{"id":299,"date":"2013-10-02T03:15:45","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T10:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/?p=299"},"modified":"2013-10-02T03:43:16","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T10:43:16","slug":"dinnervention-3-art-and-institutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/2013\/10\/dinnervention-3-art-and-institutions.html","title":{"rendered":"Dinnervention 4: Art and Institutions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This one\u2019s not going to be very new, I fear.\u00a0 It seems to have been the core outcome for most of the folks coming out of the Dinnervention, and of course is also a trope that has run its course through the blogosphere for a while.\u00a0 And yet\u2026<\/p>\n

If the core problem facing the arts today really is one of relevance, of public value, of engagement, then the core solution must be one that embraces what America writ large finds relevant, what the public values, and what a new and expansive definition of prospective arts consumers find engaging.\u00a0 This, to me, seems both obvious and nearly insurmountable in its scope.\u00a0 Obvious for obvious reasons, I hope, and nearly insurmountable because of the incredible inertia that exists, for reasons both good and bad, around our media, our systems, our institutions, our language, our structures, our criteria for success.<\/p>\n

At the dinner, Laura Zabel<\/a>, Devon Smith<\/a>, Marc Bamuthi Joseph<\/a>\u00a0and others started by framing out the dichotomy of art and the institution.\u00a0 Art is not dwindling.\u00a0 Art is not in trouble.\u00a0 Art has always and will always exist–it is a pervasive force that manifests in every culture; it is the way we tell stories, tell history, teach lessons, show love, grieve, celebrate, honor.\u00a0 The decline in “arts” participation in the past thirty years, since the advent of the first Survey on Public Participation in the Arts<\/em> by the NEA, is in fact the decline in participation at the core Eurocentric artistic institutions.\u00a0 It is a decline that maps exactly against the rise of new populations, the fall of arts education programs throughout the country, the adoption of art-as-code-for-elitism by the right wing.\u00a0 But it is not a decline in art making or art consumption.\u00a0 It is a decline in consumption of a particular type of art, narrow in form, time- and place-based, constrained by hundreds of years of rules and mores.<\/p>\n

It is also, as it happens, a decline in the institutions that have made full- and part-time employment as artists and arts administrators possible.\u00a0 Which leads to schizophrenia in the core question–because “art,” arguably, has never been more relevant, more valued, more engaging, even as “arts institutions,” in particular those that hold strongly to the trappings of traditional arts, dwindle in importance.\u00a0 They are, for most of the parts of our population that are expanding, not the place where art really lives–they place it distantly, on a hill, obscured by walls and price and vocabulary that doesn’t resonate, down a winding road that is narrow and tight, beautiful, perhaps, but why can’t I just do that at home?<\/p>\n

Which may, in a way, be all to the good\u2014at least until you get to the finer points of survivability, the underpinning training required to create free pop songs, the core societal resonances that pervade the chords of homemade music, the subjects of personal paintings, the structure of self-told stories. \u00a0Then the room starts echoing the sounds of silence.<\/p>\n

A new movement in the arts must be cognizant of the fact that we are moving inside a space that is infinitely larger and more diverse than we ever will be.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0At the same time, a new movement must embrace and tout the ways in which the old forms are a required foundation for the new ones.\u00a0 It must understand the grace that allows us to exist in that space, and must let go of any feelings of entitlement or ownership–we do not make the arts exist, they have existed long before us and will exist long after we and our organizations have gone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This one\u2019s not going to be very new, I fear.\u00a0 It seems to have been the core outcome for most of the folks coming out of the Dinnervention, and of course is also a trope that has run its course through the blogosphere for a while.\u00a0 And yet\u2026 If the core problem facing the arts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-change","8":"category-main","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}