing or the wrong thing in this theater filled with white, upper middle class people. You belong here.”

*** The word “actor” is used to refer to female or male performers.

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Tackling an inequitable arts funding system: A response to the report, Not Just Money

Helicon Collaborative, with a grant from the Surdna Foundation, has recently published a second report, Not Just Money, examining where US arts philanthropic dollars go. Some may recall that when the first report was published it set off a small quake across the arts and culture landscape—with many shaking their heads at the inequitable funding picture that emerged in the report and some (like me) finding it curious that this was news to anyone since these inequities are not only longstanding but, to a great extent, by design. (You can read my Jumper post on the 2011 report here.)

Here’s how the most recent report describes the issue, which is worsening:

Just 2 percent of all cultural institutions receive nearly 60 percent of all contributed revenue, up approximately 5 percentage points over a decade.

The 2 percent cohort is made up of 925 cultural groups that have annual budgets of more than $5 million (NCCS). These organizations are symphonies, opera companies, regional theaters, art museums, ballet companies and other large institutions – the majority of which focus primarily on Western European fine arts traditions. While most of these institutions have made sincere efforts to broaden participation in the past decade, their audiences remain predominantly white and upper income (NEA Research Report #57).

If the goal of the first report was not only to raise awareness but also to spur a shift in funding away from large, (historically) white, major metropolitan fine arts organizations to smaller, community-based, or culturally specific, or rural arts organizations … it appears to have failed, thus far. The winners have gotten richer and the losers poorer since the first report; and this is despite considerable attention having been paid the past handful of years to issues of diversity, equality, and inclusion by Grantmakers in the Arts (the national service organization for arts funders) and several individual philanthropies.

Helicon has published three posts on its key findings, which I highly recommend as an introduction to this discussion. The third post is focused on how to move the needle and recommends that private foundations: (1) set explicit goals for change; (2) engage wealthy donors to address equity with their funding; and (3) commit to collaborative actions.

These are great recommendations but I’m going to suggest that it may also be beneficial to focus attention on a few other players on this field if we want to see a more equitable distribution of funding for arts and culture in the US: government agencies (whose funding already tends to be more equitable than that of private foundations in large part because of the obligation to serve the public interest), small family foundations (many of whom do not currently fund the arts), and the winners in this winner-take-all system (the large, historically white, fine arts institutions).

***

To the National Endowment for the Arts: Graduate the Largest Institutions Out of Your Portfolio

As many know, the NEA does not have all that much money to distribute once the largest portion of the pie is sent to the states and the remainder is divided across the different programmatic areas. One consequence of this is that very large institutions often get NEA grants that represent a laughable portion of the budget (e.g. an orchestra with a $50 million budget might get a grant of $40,000). When I was a philanthropoid at the Mellon Foundation I would sometimes muse to colleagues:

How would it change the sector if there were a wholesale shift in funding from the largest organizations to the next tier down? What if organizations over a certain size (say $5-$10 million) were simply no longer eligible for certain pots of government money—on the argument that once government funding represents 0.1 percent of your budget (a) you no longer need the “imprimatur” of government to secure other funding; and (b) you can easily replace government funds with dollars from other sources?

In other words, rather than seeing all pots as pots over which all should compete for funding, what if government adjusted its priorities in light of the fact that individual contributions, private foundation support, and corporate support have proven over time to flow toward larger institutions? What if government recognized that–given its capacity to make grants that are more diverse on a number of dimensions–its primary value is to invest primarily in promising small and midsized enterprises, providing them with both an imprimatur and the early capital needed to grow their operations to the point where they might attract other sources of funding?

Having read the most recent Helicon report, I think it’s time to consider something along these lines. As a thought experiment: what if policies were instituted whereby organizations would “graduate” from NEA funding? That is, what if they would become ineligible for NEA funding once, for instance, any of the following conditions applied?

  • Total annual operating budget is greater than e.g. $10 million three years in a row;
  • One or more staff members has an annual salary greater than the president of the United States (~$400,000);
  • The wage ratio between the highest and lowest paid employee exceeds 1:5.
  • More than 50% of its end users (e.g. visitors, audiences, students, or artists) earn more than $50,000 a year (or perhaps more than the median income in the MSA where they are located).

One benefit of this approach is that it would not only begin to redistribute some arts dollars in the system; but it would blunt the tip of the sword of conservatives whose leading arguments for eliminating the NEA are that (a) multimillion dollar arts organizations can easily survive without it; and (b) it is essentially welfare for cultural elitists.

In a sense, the shift I’m proposing would put the federal government in the role of providing much-needed fertilizer to the most promising of the hundreds of Davids in the bottom and middle of the sector hourglass rather than sprinkling the equivalent of magic pixie dust on the handful of Goliaths that tend to dominate the top of the hourglass.

And, as we all know, none of this would preclude larger institutions from receiving other forms of recognition from the NEA (e.g. awards), or from tapping into other public pots (in addition to continuing to be the greatest beneficiaries of the indirect subsidies to the arts). Since driving place-based tourism and anchoring cultural/creative districts are often their highest value to cities-at-large, perhaps larger institutions should be beneficiaries of larger tourism grants, or economic development grants, rather than traditional arts funding?

***

To City/State Arts Agencies: Broker Relationships between Family Foundations and Small Arts Orgs

Helicon’s most recent report indicates that while private foundations seem to be acknowledging the importance of diversity, inclusion, and equity they are still defaulting to funding the same (large, white) organizations as always.  How to square these two findings? An all-too-familiar anecdote relayed in a recent brief article in American Theatre magazine covering the Helicon report, points to one possible reason why. AT reports:

The course of true fundraising never did run smooth. Just ask Randy Reyes, artistic director of Mu Performing Arts in St. Paul, Minn. In 2015, Mu applied for an arts access grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board to teach audiences about the history of Asian-American theatre. Though Mu’s mission and audience is Asian-American, they didn’t get the grant. “We were disappointed in that,” Reyes admitted.

But one organization that did get an arts access grant was St. Paul’s much bigger Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, which received $86,039 to present Notes From Asia, “a series of performances, films, conversations, and an exhibit that will highlight arts and culture of Eastern Asian communities for East Asian, Asian American, and broader audiences.”

This is, of course, a long lament of smaller, culturally specific organizations who quite often feel either co-opted or eaten alive by larger organizations—who will sometimes lightly affiliate with smaller, community-based or culturally specific organizations in order to get access to diversity funding, or simply emulate the longstanding practices of such organizations in order to snag limited “diversity dollars” available. More dedicated pots of money, or dedicated philanthropies, probably need to be established to pay attention to small and midsized organizations.

As I’ve written about here, more than a decade ago (after changing the tax laws to make it easier and more beneficial for individuals to set up small trusts and foundations), the Australia Arts Council started an arm’s length organization whose role was to broker relationships between small and midsized arts organizations and small private family foundations and trusts. This intermediary met with donors, talked to them about the importance of supporting the arts, and identified organizations that might fit with their values; it mentored arts organizations to help them develop realistic funding strategies and prepare effective proposals; and it made matches between the two.

I have long wondered whether that same model could be transferred and modified at the city or state level in the US. Again, as a thought experiment, could state or city arts agencies make use of a similar, arm’s length lightly staffed brokerage service designed to spur increased arts contributions from small family foundations (many of which do not presently fund the arts)–to SME’s, in particular. At the same time, like the Australia program, could these matchmakers provide mentoring to small organizations to help them prepare more effective proposals?

Attention might be more productively turned to speaking to a new generation of individual family foundations and getting them each to adopt, say, 10-15 small-to-midsized arts enterprises, while we wait for the older institutional philanthropies to catch up with changes in the world; modify their values, aesthetics, boards, presidents, staffs, and systems; and presumably launch new strategies, programs, or organizations, designed to help them reach beyond the 2% to organizations that will necessarily require different metrics, application processes, etc.

However broadminded and whatever their good intentions, it is clearly operationally or philosophically or emotionally difficult for large philanthropies to shift money away from large institutions, particularly when they keep knocking on the door and seeking funding.

Which brings me to my last provocation.

To Large arts organizations: It’s time to recognize your historic privilege and the physics of pie slicing

I’ve observed several times that when discussions in the field turn to expanding resources for under-privileged groups incumbent beneficiaries (and their trade/advocacy organizations) are often quick to say, “Yes, of course, philanthropies and government agencies must fund the smaller organizations. But they shouldn’t do so by taking away funding from the large institutions. That’s not fair.”

One is reminded of the phrase: To the privileged, equity feels like oppression.

Given that new money is not gushing into the NEA’s coffers or the arts budgets of most foundations, it would stand to reason that making more, or larger, grants to arts organizations with budgets less than $5 million will likely require taking some money away from larger organizations—who have many more sources to which they can turn to make up the difference.

It is time for large organizations to exercise some moral imagination: to recognize that they are the take-all winners of an unjust system and that aggressively (and generally successfully) competing for every single $5,000 or $10,000 or $25,000 grant available is greedy behavior that contributes to the starvation of other parts of the arts ecosystem.

Period.

***

A report came out 5 years ago intended, I think, to goad or shame arts philanthropies into adopting more progressive funding strategies. It appears most didn’t. San Francisco emerges as the North star in an otherwise bleak report. While it’s troubling that since Helicon’s first report, money has not shifted away from the 925 organizations with budgets greater than $5 million, it’s not surprising. One can imagine various reasons why the needle may not be changing.

It may be because this is a progressive political agenda that Helicon is proposing and some foundations are simply not interested to see their arts funds used to support what appears to be social activism. It may be because these things just take time given the nature of grant cycles and how long it takes to change policies, priorities, and guidelines. It may be because private philanthropies, a lot like individual donors, have a lot of ego in the game and quite often want to fund and be affiliated with arts institutions that they and their peers perceive to be “winners,” or “excellent,” or “prestigious” (qualitative valuations that are deeply tied to the culturally based aesthetic judgments and values of foundation decision makers). It may be because it’s hard to say no to organizations you have been funding for a long time, whose ADs and MDs have become close friends with program staff and board members. Or it may be because large organizations are quite savvy about how to exploit the system to secure funding no matter what the priorities are (yesterday it was innovation, today it’s diversity and inclusivity, tomorrow it will be something else).

Nevertheless, I applaud Helicon Collaborative for keeping the heat on this issue and pressing for discussion and change in the sector. I have no doubt the 2011 report spurred the leadership of Grantmakers in the Arts, much of the race-bias and implicit-bias training programs in the philanthropic community over the past five years, and many new grant initiatives aimed at diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Evidently, more is needed.

Perhaps it’s also time for the philanthropies who are presently allocating the majority of their resources to the 2% to more transparently address the questions and concerns raised in Helicon’s report? Perhaps Surdna (the funder of the most recent report) could host a roundtable of private foundation presidents to respond to the report? I, for one, would love to hear whether change is happening (but is just not showing up in the data yet because of the nature of grant cycles), or whether (and, if so, why) this is an area in which they are unlikely to implement changes anytime soon.

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When does coaxing become coercing?

carrot-stickLast week I wrote a post on the efforts of foundations to encourage diversity (of various forms) in nonprofit arts organizations, in which I suggested that such efforts could be construed as a form of coercion. In particular, I discussed a new initiative at the Irvine Foundation and suggested that Irvine has been trying to “coax” its grantees into uncharted territory and “coerce” them into behavior that some are not ready or willing to adopt. In response to my post, Ted Russell at the Irvine Foundation tweeted the excellent question, “We’re coaxing. But when is that coercive?”

Yesterday, Barry Hessenius at Barry’s Blog wrote a post astutely synthesizing a few of the recent posts on this topic of “funding diversity” (including my own, for which I’m grateful) and offering his own thoughtful perspectives on several issues, including philanthropic coercion:

Individual organizations are less interested in systemic sector wide change, no matter how lofty the purpose or how much they may embrace the concept and agree with the goal.  It’s really not their job to do so.

But, it is the legitimate job of funders; and foundations that have determined that sector wide systemic change (of whatever sort) is one of their objectives, not only have the right, but arguably the obligation to implement strategies – even ones that make demands of their grantees – that they believe may help reach those objectives.  One can argue such strategies are ill conceived, that they don’t work, that being too ambitious without allowing ample time and resource allocation to give the strategies a chance to succeed is a formula for failure – but I don’t think their underlying attempt to make systemic change is necessarily coercive.  Or, if it is, I think they have the right to be coercive (and a lot of change comes about only becomes it is coerced.)  How else can systemic change come about, if no one is permitted to make even the attempt?

I’ve been thinking a lot about Ted Russell’s question the past few days. While I agree with Barry that foundations (to the limits of their tax codes) should be able to set priorities as they see fit, I would suggest that with the power that one wields as a major funder (in a particular field or region) comes the burden to take responsibility for not only where one’s investments are made, but where they are withdrawn.

I once heard a lecture at Stanford University by Jim Phills, Jr. (author of Integrating Mission and Strategy for Nonprofit Organizations) in which he said that the more desperate an organization is for resources the less control it has over its destiny (i.e., the more likely it is to do things that are not in line with its own mission and strategy in order to obtain resources).

To coax is to persuade gently and gradually.

To coerce has many definitions but as I’m using it I would suggest that it entails pressuring another party (through action or inaction) to act in a manner that goes against their will.

For an organization that has a history of funding from Irvine, then the current shift could result in two perceived threats: (1) loss of financial support that is critical and (2) loss of the imprimatur of the Foundation. Given the possible impacts of such losses, such an organization could quite reasonably begin to feel strong pressure to adopt strategies that are not currently in line with its mission, vision or values.

I understand that foundations change their strategies with good reason. As I mentioned in my last post, it seemed that Irvine was quite thoughtful in developing its new strategy. And Irvine may be “coaxing” (from its point of view).

But if its longstanding grantees perceive that they will be out in the cold if they are not on board with the new strategy?

Well, to my mind, this is where coaxing begins to feel like coercion.

When did being pro-artist make one anti-institution?

I attended the Theatre Communications Group conference in Boston a couple weeks ago. On the first day of the conference Michael Maso, managing director of the Huntington Theatre, was presented with an award recognizing his contributions to the American theater. Towards the end of a humorous and lovely acceptance speech, Maso switched gears and used the opportunity to share thoughts on those that would question the priorities and processes of large institutional theaters. He said:

Over the next few days we will be engaged in an exploration of new ways to sustain our movement. I wholly endorse that exploration. We need new ideas. But we must not forget that this movement is one of the great success stories in the history of American theater. […] Our job, each in our own way, is to empower artists to make great art and to share it as widely as possible. And in that fundamental task our theater has not failed America. I’m not arguing for complacency. I believe that we can more fully integrate artists into our institutional lives. I believe that we can expand our audiences so that we’re serving more of our citizens, not just those that can afford dynamic prices. But I will admit my impatience with critics of our theaters, who seem determined to drive a wedge between individual artists and institutions. I hope over the next few days, and in the conversations that should follow for years to come, we can resist finger-pointing and ideological purity. Real conversations require a foundation of mutual respect and understanding. And fundamentalism is just as dangerous in the theater as it is in religion or on the Supreme Court.

So I am here to confess. My name is Michael and I run a large institutional theater. Yes, we built new spaces with multiple performance halls in order to produce new plays and create programs for local playwrights and provide first class facilities to other local theaters. Yes, we sell tickets to get an audience. Yes, we raise money because tickets alone don’t pay the bills. Yes, all of that takes people. Does that make us overstuffed bureaucracies? Bullshit!

The first thing that popped into my mind when I heard Maso’s lament was a TED talk by Clay Shirky, “Institutions versus Collaboration,” in which he remarks that institutions hate being told they are obstacles and that when an institution is told it is an obstacle it generally goes through something like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief over dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

It would appear Maso is somewhere between stage one and stage two.

Second, I wondered “Who are the ideological purists and fundamentalists to which Maso is referring?” These terms are loaded. Perhaps they were chosen for dramatic effect but, having chosen to use them, Maso might have given a few examples.

Third, I shook my head when I heard the phrase “determined to drive a wedge between artists and institutions.” I don’t even understand this idea. I see many people trying to encourage institutions to make deeper commitments to artists and bring them further into the institution. Are these the dangerous, fundamentalist, wedge-drivers to which Maso is referring?

With rare exception, artists (in this instance meaning writers, actors, directors, and often designers) are not generally part of the institution (meaning resident theaters). Administrators, marketers, and development staff have a home. Production and technical staff have a home. Literary managers and dramaturgs have a home. But artists are not part of the institution. They are jobbed in as needed and then sent home to live their precarious lives, unattached (in every sense of the word) to theater institutions.

How does one drive a wedge between two things that are not attached?

The artistic director of a large institutional theater referred to me as “pro-artist” a few years back. It was meant to be a derogatory comment. When did being “pro-artist” make one an enemy of resident theaters? When did large theater institutions begin to see their own interests as threatened by the interests of artists? And do we think this is a positive development for the American theater?

I find it disturbing that those that have attempted to shine a light on the needs of artists and the fact that those working in institutions have fared rather well relative to the artists they employ over the past thirty years, are now seen as divisive.

When I write about artists like Ethan Lipton, who has had to work a day job his entire life to continue working as an artist, I’m not trying to drive a wedge. I’m asking what I believe are quite legitimate questions—Can we do more for artists? Can we rethink where the money goes? Have we prioritized buildings over art and artists? Have those with access to the budgets and the board looked out rather well for their own welfare and fought not quite as hard for the welfare of artists?

And yes, I am specifically challenging large institutions—which own large buildings and have large staffs—to do more for artists and to take more artistic risks. The primary goal of the institution is to self preserve. And as institutions grow they become increasingly risk averse. This is not an American theater problem. This is the nature of institutions. It is a pattern one sees over and over again in industry after industry. Does the American theater think it is immune to such things?

It’s not.

I will continue to ask questions about where the money goes and whether more of it can go towards the art and the artists.

I am not trying to drive a wedge.

I’m trying to ask what I believe are important questions.

And I welcome responses. I welcome debate. I welcome the opportunity to sit around a table and break bread and talk about the financial challenges of the American theater.

I agree with Michael Maso that we should be respectful of each other—which is why I won’t call bullshit on Michael Maso. I will simply say, “I hear you.”

Funder knows best

In a recent thought-provoking Createquity post, Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem, Ian David Moss examines one of the newer initiatives of the NEA (and its private philanthropy friends) and finds it to be lacking a logic for how it will achieve its aims. Moss criticizes this program and others for attempting to connect the arts with economic development without considering the steps in between. Moss’s post is a call for a clear and detailed theory of change for such initiatives and he goes so far as to share two models (one simple and one quite complex) that he has developed.

When I read Moss’s essay, I immediately thought of the questionable motives and unquestioned assumptions that seem to underpin many philanthropic efforts in the arts. (I thought about saying “these days” at the end of that last sentence but, to be honest, I’m not sure whether it’s ever been any different.) To the best of my knowledge, the king of arts funding, Mac Lowry at the Ford Foundation, didn’t develop a sophisticated framework or a complex theory of change when he set about altering the landscape of the arts in America. (Of course some might suggest that the arts sector would be better off now if he had.)

Moss’s models and theories are impressive (and I am quite eager to see how the work in Cincinnati develops over time); but I suspect that many arts funders would see no reason and feel no pressure to go to such lengths. There are few demands that private foundations justify their strategies and they are rarely, if ever, held accountable for poor decisions. We trust funders, perhaps to a fault. Or perhaps it’s not trust as much as behavioral conditioning. Or enlightened self interest.

While Moss is (rightfully) worried that arts funders are failing to connect the dots between their grantmaking and the goals they are aiming to achieve, I must admit that I get a little nervous when I think about some funders trying to work with logic models like the ones in Moss’s post. I scan various philanthropy announcements each week. Aside from noting the incredible number of very large donations made to universities, lately I’m often struck by how paternalistic, prescriptive, demanding, inflexible, and self-congratulatory arts funding has become.

(Or has it always been this way and I’m just getting cranky with age?)

I am concerned that arts funders are becoming ever more bullish and confident that they know what’s best for the sector. A little bit of theory and systems thinking may be worse than none at all. I worry that dabbling with or employing such models could make funders all the more convinced that they can (and should) strengthen or improve or otherwise re-shape the entire arts sector by making a few dozen grants a year. I worry that funders will blame grantees if their models don’t work. More than anything, I worry about how funders may begin to connect the dots.

POSTSCRIPT ADDED JUNE 1 2012: Here’s a link to some reflections from Jason Schupbach, NEA Director of Design in response to Ian David Moss’s post on Creative Placemaking: Creative Placemaking—two years and counting!

 

 

 

Making donor dollars stretch and perform miracles

The other day I received an email alert from the Philanthropy News Digest, which mentioned that a theater company had announced a $7 million endowment challenge grant. When matched, the 3:1 challenge grant (which requires the theater to raise $2.5 million) will boost its endowment from $500,000 to $10 million. Putting aside for a moment debates over the pros and cons of endowments for performing arts organizations, I was struck by the following quote by theater’s artistic director in the press:

When reached, this unprecedented offer will enable the theatre to continue growing far into the future. […] It will ensure the theatre’s ability to continue producing classic musicals and dramatic works, develop visionary new work, maintain state-of-the-art facilities for our theatre and conservatory, and remain a cultural treasure in the community.

My first (rather cheeky) thought was, “They understand they only get to spend the interest, right?” Of course, I know the theater has a smart staff and smart board and that it has accurately projected the annual income from a $10 million endowment. I do not doubt that the endowment will prove useful; and any midsized organization that can raise $10 million in this economy is to be commended. However, unless there is a crucial part of this equation I am failing to understand, a $10 million endowment cannot deliver all that is promised in that press statement.

According to Guidestar the theater mentioned in the article has an operating budget of approximately $4.5 million. Depending on how long the theater waits to begin drawing income from the endowment, and how its investments perform, it seems that the endowment will basically give the theater a boost of about 10% on its operating budget. When I glanced back through a few 990s I noted that total expenses were $4.9 million on its 2008 filing, $4.3 million for 2009, and $4.5 million for 2010. I also noted in its 2010 filing that the organization had interest payments of $271,336 related, one presumes, to the approximately $6 million debt that appears on the balance sheet (some or all of which may be for the state-of-the-art-facility).

And actually, an endowment to cover facility-related costs could be a smart strategy – though this doesn’t appear to be the primary purpose of the endowment in this case.

I recognize that the reason arts organizations put statements like the one above in materials and press announcements for endowment, ‘advancement’ and other capital campaigns is often because they feel they must do so to attract donors. But do donors believe such statements? For that matter, do the staffs and boards of organizations believe them? If so, is everyone confused five or ten years later when another capital campaign is required just to sustain current programs and put the organization on even footing again? If not, is there any reason to continue the charade?

While it may make everyone feel better in the short term is it possible this tendency to make it appear that donor gifts (large and small) can accomplish far more than is realistic has long term negative impacts on the organization and its relationship with its donors and the community-at-large? Is it possible we avoid telling the real truth because we don’t want to confront or invite others to look to closely at the total cost of ownership of our buildings, or the real costs of running our institutions and particular programs, or how much and how little (relatively speaking) is spent on various areas of operation and resources?

And on the other side of the table, it’s been more than a year since the lengthy discourse emerging out of GIA on under- and mis-capitalization of arts organizations. As we head into 2012, I’m curious whether the climate is changing and funders or individual donors (two different animals, I know) are more willing to support costs like debt service, deficits, cash reserves, sinking funds, or general operating?

If not, I’d be curious to know why not?

Image of hands stretching dollar by Sergej Khakimullin licensed from Shutterstock.

Time to start pulling off the duct tape …

In his article, Occupy the Arts, a seat at a time, NY Times critic Anthony Tomasini (like others) pounced on recent allegations of ‘elitism’ in the arts (growing out of the Occupy movement), decrying that there are loads of free and affordable arts events and that even those organizations that charge $400 per ticket also have cheap seats (and the experience is just as great from the nosebleeds, thank you very much!). Not only do Tomasini and others seem a tad defensive when they fly their Free Tickets Flag in the face of those seeking to raise a conversation about social inequalities in the arts, it seems they rather miss the point.

Tomasini writes:

But as we try to grasp what the committed Occupy Wall Street activists are saying to the performing arts, can we all agree to put aside at last the charge of elitism? Especially, I would say from my partisan perspective, regarding classical music? At least in New York and in many other American cities, as well as most college towns, there are abundant opportunities to attend free or very affordable concerts and operas.

What arouses allegations that fine arts organizations are elitist is not (primarily) that their ticket prices are sometimes high, but rather that they are (more often than not) governed by a select group of (generally wealthy, well-educated, and often white) people whose beliefs and tastes are presumed to be ‘the best’ and, therefore, good for society as a whole. Many fine arts organizations are perceived as elitist because they seem to cater to the needs, capacities, and desires of this select group of people rather than serving their communities-at-large.

Communities in which, evidently, a lot of people are quite poor. Russell Willis Taylor of National Arts Strategies and I were chatting the other day and she mentioned that the most recent US census shows that 1 in 2 people in the US are living at the poverty level (Census: 1 in 2 Americans is Poor or Low Income).

And yet, attending a fine arts event in the US one steps into a world that seems to be (and often is) completely out of touch with the reality of that census statistic …

Arts organizations could do something in response to that statistic. Several years ago now, Appalshop (an arts and education center located in the Appalachian mountain region) realized there was a tremendous (and rather sobering) ‘growth market’ in its community (and the US generally) that was not being served by the arts: people who have been or are currently in prison, or those who know people who have been or are currently in prison. A staggering number of people fall into this category—enough that the good people at Appalshop felt that their perspectives and needs were worth taking seriously and that it was important to develop programming with them and for them. To read about this extraordinary program go to the Thousand Kites homepage.

Oh, but wait just a darned minute! Isn’t Appalshop one of those ‘community-based’ organizations? So that’s different. They’re supposed to serve the needs the community-at-large. That’s their mission. As opposed to ‘Arts’ organizations which are supposed to serve … ummmm … oh, never mind.

Pffffffff.

There is a growing financial, artistic, and psychic gap between the ‘nonprofit fine arts world’ in the US and the ‘rest of the US’.

And we’ve been trying to bridge this gap with duct tape (aka, friends with money) for at least 30 years.

It’s a new year.

What better time to tear off the duct tape, see what holds, and start building something better?

Instead of more data perhaps we should discuss why we keep ignoring the data we have?

I finally had found some time this week to read Scott Walter’s excellent second post in his trilogy (all three now published) looking at the 1% vs 99% issues in the US arts and culture sector. A compelling string of comments follows this post, led by one of my other favorite bloggers, Clayton Lord, who argues two points: (1) Is it effective to turn against the ‘top’ arts organizations at a time when the arts generally are under attack? and (2) We need to collect more data to understand how to improve the system. Walters responds that the time for action has come and that collecting data has become, essentially, a way of postponing action.  As much of a data geek as I have becomenow that I’m working on a dissertation (and as much as I would advocate for transparency and the collection of better data in the sector generally), I tend to agree with Scott Walters that data is probably not going to make the difference here.

My suspicion arises from what I pointed out in a Jumper post written in response to the Fusing Arts, Culture, and Social Change report when it was first published: the issues outlined in that report have been in existence, and have been reported on, for decades. Furthermore, every single year that I was a grantmaker I read the annual ‘funding snapshot’ published by Grantmakers in the Arts, which discussed (among many topics) the distribution of funding. Every year, GIA seemed to report that the majority of funding was distributed to a minority of organizations and every year the percentages remained about the same.

Here’s another example of funders and arts organizations disregarding data (and a bit of a tangent, but I think it is a related and serious issue). I was recently at a meeting looking at the findings of a major new study examining the causes and impacts of the massive investments in arts facilities in recent decades. At the convening, it was discussed that at least one (and I suspect more than one) study had been done prior to this one – perhaps not as comprehensive, but certainly raising many of the same issues and concerns – and that the behavior of funders and arts organizations had not changed in response to learning the findings.

How many arts leaders (and their capital investors) were told when planning to build/expand/renovate facilities and (invest in such facilities projects) the statistics on what happens to organizations in the first five years after those buildings are built? Probably all of them. How many went ahead anyway? Probably most of them. How many arts groups struggled  to pay off debt or laid off staff or struggled to stay true to their missions and keep the building open 3-5 years after completing the project? How many donors who made ‘one time’ gifts to the capital campaign were asked to consider large operating gifts to help the organization after opening because audiences and contributed income were not as high as projected and expenses were higher than projected? Again, I’d wager a majority of them. (We could get into the related issue of the opportunity costs of so much funding getting sucked into a single organizations, but I’ll stop here.)

It seems to me there are two issues here. The first one I raised in my post a few weeks ago. The wealth/class/race disparities that we are experiencing today are, I believe, to a large extent by design. High art / low art, upper middle class / ‘the rest of us’ distinctions were very much embedded in the development of the ‘fine arts’ end of the nonprofit arts sector. For all the talk about the ‘blurring’ of lines and democratization of the arts, in reality, we seem to have a system that is still trying to maintain these distinctions. There are arts leaders and those that would fund them that would wholeheartedly agree that they are elitist and would say that this is a positive thing (meaning  that they want to do the finest work possible for the people that have the time, money, and education to appreciate it). I’ve wondered in a previous post whether such organizations should perhaps be restructured as country clubs (and have the nonprofit tax status that is given to such clubs rather than the kind that goes to charitable or educational institutions).  But that’s a topic for another day ….

The second issue is that data (facts) do not seem to change behavior unless people have an emotional connection to them, especially if the status quo is working in their favor. I tend to think that change will come in the arts sector with a change in leadership (which will bring with it a changed worldview). When I look at my generation and the generations below mine (I’m at the upper end of ‘X’) I am inspired. Of course, if we don’t turn the reins over to people now 40 or under for 20 more years and if they have no interest in working for the arts when ‘their time’ comes, then my hope in the next generation may be for nil.

In the meantime I would offer this: foundations and service organizations should not be collecting data unless they are prepared to take firm action when they get the results. I have repeatedly seen both types of organizations pursue strategies that seem to be in direct contradiction to the very research that they have commissioned. If you are not prepared (if the data implications suggest it) to stop funding or celebrating the practices of the historically leading institutions of this country then do not commission research that may lead to this conclusion. It’s a waste of tax deductible individual gifts and grant dollars.

Even better, before paying for any new studies perhaps funders and service organizations should take several months and simply read all the studies that have already been done and see whether there isn’t a preponderance of evidence already in existence that might compel us all to make different choices. I suspect it’s out there and that what we need is not more evidence but a candid discussion about why nothing has changed despite the evidence that already exists.

And to Clayton’s excellent question about whether we should turn against the leaders at a time when the arts are under attack – I am probably oversimplifying things here, but it seems to me that the majority of the attacks against the arts are political and stem from them being perceived or easily portrayed as elitist and out of touch with (and doing very little for) the majority of Americans. Just punting here, but … I wonder what would happen if the top 1% of arts organizations (who capture the majority of foundation, corporate, and individual support) willingly gave up their federal, state, and local government cash grants (perhaps the grants could be tapered off over 3 years, giving them three years to develop individual donors to replace those funds) so that those funds could be redistributed to the 99%?

Perhaps we would remove the largest weapon that the other side has to use against the arts while simultaneously redistributing government funds to smaller organizations that (let’s be honest, Mr. Kaiser), will never be competitive in the fight to attract board members or individual donors when battling against organizations 10 or 100 times their size that are armed with glossy publications, celebrity-studded galas, Fortune 500 CEOs on their boards, well-branded if not exceedingly talented artistic leaders, and a battalion of development staffers.

1% image by ThreeArt and licensed by Shutterstock.com

 

On artists making a living and artistic directors that could make a difference but don’t

Ethan Lipton

Saturday night I went to Joe’s Pub to see playwright-lounge lizard Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra perform  his new work, No Place To Go, about a playwright-lounge lizard that must decide whether to relocate or stay in the ‘the city’ when the company that has provided him with a steady ‘day-job’ (part-time no-benefits employment) for a decade decides to relocate to Mars.  It’s funny, satirical, and poignant. As you might have inferred, the piece is inspired by events in Lipton’s life.

Some of my friends who are actors, playwrights, composers, or directors are able to make something close to a living alternating between paying gigs and unemployment (if you can call having a gross income just above poverty level and no health insurance ‘making a living’); but many of them have (like Lipton) been able to pursue their careers as artists only by working day jobs (many of which have become harder to obtain or hold onto during the rather brutal current economic climate).

There was a time when one of the first principles of resident theaters in this country was that they would hire a company of actors and then cast them in multiple productions throughout the season in a combination of large and small roles. I recently re-read a speech given by W. McNeil Lowry at the Ford Foundation in which he mentions that Ford started investing in theaters in the 1960’s in part to improve circumstances for actors. While ‘acting ensembles’ still exist they are mostly in the form of ‘artist-driven collectives’ that produce shows but operate with a bare bones administrative budget. There are exceptions, but by-and-large, and for a variety of reasons, resident theaters lost their resident acting companies decades ago.

Over the same period of time, however, the administrative staffs of these same theaters became quite substantial to the point where  NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman has recently questioned whether we need “three administrators for every artist” in America. I’m not familiar with the research that underpins that question/statistic, but it certainly seems that artists with salaries are generally artists that have become arts administrators.

The past year or two I’ve begun to hear artistic directors express dismay at the fact that we give administrators salaries but we hire actors, directors, designers, and writers on a ‘contract’ basis. Unfortunately, these conversations never seem to go anywhere. I don’t hear anyone going so far as to suggest that theaters try to ‘get the acting company back together again’ or even that theaters should be paying higher wages to artists to compensate for the fact that they no longer provide stable employment.  They all seem to shrug their shoulders and shake their heads as if to say, “I wish I could do something about this”. It’s like they’ve forgotten that they are the leaders of these organizations and responsible for setting the priorities and values.

I’m no artistic director, but I can think of a few things larger theaters in the US might do for actors short of reconstituting their acting companies and their repertory models:

  • What if theaters maintained a minimum ratio between ‘wages or fees paid to artists’ and the total operating budget?
  • What if investments in the buildings, administrative budgets, and salaries of full-time staff of theaters were matched with a relative increase in artistic budgets and, specifically, wages or fees paid to artists?
  • What if LORT A theaters paid wages to artists comparable to a Broadway production contract?
  • What if, in consideration of the fact that an actor must begin working on a role before rehearsal begins and often needs time to find employment after a show ends, actors were paid a minimum of 12 weeks of salary at any LORT theater (even though they were working at the theater for only 8 of those weeks)?
  • What if theaters opting to do a play with 5 or fewer characters doubled the weekly wages of the actors?

I know …these ideas are preposterous.

I remember hearing Michael Halberstam at Writers’ Theater in Chicago speak at a TCG conference (at a brilliant session with Mike Daisey discussing his insightful and rather incendiary work How Theater Failed America) and learning that Writers’ Theater had long ago made a commitment to invest in actors (and local ones at that) and pay wages comparable to the wages paid by larger theaters. It sounded so right when I heard it, and it was clear that in this room filled with artistic and managing directors from around the country that Michael Halberstam was considered a radical for doing this.

Why is it an outlandish idea to pay as much as you can to the artists and to keep administrative or other production costs as low as possible in order to do so?

And why do we accept this strange idea that doing a play with more than 5 characters is going to bankrupt a theater with a $5- or $10- or $15 million operating budget?

Pffff.

Ethan Lipton is clearly a talented artist. As much as I’d like to hope that he will suddenly be able to make his living fulltime as an artist in this country, realistically I know that I should probably hope that he gets another part-time day job that will let him continue working as an artist.

This makes me sad. I bet it makes many artistic directors sad, as well. But we need to do more than shake our heads when we discuss that arts administrators can make a living wage in this country and that even really talented actors (and musicians and dancers) too often cannot.

We want to tell ourselves that it is not possible to do more for artists but this is simply not true.

At large institutions across this country, of course more can be done.

I welcome other outlandish suggestions …

 

The times may be a-changin’ but (no surprise) arts philanthropy ain’t

The Philanthropy News Digest recently sent me a bulletin with the headline, “Arts Funding Does Not Reflect Nation’s Diversity, Report Finds” which linked me to an AP Newsbreak article with the headline “Report finds arts funding serves wealthy audience, is out of touch with diversity”. My initial thought was, “Seriously? We need a report to tell us this?” The report, Fusing Arts, Culture, and Social Change: High Impact Strategies for Philanthropy, was produced by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and written by Holly Sidford.

Here are a couple paragraphs from the executive summary:

Every year, approximately 11 percent of foundation giving – more than $2.3 billion in 2009 – is awarded to nonprofit arts and culture. At present, the vast majority of that funding supports cultural organizations whose work is based in the elite segment of the Western European cultural tradition – commonly called the canon – and whose audiences are predominantly white and upper income. A much smaller percentage of cultural philanthropy supports the arts and traditions of non-European cultures and the  non-elite expressions of all cultures that comprise an increasing part of American society. An even smaller fraction supports arts activity that explicitly challenges social norms and propels movements for greater justice and equality.

This pronounced imbalance restricts the expressive life of millions of people, thus constraining our creativity as a nation. But it is problematic for many other reasons, as well. It is a problem because it means that – in the arts – philanthropy is using its tax-exempt status primarily to benefit wealthier, more privileged institutions and populations. It is a problem because our artistic and cultural landscape includes an increasingly diverse range of practices, many of which are based in the history and experience of lower-income and nonwhite peoples, and philanthropy is not keeping pace with these developments. And it is a problem because art and cultural expression offer essential tools to help us create fairer, more just and more civic-minded communities, and these tools are currently under-funded.

I am as discouraged as anyone by where many (but certainly not all) private foundations and wealthy individual donors give their support, and where they do not. However, my sense has never been that this behavior persists (and has perhaps become more pronounced as the demographics of the country are shifting dramatically) because the heads of foundations or the wealthiest donors in America were lacking a report explaining that too much of their money was going to arts organizations producing Western European ‘high art’ for white, upper middle class audiences.

The book Patrons Despite Themselves told very much the same story back in 1983 in its analysis of the ‘indirect’ system of funding the arts (that is, via the tax system rather than via direct grants from government). Feld, O’Hare, and Schuster concluded (among other things):

On balance, income to the arts is paid for disproportionately by the very wealthy and is enjoyed more by the moderately wealthy and the well educated. The demographic characteristics of the audience – the beneficiaries of the government aid – do not vary much across art forms. While the system tends to be redistributive, it is only so in a limited sense: from the very wealthy to the moderately wealthy.

Three of the recommendations in PDT regarding philanthropic decisionmaking are: (1) “decisions should reflect expertise in the subject”; (2) “public decisions in allocation of government support for the arts should reflect many varied kinds of tastes”; and (3) “arts decisionmaking must be independent of malign influence, that is, influence represented by narrow partisan politics or self-serving interests.”

We can see how much traction the authors had in the arts and culture sector with this message given the ‘elitism redux’ (and with more urgency) message in the new National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy report.

This is why I find it ironic when funders throw their arms up in the air, discouraged by declining attendance at ‘out-of-touch’ symphony orchestras and other fine art forms. It would seem that the growing gap between these organizations and their communities exists in large part because they continued to find support and legitimacy from high profile foundations even as they were raising ticket prices and failing to update their programming and becoming increasingly ‘non-representative’ of their communities over the past 30 years.

Moreover, if we are wondering why this decades-old message just doesn’t seem to ‘stick’ and change behavior, it may be worth taking a moment to recognize the “alliance between class and culture” that emerged with the very development of our nonprofit arts system in the US: “High art” was meant to serve the needs of urban elites and the hierarchical distinction between “high culture” and “popular culture” was meant to distinguish not simply two forms of culture but the types of people that patronized these forms of culture (DiMaggio 1982).

We have (and have had) a cultural divide in the US and the arts continue to contribute to it – not all arts, but certainly a large part of the sector that is often heralded as ‘leading’, ‘excellent’ and ‘world class’. You don’t end up with the large majority of your audience being white and wealthy by accident. Nor do you end up with the large majority of your funding portfolio going to assist those organizations that are primarily serving those white and wealthy people, by accident.

This is by design, folks.

I by no means want to suggest that it is a waste of time to periodically document the fact that private funding for the arts continues to primarily support upper middle class white people. This is, perhaps, a message that needs to be transmitted continually if the situation is to change. And, as the report accurately suggests, this issue is becoming more acute as arts funding fails to keep pace with dramatic socio-economic changes that are occurring.

Indeed. Taking the message one step further, I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that organizations whose value is reliant upon old institutions, old habits, and old social networks (centered around an old concept of ‘the cultural elite’) may very well find themselves on the wrong side of a cultural change in the years to come.

Arts organizations and their funders would seem to have a choice: be part of the change or fight to the death to uphold the dying system that for decades gave their work meaning. Perhaps their own survival (if not an interest in fairer and more civic-minded communities and a sincere desire to upend social norms and support social change) will ultimately prompt some of these institutions to change their behaviors?

 Poster designed by adbusters for #OccupyWallStreet.

 

 

But What Does Barry’s List Mean?

So Barry’s Blog posted its annual Top 25 Most Powerful and Influential Leaders in the Nonprofit Arts list last week. In years’ past I would see this list and bemoan the fact that it seemed to be dominated by funders. I never said anything because I thought it would probably come across as sour grapes since I was, at the time, a funder (but not one that made the list).  As it turns out, this year I squeaked onto the list … barely. And so (with this new found and, no doubt, short-lived position of influence) I have decided to raise the question:

What are we to make of this list and who is on it?

One point of clarification: my aim is not to debate the merits of individuals on the list. My concern is with the overall makeup of the list. I attempted to raise this issue by commenting on Barry’s post last week. Here’s an edited version of what I wrote, building on a comment by Rachel who noted the absence of arts organization leaders beyond Michael Kaiser:

Where are the amazing managing and executive directors of arts organizations on this list? For that matter, where are the artists and artistic directors? I find myself troubled by the fact that this list is so dominated by funders, bloggers (like me), policy wonks, and people running intermediary organizations – despite the fact that some of these people are friends and many are people I deeply respect. Even when I worked at a foundation I thought that it was not such a great thing that so many funders show up on this list each year.

Barry gave a thoughtful response in which he clarified (rightly so) that his list was about arts administration and organizational leadership, and that artists did not appear on the list because nominators were asked not to recommend artists. He also noted that while there were countless things about the sector that troubled him the fact that the list was dominated by funders and policy types was not one of them. Another commenter (following mine) asserted that we need the ‘wonks’ and encouraged them to ‘wonk on’.

These are all valid points. I deny neither the need for policymakers, or funders, or service organizations nor their importance as entities that (often, at least ideally) have both the benefit of a systems perspective on the field and the ability to intervene and have positive impact. They are powerful and influential; and some of them should be on the list.

But I would argue that we should not be content that among the 44-ish people that appear to represent the top 25 and those ‘bubbling under’ only one (Michael Kaiser) actually runs or works in a nonprofit arts institution (that is not related primarily to arts education). Notably, Barry agreed (with Rachel’s point) and said he thought there were “any number of exemplary leaders of performing arts organizations that not only could be, but really ought to be on this list.”

Believe me, I fully understand why the list is constituted as it is. But it suggests a power/influence imbalance in our sector that one-third or one-half of the list is not made up of leaders within arts organizations (and by ‘leaders’ I do not mean to imply ‘directors’) and particularly artistic leaders (yes, being influential and powerful in such areas as arts administration, funding, advocacy, and organizational leadership). As I also wrote in my comment on Barry’s Blog:

If this were the 1960s or 70s W. McNeil (Mac) Lowry at the Ford Foundation would no doubt have been on the list, but so would have been Zelda Fichandler (founding artistic director of Arena Stage), Joe Papp (at the Public) and several other artistic/producing directors (and that’s just the theater).

Robert (Bob) Brustein, founder of Yale Repertory Theatre and American Repertory Theatre (ART) at Harvard University has written (I believe) 16 books on theatre and society over the past three decades or so—the majority of those while he was serving as a director at ART. Regardless of whether one embraces his viewpoints, one cannot deny that the theater world is better off because he was actively contributing to the conversation on such topics as the role of theater in society and what systems (including management, financial, political) support or hinder the making of art. He was not at all hesitant to challenge the decisions of policymakers, funders, and others. In 2000 he contributed an essay to a great book, The Politics of Culture, (G. Bradford, M. Gary, and G. Wallach eds.) entitled “Coercive Philanthropy.” The title (rather wonderfully) speaks for itself.

We are not having an enlightened dialogue about the current state or imagined future of the arts if among the 25 (or 44?) most powerful people thinking about the systems for funding, managing, and administrating arts institutions (again, excluding the arts education subset of the list, which seems to have achieved a better ‘balance’) none are artistic directors, or artistic staff, or artists.

Cynically, I wonder whether artists (etc.) would end up on the list even if Barry removed the rule that excludes them from being nominated. I say this not because we don’t have another generation or two of Roberts, Zeldas, and Joes working in the arts and culture sector (please forgive the theater bias; it’s the history I know best), but because I don’t trust they’d get nominated.

Barry writes in the introduction to the list:

Like every other field or profession, there are those in the nonprofit arts who are powerful and influential. To pretend that any world (ours included) is not stratified, tiered, territorial and subject to politics and disproportionately controlled by an oligarchy at the top is naïve. I believe the people who work in our field are passionate and motivated and seek the higher good, but I also recognize that they are human beings, and that our field isn’t some separate and perfect world – and that power and influence are tangible currency – sometimes spent wisely, other times needlessly squandered.

What I take from this passage is that the field should be engaged with which names are on this list and which are not. Thus, I’d be curious what people think of the list. Again, I’m not asking for opinions on individuals who are either on or off the list (as Barry notes, people are bound to have diverse points of view on the merits of individuals on the list). Rather, I’m interested to hear reflections on the overall makeup of the list—the types of people on it—and what this might say about the sector. In other words, what (if anything) does this list mean? Do you give the list much thought? If so, what do you think about it? And if it means nothing to you, why is that?

I wonder whether the shape of this list reflects the fact that arts organizations (and by that I mean the individuals working within and for them) have, over the past three decades, ceded too much of the power and influence over the arts and culture sector to funders, government agencies, and service organizations? Am I wrong about this?

Despite having concerns about the lack of people working in arts organizations on the list and some questions about the methodology used to generate the list (I wonder how representative it is), I would be disingenuous if I said that getting on the list meant nothing to me. I sincerely enjoy writing my blog and am deeply gratified when people read it much less take the time to Tweet about it, or post comments, or otherwise engage with the ideas. But I would also be remiss if I did not say that (with very few exceptions) I am largely influenced (and inspired) by those working in the trenches, in arts organizations. This is because I spent the majority of my career working in arts organizations and I know that the picture on the inside is much different than the one often envisioned or theorized by researchers, consultants, funders, and policy makers.

It may be excellent work … but is it good?

A few years back I heard Howard Gardner speak in a lecture series at MOMA in NYC called The True, the Beautiful and the Good, Reconsiderations in a Postmodern, Digital Era. I attended the lecture on ‘the Good’ in which Gardner described ‘good work’ (in the sense of one’s vocation/job) as work that is excellent, engaging, and ethical (for more on this idea, check out Gardner’s Goodwork Toolkit). As soon as I heard the description my mind began working on a question: By-and-large, are nonprofit arts organizations doing ‘good’ (i.e., excellent, engaging, and ethical) work? While there are many arts organizations that are beloved by the artists and staffers that work there, anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that (at least at some institutions) one or more legs of the ‘goodwork’ stool may need shoring up.

Some have written that Philadelphia Orchestra’s filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy is a ploy to enable them to renege on the pension benefits that they once promised to musicians.  A post on Norman Lebrecht’s blog describes the new Metropolitan Opera contract for conductors as one which requires them to ‘sign their lives away’. And of course there is the oft-referenced and remarkable statistic that orchestra musician job satisfaction ranked below that of prison guards in one study (Allmendinger, Hackman, and Lehman (1996), p. 202).

Likewise, the book Outrageous Fortune is chock-full of observations by playwrights that would suggest that the process of having their plays developed by a major nonprofit resident theater is often demoralizing or oppressive. Moreover, some playwrights say they prefer working for TV over the American theater not just because it pays more but because it is often more creative.

And while (in the good news column) some nonprofit theaters have in recent years modified their stances on subsidiary rights (in favor of playwrights) it’s not clear that the move was entirely altruistic; some simply seem to have realized that the relatively small amounts of money they were making off the artists were not worth looking like jerks and potentially losing goodwill and funding. More importantly, one might ask how such rights ever became the standard in nonprofit organization contracts?

I talk with young arts administrators who have graduated with the aspiration to do ‘good work’ in a nonprofit arts organization who, one or two years later, are bored and frustrated. They feel like cogs in a machine, or like slave labor, working long hours for low pay (all the more challenging if they know the artistic or executive director is making 15 or 20 times as much) and doing not very interesting work. The last point is an important one. I often hear Baby Boomers decry that they had to scrub the toilets and take out the trash at their theaters when they first started them. Yeah, well so did almost every entrepreneur that ever started his or her own small business. But let’s face it, taking out the trash (much less doing data entry) is much easier to endure if you know that you also get to program the season, or have dinner with a major American playwright and discuss her work, or choreograph a new work later this year.

If I had a dime for every time a nonprofit arts admin staffer said to me, “our organization is filled with people under 35 who have great ideas but the artistic and managing directors have no interest in what we have to say” I’d be able to buy a round-trip ticket Amsterdam to NYC. Similarly, actors, musicians, dancers, and other artists (unless they are celebrities) are rarely invited to share their opinions on programming or marketing or fundraising strategies. While I acknowledge that some may have no interest in such matters, my sense is that some do but that their ideas often die on the vine because no one thought they’d be worth picking.

This all strikes me as wrong. It seems that nonprofits should hold themselves accountable for being places where process matters as much as product and where ‘good work’ reliably happens. Places where administrators and artists alike are able to do excellent work (e.g., are given sufficient rehearsal time), are engaged in the work (e.g., have the autonomy to be creative and feel ownership of the mission), and are treated and behave ethically (e.g., contracts do not advantage institutions at the expense of artists).

Yes, organizations face uncertain times and unfavorable financial circumstances. Such an environment can require dramatic changes in the size or scope of an institution. Union contracts may very well need to change and it may not be possible to sustain the infrastructure that was once created–and administrators and artists alike must face this reality. But what are we safeguarding as we make such changes? If not the promise of ‘good work’ then is it worth keeping the doors open? How these changes happen is as important as whether they happen.

We have for years taken for granted that nonprofit arts institutions are inherently more trustworthy than commercial entities and are (more) worthwhile and creative places to work. However, the experiences of at least some artists and arts administrators would suggest that even when arts organizations appear to be achieving a certain kind of excellence (selling out the hall, doing great work on stage, raising lots of money, or balancing their budgets), the toll exacted for that ‘excellent’ work may be ‘goodness’ in the process.

Image of arrow signs by IQoncept, licensed at shutterstock.com.

Strategic partnerships between funders & arts orgs: same small grants, more hoop jumping

There were many thoughtful comments to last week’s post, including provocative reflections on the power imbalance between funders and grantees and speculation as to whether restructuring the relationship as a ‘partnership’ might be feasible or desirable. In recent years, a ‘strategic partnership’ approach (commonly used by venture philanthropists seeking to, for example, fund nonprofits to make and distribute mosquito nets in the Third World), has been embraced by some arts funders. But is this a positive development for arts groups?

Most arts funders (even those that are endeavoring to be ‘partners’) are making miniscule grants relative to arts organizations’ operating budgets, or even the budgets of their individual programs in many cases. If an arts organization is cobbling together a bunch of $5-$25,000 grants to fund some portion of its operations (as many of them are), how many authentic ‘partnerships’ (read: masters) can it reasonably fulfill (read: serve)?

For that matter, how many ‘partnerships’ can one funder reasonably sustain? I was interested to learn from a presentation by a major venture philanthropist that his foundation had determined that it could manage no more than about 30 projects at a time, because each ‘partnership’ required sustained financial support and significant time (read: involvement) of foundation staff.

Which raises another question: Do arts organizations want ‘partnership’ if it implies intense involvement? Furthermore, is such involvement appropriate when one is creating operas or art exhibitions? Witness the way some foundations and individual donors have, essentially, sought to coerce the National Portrait Gallery into reinstating A Fire in My Belly by artist David Wojnarowicz on the grounds that they have contributed to the exhibit Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.

It would appear that the National Portrait Gallery made the decision to remove the exhibit in response to political pressure from representatives of the US government, which might reasonably be considered a ‘partner’ given that the NPG receives several million dollars in federal appropriations each year. That other smaller ‘partners’ of the exhibit disagree with the decision is completely understandable (there seems to be near unanimity in the ‘art world’ that this was a scandalous turn of events); but that they expect to change the outcome, may not be. Unless these other funders and individual donors can pony up millions of dollars per year in operating support for the National Portrait Gallery, they are unlikely to have significant political leverage with it now, or in the future. And, reasonably, should they?  

I sense that grant seekers are keen to use the term ‘partnership’ as they perceive that recasting the relationship as two entities jointly trying to achieve a great goal may help level the playing field and encourage meaningful underwriting in support of core programs for sustained periods of time (think: The Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville). Realistically, I don’t see many arts funders being able or willing to do this. Cynically, I think calling them partners (particularly those that are flying the ‘strategic philanthropy’ flag) may simply give them more power and lead them to expect more involvement and hoop jumping and achievement of outcomes, in exchange for what still amounts to relatively small amounts of restricted support.

Elephant and Mouse image by Gnurf, licensed at Shutterstock.com

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