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!

[contextly_auto_sidebar]

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.

[contextly_auto_sidebar]

On “looky-loos” and the institutions who are desperate for them and desperate for them to behave

Bathroom Celebs at the Met Gala. Photo: Courtesy of Twitter/victuuris95

On the recommendation of a couple friends who are artists I recently read Dave Hickey’s fantastic 1997 memoir Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy.

As I was reading a couple essays, in particular, I kept thinking about the recent tizzy over the behavior of a pack of celebrities attending the Met gala, who hid out in the bathroom to socialize, take selfies, and smoke.  AJ blogger, Judith Dobrzynski, who commented on the incident in her post, If This Can Happen at the Met and the British Museum … We Have a Big Problem, suggests that the Met is just one (though perhaps an extreme and high profile) example of a growing trend: people who don’t know how to behave in cultural institutions. In her post, Dobrzynski also recounts that the British Museum suffers approximately 50 acts of “pencil graffiti on its ancient sculptures” each year (mostly by schoolchildren).

Her conclusion:

I’ve increasingly noticed the posting of Don’ts, and sometimes Dos, at museums. They do not seem to be enough.

Reading Hickey’s memoir this past week I was suddenly struck by the way arts organizations have set themselves up for this very situation.

There are a few essays in Hickey’s memoir that I suspect will become lifelong touchstones for me. One is called “Romancing the Looky-Loos.” Looky-loos is Hickey’s dad’s term for those who pay “their dollar at the door” for concerts or art experiences, “but contribute nothing”–spectators, rather than participants. Hickey distinguishes these two types writing, “while spectators must be lured, participants just appear, looking for that new thing.”

Participants show up (no luring necessary) Hickey argues, because they have a “passion for what is going on” and because showing up is a way “to increase the social value of the things you love.” Participants show up for the conversation (both literal and metaphorical). While participants decide what they love and then give it their attention, Hickey says spectators love whatever is the winning side—”the side with the chic building, the gaudy doctorates, and the star-studded cast. They seek out spectacles whose value is confirmed by the normative blessing of institutions and corporations.”

The very next essay in the volume—also a new favorite—is called “The Heresy of Zone Defense.” Among other themes, Hickey riffs on basketball and how it has evolved since 1891 from being a “socially redeeming” activity for recidivist, working-class youth to a sport that is “more joyful, various, and articulate.” That evolution, Hickey argues, is a result of “changing the rules when they threatened[ed] to make the game less beautiful and less visible.” Put another way, the rule changes in basketball over the past century all have been designed to improve the game’s aesthetics.

Hickey contrasts the sort of rules that seek to liberate from those that seek to govern and says that “nearly every style change in fine art has been, in some way, motivated” by the latter. He contrasts the evolution in basketball from that of art, writing:

Thus basketball, which began this century as a pedagogical discipline, concludes it as a much beloved public spectacle, while fine art, which began this century as a much-beloved public spectacle, has ended up where basketball began—in the YMCA or its equivalent—governed rather than liberated by its rules.

Putting the two essays together I’m left with a few thoughts on both the Met smoking-in-the-girls’-room scandal and the more general “problem” (as it is being framed) of people “misbehaving” at cultural institutions:

First, if our economic models depend on drawing exponentially more looky-loos than participants then is it really reasonable to expect those lured to our events by aggressive marketing or buzz to be sincerely interested in the arts experience and aware of the rules of the game, so to speak?

Second, while concerns around smoking in the building or drawing on valuable artworks are, indeed, warranted, it strikes me that the big problem is not that people are no longer following museum rules on how to behave. The big problem is that, in response to this situation, museums seem to think the answer is to post more rules–a strategy that has already taken much of the joy out of arts experiences. Of course the celebs that are forced to make a command performance at the Met gala, or risk the wrath of Anna Wintour, rebel in the bathroom. Of course the school kids, confused perhaps because in other areas of life they are encouraged to create and participate, mistakenly draw on the sculptures.

So what’s the solution if, as Dobrzynski suggests, over time an increasing portion of the culture doesn’t seem to get the rules, or seems to grasp them but not to respect them?

Perhaps to find a solution we first need to reframe the problem from a version of “How do we survive in this world that is clearly no longer good enough for us?” to something else. Rather than trying to figure out how to police the culture, perhaps arts institutions could ask themselves:

  • Where are we aggressively luring looky-loos rather than inviting participation? and
  • Where are our rules seeking to govern artists and participants, rather than liberate them?

And let’s be honest: How many arts organizations actually want or expect meaningful participation from their version of the looky-loos? I’d wager most are lured primarily for the optics and economic gains to the institution.We want to eat our cake and have it, too. We want everyone to show up but we don’t want to widen our conception of what makes for a great arts experience. Inviting everyone and then shoving a long list of rules in their hands is a short-term solution likely to result in many of those people henceforth looking elsewhere for an experience that is participatory, relevant, and joyful–the NBA finals, perhaps.

[contextly_auto_sidebar]

Is artistic leadership at America’s arts institutions lacking? Is this at the root of declining relevancy?

Joe Horowitz has written a stirring essay on the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, and New York Philharmonic on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Lincoln Center. In response, ArtsJournal has asked a number of people to consider the essay and to weigh in on a series of questions (paraphrased):

Is artistic leadership at America’s arts institutions lacking? Moreover, is this at the root of declining relevancy of the arts? Is something more, or better, needed from America’s arts institutions, particularly at this vexing and critical time?

This essay explores these questions through the lens of the American theater. At the heart of this essay rests the paradox of the Public Arts Institution—a paradox captured beautifully in this passage from a 1970 essay by Arena Stage co-founder, Zelda Fichandler, Theatres or Institutions?[1]

I am not very strong on community giving, except perhaps when it represents only a small percentage of the total. I think we could well do without the hand that rocks the cradle, for the hand that rocks the cradle will also want to raise it in a vote and mix into the pie with it. For while a theatre is a public art and belongs to its public, it is an art before it is public and so it belongs first to itself and its first service must be self-service. A theatre is part of its society. But it is a part which must remain apart since it is also chastiser, rebel, lightning rod, redeemer, irritant, codifier, and horse-laughter.

This is a paradox I also wrestled with in an essay published in the most recent issue of Artivate called On Entrepreneurialism and Publicness (or Whose Theatre is it, Really?). 

Part I: Are We Weeding, or Breeding, Artistic Leadership Out of the Field?

Joe Horowitz’s story is a tale of three organizations, only one of which (New York City Ballet) succeeded in changing the face of its art form. What made the difference at the Ballet? By my reading, there was first and foremost a will on the part of both Balanchine and his impresario, Kirstein, to do so; and second, conditions were ripe for these institutional entrepreneurs to make their move.

Last year I worked on a case study on the Margo Jones Theatre, founded in 1947 (in Dallas, Texas) and hailed by most theater historians as the prototypical modern resident theater. Jones produced exclusively new plays and classics. In an average season Jones produced 4-5 premieres and two classics; in contrast, of 23 resident theaters surveyed in 1965 by journalist Sandra Schmidt, 15 produced no new plays at all and four produced only one.[2] At the time, most resident theaters exemplified the vibrant museum model described in Horowitz’s essay.

Historians often chalk this up to a discomfort with new fare on the part of both institutional leaders and their audiences. Perhaps. It seems Jones overcame discomfort by reading a minimum of one new script every day of her life from her college days onward and, more importantly, she made her audience comfortable with new fare through the same process: repeated exposure.

Like Balanchine, Jones had a vision and the will to execute it. Importantly, she also had a business manager who supported her commitment to new plays and a board of directors that gave her free reign. Equally as important, resident theater in America was in its pioneer period. But the first condition is critical. Jones was devoted to playwrights and preached far and wide that nonprofit regional theaters had a moral duty to produce new plays being rejected by the commercial stage, in lieu of relying on Broadway revivals–fare favored by both commercial winter stock companies and community theaters at the time.

We seem to have few such zealots running American LORT theaters these days.

Why is that?

I don’t believe it’s because none exist.

Consider the driving emphasis on instilling arts institutional leaders with business skills since 1960; the now mandatory requirements of a track record of raising money and delivering box office hits (that will fill Broadway-sized venues) to attain the job of artistic director at a major theater; the lack of artists on nonprofit boards, or even many individuals with an aesthetic sensibility; and the dramatic power shift from artist-leaders to business-leaders, generally.

Maybe we have been breeding, or weeding, artistic leadership out of the field?

Margo Jones didn’t like to raise money from the community, she demanded 100% control of her theater, and she walked into the job interview saying to the board, in essence: Count me out if you are planning to be a theater of the past, “striving to exist on box-office hits,” as I am only interested in creating “a true playwright’s theatre, presenting original scripts and providing playwrights with an outlet for their work.”[3]

If Margo Jones were applying to run an American theater in the hinterlands of the US today she probably wouldn’t stand a chance.

Part II: Artists are Getting it Done … But Are Institutions Getting in the Way?

I recently had the privilege of attending a Salzburg Global Seminar called The Art of Resilience: Creativity, Courage and Renewal. Among many inspiring presentations was one by artist Anida Yoeu Ali, a first generation Muslim Khmer woman born in Cambodia and raised in Chicago. Anida talked about a number of her works, including a performance installation called The Red Chador: Thresholds, created for a 2016 Smithsonian event called Crosslines: A Culture Lab on Intersectionality. The work asked viewers: “Can we accept a Muslim woman as a patriotic woman?”

The Red Chador: Threshold, Washington DC, USA | May 28-29, 2016. Commissioned by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Performance by Anida Yoeu Ali.                               Photo Courtesy of Les Talusan

Over breakfast one morning I asked Anida, “So how would you respond to the question, ‘What is the role of the artist post-Trump?” and she said, “Same as always. No different. Get up and do the work.”

The day after the election Anida took to the streets of Seattle, where she is now based, wearing the red, glittering chador she created for the Smithsonian performance installation and holding a sign that on one side said, I AM A MUSLIM and, on the other, BAN ME.

The Red Chador: The Day After, Seattle, USA | Nov 9, 2016. Performance by Anida Yoeu Ali.  Photo courtesy of Studio Revolt.

What’s my point?

Artists are doing something about it, same as always.

However, most artists depend upon institutional outlets for protection, platforms, and resources for that something to be fully realized.

To this very point, the New York Times recently ran an article on a new play by Robert Schenkkan, written in a “white-hot fury” in one week. Characterized as a “disquieting response to the Trump era,” it’s called Building the Wall.  Schenkkan says in the article:

We no longer live in a world that is business as usual—Trump has made that very clear—and if theater is going to remain relevant, we must become faster to respond.

While the article goes on to mention that a group of theaters has committed to producing the play within the next few months, it’s worth noting that (a) this sort of response is exceedingly rare; and (b) the theaters that have stepped up are largely part of a small alliance of exemplary midsized theaters (the National New Play Network) that has fought the past decade or so to shift stultifying practices around new play development in the US.

Most institutions are not able to respond quickly to artists (doing something about it) in large part because artists exist outside of institutions rather than within them. While resident theaters were initially idealized as homes for actors, writers, and designers what they have become in reality is homes for administrators and technicians. Even when artists are in residence they quite often have minimal (if any) power within institutions, or influence on them. And we have had a number of instances of institutional cowardice (if not censorship) in recent years. (See, e.g. this article on the experience of Anida Yoeu Ali and Gregg Deal at the Smithsonian event mentioned above.)

I have heard playwrights say that they write for television these days not only because they make more money but because it is a more creative and validating environment than the nonprofit American theater. That is a sobering thought.

Perhaps any lack of courage, vision, or moral imagination in arts organizations is related to the extent to which arts leaders have managed risk by disempowering artists or placing them outside the institution?

Part III: Do arts leaders identify too much with their upper middle class donors?

I was at a conference a few weeks ago and heard a development staffer bemoaning over her morning croissant that she had spent the better part of the prior two weeks trying to learn everything she could about some Ultra-High-Net-Worth-Couple in her city so that her institution could launch a stealth courtship and, with any luck, land a major gift. She commented that, as far as anyone could tell, this couple had never stepped foot in the doors of the institution. She fretted over the fact that she was dedicating every working moment to deeply understanding two wealthy people with no relationship whatsoever to the institution; while nary a nanosecond was being expended trying to learn about the values, hopes, dreams, and challenges of the loyal patrons who were not in a position to make an extraordinary gift to the institution.

While donor research and cultivation has become a serious science, the ideology driving such behavior has been with us since the founding of the nonprofit-professional arts sector in the US. I am amazed that we are able to say with a straight face that America’s 20th century nonprofit-professional theater companies were largely established to serve the general public when many institutionalized a practice (at their inceptions) that would ensure they paid attention to the needs of the upper middle class at the expense of all others.

In the 1960s Danny Newman persuaded theaters that it was better (not just economically better, but morally better) to focus their time and resources on the 3% of the population that is inclined to subscribe and to ignore everyone else. Though some artistic directors rebelled mightily against this approach in the theater industry—Richard Schechner and Gregory Mosher were among the most vocal who noted that it was undemocratic and had a stultifying effect on programming—it was embraced wholeheartedly by a majority of institutions. This was in large part because it was strongly encouraged by the Ford Foundation and its proxy at the time, Theatre Communications Group.

Today marketing firms promulgate customer relationship management models like this one promoted by TRG Arts. This sort of philosophy upheld over time will invariably orient an organization toward caring more about those who can buy more tickets and donate more money.

Arts institutions cannot uphold Zelda Fichandler’s notion of the theatre as belonging to the public but first belonging to itself if they are, essentially, social clubs for the upper middle class. The institution cannot be “chastiser, rebel, lightning rod, redeemer, irritant, codifier, and horse-laughter” if it has neither independence nor publicness.

Perhaps a driving focus on cultivating the patronage of the upper middle class has skewed the politics and purposes of arts institutions, and also has been a major factor in declining relevancy? On the most fundamental level nonprofit art institutions are among the cultural spaces that are able to bring people together across divides on equal terms—a vital function that is, at times like these, in and of itself a political act. However, it seems we have too gladly ceded that role to sports and (lately) to some exemplary libraries around the world (see, e.g., the library parks in Colombia) that have transformed their purposes for the 21st century.

Part IV: Good We Are Awake. Now, Can we Stay Awake?

Shortly after Trump was elected a particular a phrase from Tony Kushner’s masterpieces Angels in America, parts I and II began to appear on my Facebook feed, which is to a great extent populated by liberal arts types like me. That phrase: “The Great Work Begins.”

The statement, in turns hopeful and harrowing depending on its context in the plays, provoked two questions for me:

What is our Great Work in the arts? (which I addressed in this Jumper post); and

Why is this Great Work beginning only now, after Trump’s election?

Put another way, why does it so often take a crisis for those of us working in the arts, in the so-called civic sphere, to engage with the struggles, the pain, the hopes, the dreams, the fears … of our communities-at-large?

The extraordinary observer of the human condition, writer Rebecca Solnit, reflects in her beautiful book, Hope in the Dark:

Americans are good at responding to crisis and then going home to let another crisis brew.

She says this is, in part …

… because we tend to think that political engagement is something for emergencies rather than, as people in many countries (and Americans at other times) have imagined, as part and even a pleasure of everyday life.

“The problem” as she puts it, “seldom goes home.”

Unlike television (and libraries) the American theater didn’t use the Digital Revolution combined with the Great Recession as an opportunity to radically transform itself so as to become more relevant, more vibrant, more accessible, more vital—and yes, more economically sustainable.

It seems we have another shot as, for many in the arts sector, Trump seems to represent a wake-up call.

Perhaps now is the time to prioritize artistic vision over business skills; to grant artists primacy within the arts institution; and to shift attention from wealthy donors to the community-at-large. Perhaps now is the time to embrace the paradox of being Public Arts Institutions: a part of society—but a part which must remain apart in order to fulfill its multifaceted role as “chastiser, rebel, lightning rod, redeemer, irritant, codifier, and horse-laughter.”

Finally, perhaps engaging in public affairs for the next four years will remind arts institutions that this is not the Great Work we must do now, this is the everyday work–the doing something about it–we should have been doing the past 30 years and that we must continue to do post 2020.

PS – Huge shout out to Deborah Cullinan at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. I love her notion of art centers existing to ignite radical citizenship and I love the YBCA campaign that resulted in the tagline pictured in the photo at the top of this post, which was an inspiration for this piece. 

***

[1] Fichandler, Z. (1970). Theatres or Institutions? The American Theatre 1969-70: International Theatre Institute of the United States, Volume 3. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons), p. 110.

[2] Schmidt, S. (1965). The Regional Theatre: Some Statistics. The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Autumn, 1965), pp. 50-61.

[3] Sheehy, H. (1989). Margo: The Life and Theatre of Margo Jones. (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press), p. 88.

Insiders and Outsiders: Reflections on “The Art of Relevance” by Nina Simon

Flikr photo by Susan Sermoneta, "Outsiders and Insiders Reflected" - Some rights reserved.

Flikr photo by Susan Sermoneta, “Outsiders and Insiders Reflected” – Some rights reserved.

This past week I read Nina Simon’s new book, The Art of Relevance. I am a tremendous admirer of Simon and have many times used her transformation of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History from an object-oriented museum to a participatory museum as one example of how to make a permanently failing arts organization more broadly relevant. As I recently remarked in a keynote address:

Since Simon became executive director of her museum, attendance has tripled, membership has increased by 50 percent, and more than 4,000 local artists and community groups have collaborated on exhibitions and cultural events. The museum has gone from five years in the red to three years of significant budget growth and surpluses. Simon has led an institutional turnaround based on creative risk-taking, grassroots participation, and unexpected community partnerships. This is social enterprise at its best.

Simon uses the analogy of doors, locks, and keys as the driving metaphor for relevance, which she defines as “a key that unlocks meaning.” She elaborates on her metaphor (on p. 29):

Imagine a locked door. Behind the door is a room that holds something powerful—information, emotion, experience, value. The room is dazzling. The room is locked.

Relevance is the key to that door. Without it, you can’t experience the magic that room has to offer. With it, you can enter. The power of relevance is not how connected that room is to what you already know. The power is in the experiences the room offers … and how wonderful it feels to open the door and walk inside.

Simon is an accomplished blogger and from a structural standpoint her book feels like a series of blog posts riffing on one giant question: How can mission-driven organizations matter more to more people? It is divided into 43 small (2-5 page) sections bundled under five broad themes. It is also chock-full with vignettes—concrete examples from her personal life, from her experience at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History and elsewhere, and from other organizations (both cultural and not)—all aimed at demonstrating her points.

Simon also brings forward a bit of theory to support her anecdotes and propositions. She references cognitive scientists, Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson’s “theory of relevance”— which explains how people are successfully able to convey and receive meaning (i.e. understand one another). According to Sperber and Wilson, relevance is a function of effect and effort. The more positive cognitive effect you experience when processing new information, the more likely you are to perceive that information as relevant; at the same time, the more you have to work at understanding new information, the less likely you are to perceive that information as relevant. Simon asserts that Sperber and Wilson’s “criteria for relevance apply to both extraordinary and everyday experiences” and gives the following example to demonstrate the theory deployed in such a manner (on pp. 32-3):

Imagine you are considering going out to see a movie. You start seeking relevant information. You read a review that gets you excited about a particular film (a positive cognitive effect). You feel confident you’ll enjoy that movie. If it’s playing at convenient times at a theater nearby (low effort), you’re set. You buy a ticket.

But if the movie is not showing nearby (high effort), or the reviews you read are conflicting and full of muddled information (negative cognitive effect), you’re stuck. You don’t get the useful conclusions you seek. It takes too much effort to find the right key to the door. You stay home.

Simon has many admirers in the arts and culture sector and at least a few detractors—in large part because she is a courageous bucker of the status quo. The participatory strategies that Simon advocates for achieving the goal of “mattering more to more people” are not without controversy. Simon has taken heat from those who see the move toward “participation” as detrimental to the very purpose and nature of fine arts institutions. Simon deals with this head on in her book. In a terrific section called OUTSIDE IN on insiders, outsiders, and inside-outsiders, Simon first fesses up to her her own tendency toward “insider entitlement” when it comes not to art, but to wilderness areas. Simon admits that she tends to be turned off (revolted, even) by parks (like Yellowstone) that have worked hard to make themselves more accessible and that are now not only jammed up with people but spoiled by ice cream vendors, paved paths, and other amenities that destroy the experience for purists like Simon.

She demonstrates sympathy with “protectionist-insiders” in the arts and other realms writing:

We all have our own personal Yellowstones, the insider places we want to protect from change. Embrace your inner insider for a moment. Think of something you love just as it is. A restaurant. A fictional character. An art form. A park. Now imagine someone saying publicly, “We are going to make X relevant to new people. We’re going to make some changes and open it up to new folks. We need to be more inclusive.”

When you are on the inside, this doesn’t sound like inclusive language. It sounds threatening.  It sounds like the thing you hold dear being adulterated for public consumption.  … It looks like a shift away from what was. A dilution of services, a distortion of values. That shift means loss, not gain.

Simon then considers the situation from the perspective of those who might come if only they could see a door and if only they had a key to open it. Simon refers to these inclined outsiders as “almost comes” and suggests that organizations need to cultivate “open-hearted insiders … who are thrilled to welcome in new people.” She eventually concedes the value of making Yellowstone accessible to all, through recognition that the great national parks should be for everyone; that making parks relevant to more people helps to establish their value and justify investments in sustaining them; and that as an “elite park user” she has access to resources and “backcountry trails” where she can achieve the “natural” experience she is seeking.

When I read this section on insiders and outsiders I immediately thought of Center Stage, a professional resident theater in Baltimore that I have often referenced in talks. In the 1990s Center Stage’s artistic director, Irene Lewis, began programming many more plays by African American writers, or about the African American experience, or featuring African American actors—in an effort to become more relevant to her community, which was 67% African American. (Theretofore, like many resident theaters at the time, Center Stage tended to program white plays, featuring white actors, performed for white middle class subscribers.) In response to Lewis’s shift in programming a significant number of its subscribers walked out the door. Jon Moscone (now at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) tells a similar story (from his time at Cal Shakes) in the introduction to Simon’s book. He writes:

…in 2011, we presented a Shakespeare play, The Winter’s Tale, directed by and cast entirely with artists of color. Our longtime audience rebelled. It broke open a new conversation with key stakeholders and board members, who saw the shift in relevance away from them.

Simon’s Yellowstone analogy, as well as the examples at Center Stage and Cal Shakes, demonstrate that what makes an experience relevant for insiders can be at odds with what makes it relevant for outsiders. Making one’s organization more broadly relevant requires standing up for values like inclusivity even if they don’t sit well with current patrons. One of the lessons from Center Stage’s successful transformation—as well as that of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History—is that such transformations can take a long time. It took ten years for Center Stage to replace its lost subscribers with those who shared its new values and vision. Too many organizations wade a few steps into the water with these sorts of efforts and then retreat in haste when the initial response is a complaining patron base. This is not work for the faint of heart.

Simon’s book provides encouragement, arguments, and concrete examples for those trying to figure out how to make their organizations more broadly relevant – but it does something else that is perhaps more important. It is great fodder for a discussion on some of the most important questions that organizations can ask themselves: Who are we for and why? What is the long-term risk of catering to a declining patron base at the expense of broader relevance? And what do we lose if we set our sights on being for outsiders (or “almost comes”) and not just insiders?

A brief email exchange with the sculptor Carter Gillies (who recently wrote a guest post on intrinsic value) really brought home for me how much is at stake in the way organizations answer such questions. Carter shared with me a conceptualization of intrinsic value by the brilliant UK cultural policy wonk John Holden. Holden has lately taken to thinking of intrinsic value as having three deployments (i.e. ways in which we tend to use the concept). Taking some liberties, if I were to substitute “relevance” (or mattering) for “intrinsic value” Holden’s three deployments might look like this:

  1. A dance work matters because dance matters (you can’t express a dance idea without something called dance).
  2. A dance work matters to the extent that I (or you, or anyone else) attend dance and have an emotional or spiritual or intellectual response and think, “This matters to me – I get something out of this experience.”
  3. And a dance work matters to the extent that a group of art world experts/enthusiasts (or protectionist-insiders in Simon’s terms) say it matters.

Real-world experience and theory would suggest that this is contested terrain and that these three deployments have the potential to undermine or threaten the other. The more an arts experience matters to the masses in a personal/subjective way, the less it (often) matters to elites. At the same time, the more we emphasize that dance must matter to as many people as possible (in a personal subjective way) the more we may undermine the idea that dance (as a way of expressing an idea) matters even when a particular dance work matters to very few people, or none at all.

***

As I finished Nina’s book I was left with three thoughts:

First, as inspired as I was by the book the research scientist in me was yearning for some empirical studies (i.e. experiments) as well as some more robust theorizing. While Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory seems to be a good starting point for understanding how one makes the choice to buy a ticket to the symphony or not, it may be limited in its capacity to explain relevance inside the concert hall, for instance. Aesthetic experiences don’t seem to be entirely akin to straight two-way communication. Anecdotally speaking, there are works of art (both visual and performative) that were quite off-putting to me at first (i.e. had a negative cognitive effect) and that required quite a bit of effort for me to grasp them, which ended up being incredibly rewarding (seeing Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz at the Walker Art Center in 2006 comes to mind). Moreover, the arts experience is constituted by more than the connection an individual may have with the art work itself. Simon addresses this in her book but Sperber and Wilson’s theory seems a bit overextended if used to explain how various elements (e.g. place, people, art, amenities, ancillary activities, past cultural experiences, trust in institutions, expectations) may combine to yield an experience that is perceived as relevant or not. For instance, perhaps being with people like you trumps an artwork you have to work hard to understand?

Second, and related to point one, considering that arts organizations are, in the main, in the business of creating aesthetic experiences one could argue that they should be much more well-versed in the nature of the aesthetic experience and the process of aesthetic development. All arts institutions (especially those with an educational mandate as 501c3s) need to be, as I believe Simon is, infinitely curious, willing, and eager to experiment with various ways of helping people connect with the art. As Simon says in her book, getting people to locate the door and walk through it is not enough—once they get to the other side the experience needs to be meaningful otherwise they won’t return. I would argue that, in particular, arts organizations should become experts in helping people cultivate an aesthetic sensibility–that is, helping them to expand and deepen their capacities to enjoy various types of aesthetic experiences.

Third, reading Simon’s Yellowstone analogy I was struck by Simon’s admission that she was able to let go of her “insider’s entitlement” with regard to Yellowstone (in part) because, as she put it, “as an elite park user, I have plenty of resources at my disposal, from maps to rangers to well-maintained backcountry trails.”  Yellowstone is able to cater to both casual park users looking for ice cream vendors and paved paths and benches and signs, as well as elite users looking to get off the beaten path and tramp around on the areas that newcomers would be unprepared to explore. If you extend the Yellowstone analogy to the arts it suggests that arts organizations might need to have different brands, experiences, and resources for insiders and outsiders; or that cultural institutions might need to specialize in one of these. Indeed, it’s an interesting question (from an ethical, aesthetic, and economic standpoint) whether diversification or specialization would be a better approach?

Simon’s book is a quick read and a must-read for mission-based organizations (most especially cultural organizations) that believe they could and should matter more to more people.

[contextly_auto_sidebar]

Irvine asks: Is there an issue in the arts field more urgent than engagement? My answer: Yes.

A couple weeks back the Irvine Foundation launched an online Q&A series, Are We Doing Enough?—aimed at “exploring tough questions about engagement practices and programming.” I was delighted and honored to be one of a small group of “outsiders” asked to provide some reflections in response to one of the Qs. The first two issues of the series (Part 1 and Part 2) featured a group of Irvine’s current grantees, as well as Irvine arts program director Josephine Ramirez, addressing such questions as: Should artists be responsible for creating art for the purpose of engaging communities? What purpose do “engagement events” serve if people don’t start showing up at the museum? and Are culturally and racially-specific organizations negatively affected when mainstream arts organizations offer diverse programming?

Clay Lord, Vu Lee, Karen Mack, Teresa Eyring and I were asked to address the question: Is there an issue in the arts field that is more urgent than engagement? You can read how we responded here. I want to use this post to elaborate on my response, the conclusion of which was this:

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

As I’ve mentioned from time-to-time on Jumper, the topic of my dissertation is the evolving relationship between the commercial and nonprofit theater in America—how it has changed over time, why, and with what consequence. Some of the deeper questions motivating my research have been:

  1. What is nonprofit professional theater for?
  2. Are there clear differences between the way the theater that exists for the primary goal of making money relates to its employees, customers and market and the way the theater that exists to improve society through art relates to its front-line missionaries (i.e., staff and volunteers), beneficiaries (i.e., artists and audiences) and the community-at-large?
  3. If not, or if these have been eroding over time, is this cause for concern? Can and should we stem the tide? And if so, how?

In 2011 I helped to plan and document a meeting of nonprofit and commercial theater producers, who were gathered to discuss partnerships between them. Candidly, the room seemed rather stumped for an answer to a version of that first question. A few ideas were tossed out but nothing stuck–in large part because, as more than a few participants observed, nonprofits and commercial producers “are more and more the same in practice.” As I wrote in the report (available here in paperback or free e-file) anaylyzing the meeting:

Many noted that it is no longer evident what value nonrofits bring to the table, distinct from commercial producers. Some suggested that the interests of nonprofit and commercial producers are now aligned to the point where the shape of [their] intersection is less like a crossroads and more like two lanes merging on a highway.

And why is that?

Well, lots of reasons. But part of the issue seems to be that the 20th century witnessed not just the professionalization of the community arts but their corporatization. Once labors of love by amateurs, arts groups across the US incorporated as not-for-profit corporations but then put corporate leaders on their boards, hired staff with more corporate management skills, adopted corporate marketing techniques, and looked to major corporations like hospitals and universities for models on how to raise money and advance their institutions. Savvier arts nonprofits also opened for-profit subsdiaries, formed partnerships with commercial enterprises, or became real estate investors or developers … basically, they pursued any and all means of exploiting their assets. And, ironically but not surprisingly, much of this sort of activity was actively encouraged by private philanthropists and government agencies.

What’s been the cost?

In her book Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf writes:

If people are highly successful in their professions they lose their senses. Sight goes. They have no time to look at pictures. Sound goes. They have no time to listen to music. Speech goes. They have no time for conversation. They lose their sense of proportion—the relations between one thing and another. Humanity goes.

I don’t know about you, but I find this statement to be disturbingly resonant.

Here we are in the 21st century and it strikes me that the nonprofit arts have become increasingly dehumanized–which is ironic since arguably one of the primary benefits of the arts is that they stimulate the senses, awaken us to beauty, fill us with awe, connect us to others, and inspire us to be better humans. But as David Brooks seemed to be arguing in his January 15 column When Beauty Strikes Back (for which he took quite a bit of flack), the arts have forgotten or rejected this role and society is poorer for it. He writes:

These days we all like beautiful things. Everybody approves of art. But the culture does not attach as much emotional, intellectual or spiritual weight to beauty. We live, as Leon Wieseltier wrote in an essay for The Times Book Review, in a post-humanist moment. That which can be measured with data is valorized. Economists are experts on happiness. The world is understood primarily as the product of impersonal forces; the nonmaterial dimension of life explained by the material ones. …

The shift to post-humanism has left the world beauty-poor and meaning-deprived. It’s not so much that we need more artists and bigger audiences, though that would be nice.  It’s that we accidentally abandoned a worldview that showed how art can be used to cultivate the fullest inner life.

Perhaps the arts are losing a battle over the minds and souls of society in large part because we don’t seem to recognize that we have been fighting for the wrong side–don’t recognize it because, as Woolf says, we have lost our senses. We have been swept up in econometrics and CRM theory and funder logic models and we have lost our ability to see what is in front of us and to be distrubed. It now seems normal to us that some heads of nonprofit resident theater companies, for instance, earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while even great actors in America are leaving the industry because they just can’t bear living on the cliff’s edge of poverty year-upon-year–a circumstance that should be appalling to anyone running a nonprofit theater, if one recalls that a fundamental purpose for nonprofit professional resident theaters when they were envisioned in the mid-twentieth century was to provide a stable, living wage to actors.

That’s losing the relations between one thing and another … that’s losing your humanity.

***

Speaking of poverty, if you didn’t see the press a few days back, the Irvine Foundation made the major announcement that it will “begin work on a new set of grantmaking goals focused on expanding economic and political opportunity for families and young adults who are working but struggling with poverty.”

President Don Howard wrote in a blog post:

These are mutually reinforcing goals. If all Californians are to have real economic opportunity, their voices must be heard and their interests counted. Responsive and effective government shapes the policies that allow people the chance to earn a wage that can enable a family to live in a safe, healthy community, send their kids to school, and realize their potential. Conversely, if all Californians are to be heard, they cannot teeter on the precipice of poverty, lacking the time and the conviction to meaningfully participate.

This is Irvine’s evolving focus, and as the words suggest, the changes will occur over time. As many of you know, we are deeply engaged in important and successful grantmaking. We remain firmly committed to our current grants and initiatives, many of which are in the middle of multiyear plans driving toward specific impacts. We will see all of these current grants and initiatives through to their planned conclusions. And some will evolve to be part of our future work.

As I read the last paragraph I thought … Hmmm, I wonder how the arts program will fare in this evolution? Will it be one of the programs phased out?

What’s the case for the role of professional arts groups in expanding political or economic opportunity for families living in poverty? Venezuela created El Sistema. What have we created of late that comes close to having that scale of impact on the lives of the most impoverished? Has there been anything since the Works Progress Administration (a New Deal initiative under FDR), which gave us the remarkable Federal Theatre Project and related projects in other disciplines? The Federal Theatre Project, if you don’t know it, was a work-relief program that made significant funds available to cities and towns across the US to hire out-of-work artists. It resulted in a flowering of hundreds of new ad hoc companies that collectively brought vital, relevant theater—including The Living Newspaper, a form of theater aimed at presenting reflections on current social events to popular audiences—and other forms of art to millions of people who had never had such experiences. It was a short-term relief program intended to do two things: alleviate artist unemployment and awaken and inspire America as it struggled out of a Great Depression.

And it exemplified the extraordinary role art can play—when it is for the advancement of the many, rather than the few—in helping a nation that is struggling to find a way forward.

 

*The photo is of James Turrell’s Roden Crater and is mentioned in my post for the Irvine Foundation. (Here’s the link again!)

[contextly_auto_sidebar]

In defense of the quieting of the audience (and so-called passive participation)

Student of “Aesthetics & Business” Course in front of ChanShatz work at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art

A couple weeks back I wrote a post about the latest research report from the Irvine Foundation, in response to which several people posted smart comments. My post dealt to a large extent with Irvine’s general recommendation to arts nonprofits to respond to audience demand for more active participation. Around the same time my post was published, the performing arts world (the theater world, in particular) was buzzing a bit about two audience member cell phone infractions that made the news. First, at the July 2nd performance of Hand to God in New York City, a young patron rose from his seat, ambled onto the stage, and plugged his cell phone into a fake outlet on the set just before the performance was set to begin; then, a week later, at a performance of Shows for Days at Lincoln Center Patti LuPone snatched a cell phone out of the hands of a patron who wouldn’t stop texting.* Lupone says she may walk off the boards for good she’s so unnerved and annoyed by audiences who can no longer restrain themselves. The misguided patron says he was drunk and didn’t understand he was breaking any rules.

Some have weighed in over the past few weeks to express sympathy and irritation at the constant threat of intrusion by phones at performances generally, while others have suggested that it’s time for performers and producers to loosen up and evolve their practices and expectations. Among those in the we-need-to-adapt camp is Scott Walters, who wrote a widely read post for The Clyde Fitch Report—Patti LuPone and Cellphone-gazi. Scott acknowledges that his own thinking on the issue has changed since he was an actor back-in-the-day; he now thinks, “If we really want theater to become a vibrant part of our culture again, [then] we need to get over this obsession about quiet.”

Lynne Conner and The Quieting of the Audience

Walters defends his stance in part with the argument that the quiet audience is a relatively new phenomenon and that for centuries the audience at the theater was an active participant. The same argument appeared a week after Walter’s post in a San Francisco Classical Voice article on what the arts can learn from sports marketing. The article by Mark MacNamara opened:

It’s important to keep remembering that the prim and passive persona of the performing arts audience these days is relatively new. Broadly speaking, the audience experience of old — from say, the Theatre of Dionysus to the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées  — was in tone often much like right-wing talk radio: political, raucous, even violent and unhinged, but also profoundly communal, and thoroughly democratic.

We can thank, in part, theater historian (and AJ Blogger) Lynne Conner for much of our renewed awareness that being quiet in the theater is a modern phenomenon.  In numerous articles and books, Conner has reminded us that it was only in the 19th century that the audience lost its authority at the live theater; after centuries of talking back to, and talking about, the theater, patrons were put in the dark (thanks to the invention of the electric lightbulb), instructed to mind their manners, and intimidated into leaving interpretation to the experts. MacNamara writes:

The gist of [Lynne Conner’s] argument is that modern audiences have lost their “sovereignty” and the meme of the day remains, “Sophisticated audiences do not interfere with great art, and unsophisticated people should confine themselves to other spaces.”

While she has a relatively new book out that explores this arena, Audience Engagement and the Role of Arts Talk in the Digital Era, I first encounted Conner’s thoughts on this topic in a chapter in the 2009 Steven Tepper/Bill Ivey compilation Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life. Conner urged organizations to consider ways to democratize the arts and make them more engaging. I found her research and reflections inspiring. That same year I was giving a talk called “surviving the culture change” in which I was making arguments along the same lines.

While I have been among those nudging arts organizations to think about how to make the live arts experience more relevant, meaningful, and dynamic, over the past few years I have begun to feel we are in danger of throwing out the baby with the bath water. Yes, some arts organizations need to lighten up and stop scolding the audience; yes, some arts programming is hopelessly out of touch with changing values and demographics in many cities; and yes, as a result of overemphasizing the lines between amateurs and professionals, some arts organizations have inadervertently discouraged a relationship to the arts among most people.

However, it is important to bear in mind that the revocation of audience control in the 19th century emerged in response to concerns that certain audience members were becoming too distracted and disruptive. That they were showing up at the theater more focused on socializing (flirting, drinking, eating, and chatting) than on the action on stage. Such behaviors began to cause consternation among performers and, notably, more sophisticated (read: wealthy and educated) patrons. While we now use the term passive in a somewhat derogatory manner to describe this newly restrained audience, this was not always the case. At the time, the taming of the audience was generally perceived to be beneficial. When the ragers and revelers left the building, those that remained began to pay more attention to what was happening on stage.

So here we are again. The consumer is king and some audiences have, once again, become too distracted and disruptive. Some want to outlaw cell phones and create stricter guidelines, even if that drives certain patrons away (a move which seems to be history repeating itself). Others argue that there will be no audiences in the future if the live arts–across the board–don’t adapt to the changing times. Scott Walters suggests in his post that theater needs to step up its game rather than beef up its policing efforts:

We can’t keep the 21st century outside the theater much longer. People come through the doors (if we’re lucky) and they are carrying cell phones. That’s a fact. Sometimes they forget to turn those cell phones off, and they ring. Get used to it. It happens everywhere, and it will continue happening. Accept it, and make it irrelevant. Earn attention, don’t expect it. Overcome the distraction of the age by being so compelling that people can’t look away, and can’t be distracted by someone texting.

As much as I agree with Walters that the theater cannot command attention but must earn it, I worry about the loss of the arts experience that merits and rewards a quieting and a focus. For too many years we’ve shamed people into paying homage to art they don’t understand or like; now it seems we may be heading toward an overcorrection in which we shower people with stuff that will hook their attention in fifteen seconds and that they can immediately grasp.

Perhaps we could aim for someplace in between?

Active and passive participation are historically contingent concepts whose meanings have changed over time. Moreover, our sentiments about the virtues and vices of each have also changed. I’m not opposed to the development of more active forms of participation in the live arts; to the contrary, the rampant experimentation is exciting. I just hope we are not throwing in the towel on so-called passive arts experiences.

What I learned teaching a course in aesthetic (and human) development

Despite the need to change some practices, we still need environments that enable the focused attention that some art works (whether performing or visual) require and merit. Unlike beauty in nature, the internal logic of a piece of art cannot always be grasped instantly. Aesthetic judgments in art can’t be made on objective measures or even, quite often, from immediate sensory perceptions. While one might have an initial sensory response, an aesthetic judgment comes from within and often requires a quieting, a focus. Conner and others problematize the quieting of the audience because it reduces the audience’s sovereignty. But quieting the audience could also be interpreted as creating the optimal conditions for someone to have an aesthetic encounter.

The course on beauty and aesthetic development that I taught this past spring at the University of Wisconsin School of Business (to 22 undergraduate business majors) was, to a large extent, about doing just that. The students of the course discovered something about being present in the world in a different way when they turned off their phones, focused their attention on a sunset, stopped multitasking and really listened to a symphony from beginning to end, sat in the balcony of the Overture Center and watched Hubbard Street Dance, or stood silently in front of an artwork for 30 minutes (an activity captured in photo at the top of this post).

The class was an experiment and many of the choices I made this first time around were developed out of personal experience (thinking about how my own tastes and capacity to make meaning from arts experiences evolved over time) and from reading research on the nature of the aesthetic experience. One seminal book that guided my thinking was The Art of Seeing: An Interpretation of the Aesthetic Encounter by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Rick Emry Robinson. Csikszentmihalyi equates the aesthetic experience to that of flow. He arrived at this conclusion as a result of a qualitative and quantitative study of experts in the art world (who, unsurprisingly, have aesthetic experiences more frequently than most of us). Flow is an experience in which one is deeply absorbed, one loses a sense of time, and one feels joy and mastery while performing an activity (whether writing a section of a novel,operating on someone, having a conversation, playing a video game, or experiencing a great artwork). In other words, the meaningful aesthetic encounter is not a passive one.

Importantly, it is difficult to achieve flow if one is stretched too far beyond one’s natural capabilities; arguably, many audiences come to arts events without the requisite knowledge or previous experience to feel mastery.

In planning the course I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the optimal order of experiences; and I made adjustments over the course of the term in response to subtle forms of feedback from the students. At each step, I wanted them to feel challenged but never incompetent. Moreover, I refrained from giving assessments for several weeks. I wanted the students to focus on the experience itself; and I wanted them to cultivate the ability to make and articulate (internal) aesthetic judgments. I also frequently encouraged them to generate a creative response to each experience (make a drawing, write a haiku, etc.) If I teach the class again I will continue to experiment with its methods. I’ve become compelled by this notion of finding better ways to help people cultivate an aesthetic sensibility. My aim is not for them to become patrons of the arts, per se (although that could be a beneficial outcome, as well); I simply believe that there is great value in this way of experiencing and approaching life.

If we want people to feel engaged (rather than bored) at orchestral concerts, museums, dance performances, and theater pieces there are many approaches we can try. We can try letting them keep their phones on and Tweet from the back row. We can try producing more spectacular works and encouraging people to jump out of their seats and shout back at the stage when they feel moved to do so. We can try taking performances and exhibitions to nontraditional settings and letting people eat, drink, and socialize as they experience the arts event. And we can try inviting the people to create the work and bring it to life with us. Many organizations are trying these very methods–and many others–with great success. Alongside these experiments in active participation strategies, however, I hope some arts organizations will also (continue to?) experiment with ways to make the so-called “passive” artistic experience more meaningful and rewarding, especially for newcomers. Something wonderful can also come from sitting quietly, doing nothing, and focusing one’s attention on the work.

* An earlier version of this post stated that LuPone stopped the performance to take the cell phone from the patron but this has been corrected to reflect that she took the phone during a stage exit during which her character was blocked to shake hands with audience members.

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”8BsO7xOdwAvvFZ2OMTIeUQpH7U4uPN9e”]

Valuable data, questionable field recommendations. (A response to Irvine’s latest report on arts participation.)

risk question markA few years ago I had a meeting with a PhD advisor in the US to talk through the proposed chapter breakdown for my dissertation. When discussing the key components of my final chapter I conveyed that it would include a major section covering policy implications and recommendations for arts organizations, artists, and funders. My advisor smiled a bit and said, “Well, let’s see if you earn that section, first.” It was a good lesson. Whenever I come across a passage in a research study that begins, “The evidence suggests that arts organizations should, could, might …” my antenna goes up and I ask whether the recommendations are merited, or whether liberties have been taken.

I share this anecdote because I recently reviewed the findings from a very good study commissioned by the Irvine Foundation—The Cultural Lives of Californians, undertaken by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. While the report itself is chock-full of both data and provocative questions that I imagine could be of great value to arts organizations who are sincere about such things as broadening, deepening and diversifying audiences (the motto brought to us by Wallace and Rand back in the day), the Irvine Foundation seems to be overreaching with its follow-on recommendations for arts organizations.

A brief exposition:

A few years ago the Irvine Foundation (located in California) made a dramatic shift in its arts grantmaking strategy. As executive director of the LA County Arts Commission, Laura Zucker, once put it, “Irvine’s constituency seems to have shifted from arts organizations to people in the community not being served by arts organizations.” *

Irvine’s current aim is to promote engagement in the arts for all Californians. Here’s the text that appeared in 2011 when it announced its plans:

Under the new strategy, the foundation will work to boost participation among low-income and ethnically diverse populations that have traditionally been underserved by arts nonprofits; support programs that expand how Californians actively participate in the arts, including the use of digital technology to produce or curate art; and use diverse, non-traditional spaces, especially in regions with few arts-specific venues.

In support of this democratic ideal the Foundation launched in 2013 a new Exploring Engagement Fund to support projects that “aim to engage new and diverse populations by adding active participation opportunities and/or incorporating the use of nontraditional arts spaces” (emphases added). While some nonprofit professional arts organizations in its portfolio met this news with enthusiasm, evidently uptake on the new program was slow. Many of the Foundation’s historic arts grantees seemed unwilling to follow the carrot.

I addressed this resistance a couple years ago in two blog posts (here and also here).  My view, in a nutshell, was (and still is) this: While the Irvine Foundation may have been justified in pursuing a brave new strategy, its grantees were also justified in rebuffing it. I wrote:

Irvine appears to be interested in bringing about a kind of diversity (i.e., change) in the arts sector we don’t often talk about: aesthetic diversity. … However well-researched and justified, Irvine must recognize (and I think it does) that its strategy is out of line with the missions of a majority of professional arts organizations, which were formed to present work by professionals for audiences that come to appreciate that work, not make it. … Irvine needs to recognize that it is endeavoring to coax organizations into uncharted territory. It wants to coerce a change that many cannot make, or do not want to make.

On The Cultural Lives of Californians

So here we are two years later and Irvine has released the findings from its latest study, which investigated differences in  arts and culture participation behaviors across California’s diverse population. It probably goes without saying that many of those surveyed are not patrons of traditional fine arts organizations. Researchers sought to understand (1) what counts as culture, (2) where culture happens, (3) its value to people, and (4) the role of technology in the cultural lives of Californians.

One outcome of the study is an expanded concept of arts participation–one that reflects seven types of behavior researchers encountered: art-making, arts-going, arts-learning, media-based consumption, supporting arts and culture (i.e., volunteering time, money or resources), using social media, and the nebulous category additional activities.  Irvine is not alone in expanding the aperture on arts participation. The NEA has made a similar shift in its periodic survey of public participation in the arts (discussed in this NEA blog post written by director of research Sunil Iyengar).

So, what’s the headline of Irvine’s latest report? Well, it seems to be a good news/bad news message.

First, the report “reframes” the broken-record lament that arts participation is in decline by advancing the much more optimistic perspective that if the definitions of ‘art’ and ‘participation’ are expanded to encompass such things as salsa dancing at the community center, singing at church, knitting at home, watching a YouTube video demonstrating how to knit, writing fan fiction, posting a comment to Facebook about an artist, or taking a photograph and posting it on Instagram–then, actually, significantly more people participate in the arts and culture than previously acknowledged.

(That this might not be encouraging news for orchestras whose audiences for concerts are in decline seems to be a perspective the report doesn’t want to indulge.)

However, the report is not simply a pep rally to drum up enthusiam for the breadth and diversity of cultural participation in California. The bad news? While the levels and varieties of arts and cultural participation overall are “encouraging, there is significant disparity between different groups of Californians.”

It strikes me that, to a great extent, Irvine is trying to grapple with this disparity and, in particular, trying to harness the energies of nonprofit professional arts organizations to solve this problem. To that end, the report includes several sets of provocative questions—all versions of, “So how might a professional arts organization help improve this situation?”

  • What tools or points of access can organizations offer to support individuals in their own art making and learning?
  • What are the opportunities for nonprofit arts organizations to entice and engage those who typically make art in private?
  • How can nonprofit arts organizations make their expertise and resources accessible to people who choose to engage culturally in non-arts-specific spaces, including private settings, such as the home?
  • What are the opportunities for the nonprofit sector to work in and with community spaces without being disruptive to the activity already underway?
  • How can nonprofit arts organizations make their expertise accessible to people who choose to engage culturally online or through mobile devices

I wonder if I am alone in bristling a tiny bit at these questions, which lead a bit too obviously in the direction of Irvine’s grantmaking strategy. Nonetheless, the market is changing, disparities exist, and it’s not unreasonable to at least turn to professional arts groups and ask, “So, what about this market? Do you think you might have something to offer here?”

While the report merely hints at possible strategies for arts organizations, a blog post by Irvine president Josephine Ramirez introducing the report is more direct.  In What Arts Organizations Should Know About the Cultural Lives of Californians, Ramirez states, “this study, and a growing body of research, point to several important opportunities and implications for arts organizations and the sector.” She mentions five, three of which are:

  • Respond to the high demand for more active arts participation;
  • Expand offerings to meet people where they are; and
  • Explore how the arts can stimulate greater participation and connection among California’s largest and growing demographic groups.

Sound familiar?

Basically, the conclusions drawn from the research are that arts organizations need to develop the sorts of programs and initiatives that Irvine has been trying to spur through its Exploring Engagement Fund.

Overreaching?

And this brings me to my basic concerns about the report. While it is extraordinarily worthwhile for a foundation to shine a light on arts and cultural participation among those disinclined to participate in traditional fine arts institutions, and while smart arts organizations will look at this data and seek to understand what it conveys about arts participation behaviors across diverse populations, I’m not sure that the implications proposed by Ramirez are realistic.

Essentially, Ramirez is suggesting that nonprofit professional arts organizations need to develop new products (e.g., those that meet the demand for active participation and those that happen where people are rather than in the traditional arts space) for new markets (e.g. first generation immigrants and other growing groups who are not currently participating in the arts). This is a move that carries enormous risks.

This Ansoff Matrix demonstrates the point.

ansoffmatrix

If a business is doing well, then (from its perspective) the best strategy is to continue to create the product it knows for the market it knows (market penetration). However, when that market is in decline (and one could argue that this is the case for many professional arts groups at the moment), its least risky move is either (a) to develop new products for existing markets (product development), or (b) to develop new markets for existing products (market development).

Asking arts organizations to develop new products for new markets sends them diagonally into the box marked diversification and is a high-risk move; there can be a significant chance of failure. And while Irvine might be willing to underwrite some of the financial risks associated with experiments in this realm, it can’t underwrite the strategic, operational, compliance, social, and psychological risks associated with such changes—organizations need to be ready, willing, and able to bear these on their own.

bridge jumping

Areas for further research?

There seem to be a few assumptions embedded in Ramirez’s recommendations to arts organizations to venture into this realm.

The first is alluded to above. It’s the assumption that profesional museums, theaters, opera companies, dance companies, and orchestras have the capabilities and resources to do this work. This assumption may derive from the difficult reality of an overbuilt nonprofit sector and a desire to see existing assets (whose value may be declining anyway) redeployed in service of a new set of needs. It may derive from the loyalty Irvine feels to its historic grantees and a desire to continue to support them in some way (rather than abandon them for others). Whatever the motivations underpinning the assumption, however, I am not sure it’s sound.

A related concern is that the emphasis on spurring traditional arts organizations into this realm seems to overlook the excellent work being done (for decades now) by grassroots or community-based organizations. They have the necessary skills, values, and ties to diverse populations. Many are already reaching representative audiences (which seems to be Irvine’s primary goal). They are also, quite often, underresourced. Would a better recommendation be that grassroots and community-based organizations merit greater investment to meet this growing need?

The second assumption is the flipside of the first: it’s that first-generation immigrants, the elderly, and the other populations about whose cultural lives Irvine is most concerned desire deeper engagement with opera companies, orchestras, dance companies, museums, and theaters. Is there evidence that this is true?

The third assumption seems to be that art-making is swallowing arts-going whole and that there will be no demand in the future for receptive arts experiences and organizations that are uniquely qualified to offer them. And yet reading the report I was struck by how much interest there still seems to be in good, old-fashioned, “passive” arts-going. Will professional arts organizations that avoid developing active participation strategies be at a disadvantage in the future? Or is there still a healthy market of people who want to buy a ticket, sit in a seat, and watch a show?

Has research already been done that could help address these questions? If so, please comment and send links. If not, would it be worthwhile to probe these assumptions?

***

From my perspective, the report is definitely worth a read. I was particularly interested in a section that reports on the relationship between use of social media (to experience, educate oneself, gather information, or tell others about art or artists) and ethnicity (p. 38). I also spent quite a bit of time examining two infographics that show the relative size of audiences for various forms of music and dance (pp.19-20), one that examines venues for arts-going by type of arts activity (p. 41), one showing rates of arts-going across income levels (p. 24), and one that maps the seven modes of arts participation (p. 12).  Again, it is chock-full of data and I would encourage arts organizations to dig into it.

Here are some links (that Irvine asked me to pass along) to get you started:

I would be keen to hear what others have made of Irvine’s new report or its field recommendations.

* Laura Zucker made this comment at a Grantmakers in the Arts panel that I was invited to attend and blog about in 2013. You can read the full post here.

 

Renegotiating the value of a museum

Over the past couple of weeks quite a few people have weighed in on the Detroit Institute of Art’s successful appeal to three counties in Michigan to pass a “millage” (a property tax) which would provide $23 million per year for the museum (91% of its budget) over ten years, while it raises $400 million for its endowment to replace the tax revenues when they run out. One of the most interesting aspects of this strategy is that the DIA offered free admission to the museum only to people living in the counties that passed the levy (which equates to approximately $20 per year tax on a home with a market value of $200,000 and a taxable value of $100,000) and threatened to shut down galleries and close the museum on weekdays if the levy did not pass. If you have not been following the story, on August 7th the levy was passed in all three counties. Despite my instinct to be cautiously optimistic, I find myself mulling over this case and wondering whether it is the hands-down financial and moral victory that it seems to be on the surface.

For background and more details about the plan read an excellent overview by Judity Dobrzynski and also one by Mark Stryker. Additionally, Lee Rosenbaum (Culturegrrrl) has written a thoughtful post reflecting on the circumstances at the DIA and her perspective that it was (perhaps uniquely) well positioned to pull of such a feat and deserving of the public support. Terry Teachout astutely assessed the keys to DIA’s success, framing them as good lessons for other arts organizations in trouble. Likewise, Benjamin Genocchio examined the financial crises at DIA and LA MOCA to exhume strategies for other art museums on the brink. And one blogger asked (without much elaboration) whether DIA’s rescue can serve as a model for others.

From everything I have read about the executive director of the DIA, Graham W.J. Beal, he appears to be a very smart and capable leader. The word heroic came to mind several times as I was perusing articles about his tenure at the DIA and what he has accomplished. And I am sincerely impressed by the successful passing of the millage—it was a bold solution to a long-term structural deficit, it was executed responsibly and well, and the favorable response from the community (I presume, though I could be wrong) would seem to represent sizeable goodwill towards the institution, respect for its collection and trust in its management, or value for the arts in general.

Having said this, I have some questions:

First, I wonder what the annual net gain of this millage is estimated to be once possible reductions in contibutions, memberships and admissions are considered? I notice that the membership fees (for individuals and families) on the DIA’s Website are pretty steep relative to the $20 per year per household tax assessment: $60 for Senior Citizens; $65 Individual; $80 Companion; and $110 Family Plus. In 2009, DIA had membership revenues of nearly $4 million. Is there a risk that some (many?) of its current members will now feel that they have “already paid” and will not renew their memberships, or that the tax will crowd out future membership growth? Additionally, the DIA shows another $2 million in admission fees on its 990, some percentage of which one estimates could be lost because of the tax. Finally, it’s not unreasonable to think that some donors may now consider the DIA to be safely harbored with its millage and may reduce their contributions or choose to redirect to other organizations that do not have the heft to win such a tax.

Second, I am more familiar with such taxes being passed to support a range of nonprofit institutions, sometimes in the arts or sometimes across sectors. While I understand that a proposed tax to support 17 institutions in Detroit failed some years earlier (some suspect because it was too high), I wonder whether a tax to support a range of institutions in Detroit might have been a smarter and more ethical solution in the long run? For one, I have begun to worry that large investments in large institutions can come at the expense of the health and vitality of (arts) communities as a whole. For another, I am skeptical that many individual organizations could actually pull off this sort of feat. I agree with Lee Rosenbaum that when you read DIA’s history and track record in recent years it seems to be both deserving and well positioned for this reprieve. Could any other arts organization in Detroit successfully undertake anytime soon a similar effort now that DIA has gone this route? Is this a strategy that favors first movers only? Is it really the model that some seem to think it is?

Third, is the DIA setting itself up for an awkward renegotiation of its relationship to its community when the levy ends? Imagine a scenario ten years from now in which DIA has been unable to raise the $400 million in its endowment—a scenario that seems quite possible given the extraordinary ambition of the goal, the poor financial condition of the city, and the tremendous competition for contributions since many public services have been cutback and many nonprofits are struggling to stay afloat. DIA has already said it will not try to get the tax renewed. If it is not as flush as it hopes to be in ten years will it be forced to cut services and institute admission fees again? And will community members that have been going for free be willing to pay?

Fourth, what motivated people to pass the tax? As I understand it, the millage was not expected to be a slam dunk in all three counties. Was it civic pride and sincere appreciation for the institution/art? Competition among the counties? A logical reasoning that $20 per year to gain free admission for one’s entire household to a public museum that normally charges $4-$8 per ticket is a good deal? I wonder whether there is something we can learn from better understanding what motivated people to vote “yes” – and also how those who may have voted “no” are now feeling about the museum? Resentful because they feel that education, pubic safety and health and human services should be prioritized over art (as more than a few comments by readers of the Detroit Free Press seemed to suggest)? Or perhaps more inclined to attend and take advantage of the resource?

Fifth, what are we to make of the tripling of attendance in the week after the millage was passed? Is this a sign that even a $4 to $8 admission fee (the range of prices listed on the DIA Website) is a barrier for many, many people? That people wanted to “get their due”, or perhaps felt a newfound sense of “ownership”? That people wanted to “celebrate” the millage? I wonder if the DIA or anyone else has polled these visitors to try to determine how the millage may already be affecting people’s perceptions of the museum and their relationship to it.

Finally, and perhaps most of all, I am intrigued by DIA’s quid pro quo deal with its community. I wonder whether DIA has set a precedent that may begin to recalibrate the perceived relationship between nonprofit arts organizations and their communities and the expected ROI from future investments in the arts. This seemed to be the argument underpinning the DIA strategy: Those arts institutions that want their communities to step up and support them will need to put more than the importance of art, quality of life, and general econmic impact on the table – the people expect and deserve a tangible private benefit in return for sharing some of their hard-earned wages. And, likewise, communities that do not demonstrate support for the arts can no longer expect to receive the same levels of service or access as those that do.

Was this simply the new deal between the DIA and its community? Or does this represent a new line in the sand … a raising of the bar for all of us in the arts?

I admit to knowing only what I’ve been able to glean from newspaper accounts and blogs. I heartily welcome information and perspectives from others on these issues. in the meantime, I offer congratulations to the DIA and the greater Detroit metropolitan area for the win. It is a vote of confidence in the arts, which has clearly been heartening to many.

PS – Many thanks to all who have continued to post comments on my last three posts. I am heartened by the terrific conversation/debate. I do expect to return to some of these issues in the future.

Theatre Bay Area’s “Counting New Beans”

Clay Lord and the fine folks at Theatre Bay Area have a new publication out: Counting New Beans: Intrinsic Impact and the Value of Art, which includes interviews with 20 prominent artistic directors and essays by Alan Brown, Rebecca Ratzkin, Arlene Goldbard, Rebecca Novick, and Clayton Lord. It also includes an interview with yours truly.

Here’s an excerpt from my long and winding conversation with Clay Lord. I’ve edited together excerpts (elipses mark missing sections) from two different parts of the interview.

Clay Lord: You’ve written about “creative destruction,” this idea that we either need to take control of our growth and make decisions about what survives, or natural forces will do it for us.  But what is the rubric for understanding where the culling of the herd needs to happen, and who does the culling?  Foundations? Market forces? Attendance figures? What are the evaluative terms? If the art isn’t going to stop, then how do the organizational structures decrease? Who decides?  Who are the arbiters of which organizations are “valuable,” and what are the terms? 

DER: Artists and communities make up a constantly evolving and changing environment. It’s the institutions that are stuck, holding onto beliefs and practices about what is or is not [a] “legitimate” [artistic experience] and denying the changing tastes, habits and demographics of their communities. […] When we say we need to try to find a way to make things “more sustainable,” what are we talking about? Sustaining middle class livings for those salaried professional administrators that have them? Sustaining the capacity for artistic risk-taking? Sustaining broad and deep community engagement with the theatre? The “what” is really important. And if we’re talking about nonprofit, mission-driven organizations, then we need to be able to answer the “what” with regard to the social value we are trying to sustain or create.

We keep saying we want to see the next thing arrive, but at the same time desperately try to preserve what we’ve already created. It’s very difficult to do both; most often, you need to destroy the old in order to allow for the emergence of the new. This is the idea behind “creative destruction.” […]

I think the “impact” question makes the field a little nervous—and so does the supply/demand conversation—because we sense that we’ve arrived at a day of reckoning. The money is tight and the environment is hyper-competitive. The conversation has been controlled for a long time by a small group of people. For years we’ve had a field-wide understanding of who were the field leaders, and there was no displacing them.

To some degree we’ve gamed and worked the system to maximum output of whatever could be derived from it, and now we have come to the end of the line. It’s time to start asking ourselves the disruptive questions. Does it make sense to subsidize large resident theatres and not commercial theatres? Does it make sense to subsidize professional theatres and not amateur theatres performing in churches or high school gymnasiums? Does it make sense to subsidize those that are most able to garner patronage from wealthy, culturally elite audiences? […]

We’re rather protectionist in the U.S. nonprofit arts sector because we know, or at least suspect in our gut, that if we start measuring intrinsic impact—testing our assumptions about the impact of the art we make— we might find out that there is greater intrinsic impact from watching an episode of The Wire than going to any kind of live theatre. Or we may find that small-scale productions in churches or coffee shops are just as impactful (or more so) than large-scale professional productions in traditional theatre spaces. Are we prepared, if we find this sort of evidence, to change the way we behave in light of it? […]

Because right now it appears we have a winner-take-all system in the arts. The few at the top continue to grow while the rest of the sector is forced to divide a shrinking pie among an increasing number of organizations. Assuming we’re not going to have significantly more resources coming into the sector, […] can we allow for a different idea to emerge about which are the most important organizations to fund? Who’s at the top? Who’s at the bottom? Who’s considered leading? These are rankings that were established decades ago and it’s nearly impossible for even an incredibly worthy and high-performing entrant to displace one of the ‘pioneering’ incumbent organizations at the top of the pyramid. […]

We need data that can help us see the field differently. Sure, if you rank theatres by budget, if you rank them by how many thousands of people they perform to in a year, then you will continue to rank them 1, 2, 3, as they are currently ranked. […] We need new ways of ordering the sector, and understanding what contributes to a healthy arts ecosystem. A lot of money has come into the sector, but it hasn’t been distributed very well. The ecology is out of balance. […]

Who gets to decide which theatres stay and which go? Well, we have a decentralized, indirect subsidy system, meaning, in theory, “everybody” could get to decide. But in reality don’t we see that those with money get to decide? And by extension, then, friends of those with money are the winners and everyone else loses. And then some say, “No one should decide; we should let nature take its course.” But what do we mean by “nature?” Do we mean that we should let “the market” decide?

That’s not valid. You can’t, on the one hand, say “We have to subsidize this particular form of art  in order to compensate for market failure,” and then on the other hand say you’re going to let “the market” decide. Many organizations exist today because someone saw them as meriting support 40 or 50 years ago. Why do we resist the idea that some entity or entities should be able to intervene now and discontinue funding for certain organizations (that seem less worthy or relevant now) and encourage or enable funding for others?

The system does not seem to deal with underperforming organizations proficiently or effectively. And if you can’t eliminate underperforming organizations, over time, they compete with other, more worthy organizations for resources. Of course somebody has to decide. A bunch of ‘somebodies’ has to decide. But how do you coordinate that? This is the challenge with our decentralized, indirect subsidy system.

I’m a big believer in Alan Brown’s work, and what you are doing, and I’m hopeful that it can help reframe the conversation about social value and about what it means to be a “leading organization.” Right now, though, what we know is that major foundations provide an imprimatur; they are able to change the perceptions of organizations as they give money and take it away. The press matters. Service organizations matter. And there are others. Any of these can stand on a bully pulpit and say, “Here are the organizations that we perceive to be leaders.” And if it’s a very different list from the list that we’ve had in our minds for a long time, if the names are not simply those that we’ve historically perceived to be leading, it will begin to shift our understanding of what we mean when we say “leading” (i.e., not just oldest and largest). It also provides leverage to the new leaders, increases their ability to fundraise, and changes the way others perceive them. […]

The formation of the nonprofit arts sector was essentially an effort to create exclusive organizations to serve wealthy people – that was the goal. That was the idea at the outset. We have reached a logical result of having created such a system. Arts organizations are sleeping in beds they made. […] And the idea that we need to keep sustaining it—well, I’m not convinced that this particular thing we’ve created, this current model, needs to be sustained. It is proving to be unsustainable perhaps because it caters to a few rather than serving the many. […] Maybe it’s time to blow things up, rather than sustain the status quo.

Counting New Beans is an impressive 464 pages long, including the full final research report, four original essays commissioned for this report, and full transcripts of the interviews with artistic leaders and patrons. It is $24.95, and will only be available here, on the Theatre Bay Area website.

On my Soapbox: Digitization of Live Performance

The Wooster Group

Clay Lord has written a provocative and rather erudite post, The Work of Presentational Art in the Age of On-Demand Technological Empowerment, in which he cautions that as arts organizations embrace or respond to pressure to record and disseminate their live work that they not lose their identity and the core of what live performance (and theater in particular, perhaps) is all about.

Clay mentions my post from last week in which I wrote: “If our goal for the next century is to hold onto our marginalized position and maintain our minuscule reach—rather than being part of the cultural zeitgeist, actively addressing the social inequities in our country, and reaching exponentially greater numbers of people— then our goal is not only too small, I would suggest that it may not merit the vast amounts of time, money, or enthusiasm we would require from talented staffers and artists, governments, foundations, corporations, and private individuals to achieve it.” In response, Clay comments, “I’m not sure I can simply agree, much as I might want to. This, more than anything, reminds me of Veruca Salt, forever simply wanting more without pausing to ask whether that was going to truly get her someplace she wanted to be at the end.”

My encouragement towards reaching greater numbers of people through other channels (generally and in the post quoted) is not meant to be a rejection of the importance and distinctive joy of an intimate, high quality, live arts experience. Those opportunities exist in great numbers in many cities in the US, for those interested and able to attend. But perhaps a personal anecdote will help to illustrate my excitement over the possibilities of recording and streaming live performances.

Despite being a ‘theater person’ I did not encounter the Wooster Group until I was in my 30s when I was working at On the Boards. Why? Because the Wooster Group didn’t travel to Kansas City when I was in graduate school. Or Idaho, when I moved there in my 20s to work in theater and run a music festival.The Woosters have never traveled to more than a select number of cities in the US (for perhaps obvious reasons). I had read about the Woosters in my edition of Brockett back in the late 80s/early 90s (a few paragraphs, as I recall) but never experienced ‘that kind of theater’. When I finally saw the Woosters, live, in my 30s, it was a seminal experience.

The same with Anne Bogart, Miranda July, Felix Ruckert, John Moran, Deja Donne, Richard Maxwell and many other artists that I was fortunate to encounter only because I had the good fortune to live in Seattle and work at On the Boards and, in particular, with Lane Czaplinski. Eventually, I moved to NY and saw 150 performances per year and it was a pretty heady period of my life. And now I’m living in a small village in the Netherlands and for many reasons (financial limitations because I’m a student, transportation issues, family obligations, etc.) it is quite difficult for me to see even the great work that is happening here in the Netherlands, much less venture to various festivals around Europe. No more Wooster Group for me.

Thus, I am (now more than ever) incredibly enthused that (for example) the the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and OtB TV now exist. I wish to God OtB TV existed in 1990 when I was trying to find a place for myself in the arts world and develop an aesthetic. If I were running an arts aministration or MFA program of any kind I would make such broadcasts/channels mandatory viewing. When I was in graduate school one of my professors screened a film of Laurie Anderson’s UNITED STATES LIVE. I had not yet seen Laurie Anderson live. It prompted me to buy a ticket to her next concert, in Lawrence, Kansas. That, too, was a seminal experience for me.

Enough with the nostalgia … Yes, hold onto the core. But, to be honest, I think the ‘core’ of theater is far more threatened by the preponderance of rather deadly small-scale teledramas that pass as ‘dynamic live theater’ in many of the regional theaters in the US than by, for instance, a broadcast of the fabulous Young Jean Lee’s SHIPMENT on OtB TV.

If the ‘live’ experience is still mattering to people I believe it will compel people to go to the theater, buy a ticket (or stand in line for free tickets) and attend in person. But I would implore you not to dismiss these mediated experiences by assuming that they still generally ‘look like shit’ (as Clay suggests in his post and as they mostly did in the 20th century). Have you seen one of the Met HD Broadcasts? Personally, I think they are amazing and, as a ‘theater person’, I prefer them to the live experience as I can see the faces of the performers. Furthermore, having seen the broadcasts I now find the live experience all the richer. Not only is the technology improving but so are our skills at capturing the ‘liveness’ in a digital medium. And OtB TV is showing us that it can be done well without the price tag of the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.

The major institutions in this country are now quite large and hungry beasts, demanding incredible resources to be sustained. It is quite hard for me to imagine how we can continue to justify such expenditures in the face of the declining live audience trend (that seems to have begun in the 80s according to the various studies). But if we could begin to talk about a rising ‘online’ or ‘cinema’ or ‘DVD’ audience (which the Metropolitan Opera and others have been able to do) then I begin to see the logic of ongoing large investments in these institutions. And these recordings are not just about reaching audiences that can’t access the live work. Arguably, they could play a crucial role in helping artists (more easily or quickly) build a larger global audience, be ‘in dialogue with’ other artists, and have greater impact.

We can also avoid that path, preserve the current experience, and hunker down with the goal of serving the people that (again) have the interest and ability to join us at our venues. But if that’s the case then we probably need to be prepared to downsize our infrastructure over time if the audience for what we do continues to diminish over time.

I would argue that if organizations with the potential for wider reach (that is, they are producing work for which there is demand beyond their local community) can do it well, and affordably, and strategically, and ethically (paying artists their fare share), then they should embrace the possibility of mediated experiences, trusting that they can live side-by-side with the live performance (and decades of recordings by musicians that primarily make their money doing live concerts should give us some hope here). Or even better, that new, exciting art forms may emerge (think Dance on Film) geared especially to the medium.

While the recording may be a substitute for some, I also believe it will be a complementary good for others. Do I think that if mediated experiences grow in number and reach that we will necessarily maintain our current (some would say ‘overbuilt’) infrastructure in the US? I don’t. But like others, I think that some of that infrastructure needed to be dismantled anyway – long before the Met broadcasts disrupted our sector.

If I had seen a recording of the Wooster Group in my 20s I would have beaten a path to NYC or the next nearest city where they were performing to see them live. But I couldn’t conceive of what that experience would be before seeing it. (I was trying to place the Woosters within my rather limited LORT theater experiences.) That is, after all, why we call them experience goods. Giving more people an experience (even if it is a mediated experience) is better in my mind than having them sit outside the venues wondering what goes on inside or, even worse, being pretty sure they know and that they wouldn’t find it interesting.

POST SCRIPT: Coincidentally, I just came across an email about an opportunity to experience the Wooster Group on film and video. Anthology Film Archives are hosting a 7-day series that ends on the 23rd. Info here.

If you’re still awake at the end of this post (sorry for the length) grab a cup of coffee and make the time to read Clay’s thoughtful post as well as truly smart comments by Polly Carl and Linda Essig.

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?

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.

 

 

Works-in-process in an everyone-is-a-critic-now world.

If inviting general audiences into the artistic process now means potentially inviting them to share their feedback with the world does this change how we think about presenting works-in-development for public audiences?

Perhaps I have a skewed perception, but it strikes me that over the past couple decades (at least in the US) arts organizations have increasingly presented half- or nearly-baked works to the public and (in many cases) charged them money for the privilege of seeing this work. For a variety of reasons, we have invited patrons into the process and have sold them on the idea that (1) this will increase their knowledge and understanding of an artform or (2) their presence and feedback will be valuable to the creators.

It is perhaps worth questioning whether we are sincere when we say these things and under what conditions these statements are true.

A related phenomenon: sometimes we haven’t invited patrons into the process as much as thrust it upon them. Sometimes works ‘in development’ are not advertised as such; they are rather deceptively called ‘previews’ or ‘world premieres’. By this I mean (for example) preview periods which producers or artists use to make significant changes to a piece, or works that are essentially being developed in performance at one or more venues on their way to New York (though being sold to audiences as if they were finished).

Recently there has been a good deal of chatter and discussion about the impact of amateur critics or passionate patrons (and recently a professional critic or two) blogging or tweeting reviews or comments on works ‘in development’ or shows ‘in preview’. In general it seems these have been seen by artists and producers as breaches of trust. But given the growing power and influence of consumers, and given that we have welcomed them in and charged them money and promoted the importance of their presence and opinions, is it any wonder that they now want (or feel entitled or even encouraged) to blog about their experiences?

While some may wish that we could enter into ‘contracts’ with patrons and require them to respect the artistic process and hold their tongues, this strikes me as impractical, unenforceable, and potentially destructive to relationships with patrons. Here are some other options, posed as (quite sincere) questions:

  • Do we need to do away with works-in process for the general public and simply present work that is finished and ready for review?
  • If we do works-in-process, do we need to be much more honest and explicit with audiences about our reasons for doing them and what we consider their role to be (or not to be)? (We might start by figuring this out for ourselves.)
  • Is it possible that if a work-in-process gets a dig by a patron or amateur critic that readers are astute enough to know that the piece is still being rehearsed and will wait to form their opinions on whether or not to attend?
  • Is it possible that if a blogger writes a piece dismissing a work in its development he or she may return and write again about the evolution of the piece and that this story might be more interesting than simply hearing about the finished product?
  • Is it possible that any conversation about a work (negative or positive) is better than no conversation at all and will likely make people more inclined to see the piece?
  • Is it possible that among the opinions expressed by passionate patrons and amateur critics about works-in-process that we might actually find some valuable insights?

One final question regarding works-in-process that are disguised as ‘previews’ and ‘world premieres’: putting aside for the present moment the (perhaps quite legitimate) reasons why such things occur, we might ask ourselves whether a public performance that is being used to make major changes to an artistic work should be called something else.

Dress Rehearsal, perhaps?

 

No algorithms needed for this show recommender system

I’m back from my honeymoon and a brief hiatus from Jumper. Despite a volatile stock market, downgrading of the US credit rating, questions about the fate of the Euro, and arts budgets hither and yon that are already slashed or soon to be so, the 2011-2012 arts season begins (although sadly with the loss of some very good organizations). I’ll be honest, since moving to the Netherlands I have not seen nearly as much work as I would have liked. This is primarily due to other commitments (family, Dutch lessons, work) and logistics (I have a long commute home, particularly if a show lets out past 10:30 pm). But it is also partly due to the fact that I have had a difficult time figuring out the performance scene here, despite knowing a number of artists, companies and organizations before I arrived.

In any event, one morning this past week I engaged in what now feels like a rather old fashioned way of getting information on an arts event: I perused a thick brochure describing shows featured in the upcoming ten-day Nederlands Theater Festival in Amsterdam. The festival features remounts of some of the best theater works produced in the last season (selected by an outside
jury that also awards prizes) as well as other works and activities. After browsing the 62-page program book I determined that (at a minimum) I would see the three works that advertised English surtitling; but beyond that, I was uncertain which shows I might enjoy. I handed the materials to my husband, Jaap, saying “I wish I knew more about these companies.” He paged through the materials and came to the last page and read out loud to me (translating from Dutch to English):

“Would you like to receive personalized advice about the performances?”

“Oh yeah, call me back!”

I thought, “Oh, that’s cool. They have their box office staff call people to give advice on purchases.” Wrong. There was a form asking for my name and telephone number and asking who among the following I would like to call me:

  • a member of the jury,
  • one of the theater makers (an actor or director from one of the shows featured in the festival),
  • the director of the festival,
  • or a professional theater adviser (I’m not quite sure what this means).

I’ve long thought that ‘concierge services’ are sorely needed in the live professional arts scene. One of the recurring themes from my talks at marketing conferences is that arts organizations could create greater value for their patrons by giving personalized advice aimed at helping people navigate the arts scene and make better purchase decisions. I’ve suggested that arts groups could use citywide arts and culture portals to do this (using a recommender system + patron reviews/comments + top picks by arts staff, artists, and culture vultures) or box office staff or volunteers specifically equipped to give such advice (via chat or telephone).

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that an arts organization might offer the director of its festival, or a member of the jury, or the actor or director associated with a particular show as the person to give such advice (except perhaps as a benefit to major donors and other VIPs, which I imagine happens on an ad hoc basis all the time). It’s certainly the first time I’ve encountered such a service for the general public.

I kept looking at the form with amazement and (I must say) a wee bit of skepticism. So, these people will call me back, I thought, but will they enjoy doing so or is this an ‘audience development’ program that has members of the artistic staff rolling their eyes? Will the advice really be personalized, or are the advisers programmed to ask a few standard questions (classical, contemporary or experimental? drama or comedy? bare bones or highly produced?) and then nudge people towards one or two obvious slots?(Which isn’t to say that a call-center-style service, in and of itself, might not be of value.)

My amazement and skepticism is based on years (in the US) of having my mailbox flooded with artfully designed postcards with no information on a show (sometimes not even a date or location); years of taking the time to read the descriptions of shows in promotional materials and feeling that I might as well pick which show to see using the eeny meeny miny moe method; and trying to use the filters on online cultural calendars and finding that no matter what I plug in the site wants to send me to something like Beauty and the Beast on Ice. In other words, it’s based on years of the arts scene sending the message: If you can’t figure out what to see based on the information we’ve provided that’s a good indication that you may be happier driving to the local Cineplex and seeing Bridesmaids (which I loved).

I also love the work of Ivo van Hove and Toneelgroep Amsteram and Dood Paard, which are two of the companies I plan to see at the Nederlands Theater Festival. And I love the spirit and aims of this ‘at your service’, high-level, personalized callback program (though I am also very curious to learn whether they have many takers of the service and, if so, if it becomes a burden for those on the hook to make calls). While rather incredulous, I’m betting on being pleasantly surprised. I plan to fill out the form and await a return phone call from no less than the director of the festival, Jeffrey Meulman.

 

 

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license