Archives for August 2009

Friday’s marvelous You’ve Cott Mail tipped me off to a very provocative conversation about
experimentation in theater that’s going on simultaneously on two websites. The debate could easily apply to all of the arts disciplines.

It all began last Monday when the Lark Play Development Center* blog invited playwright Theresa Rebeck to write a post called “Can Craft and Creativity Live on the Same Stage?” The headline doesn’t really do her commentary justice, however.

Here is what David Cote, writing on Time Out New York’s Upstaged blog, called “the money quote” from Rebeck’s essay:

This is my worry, honestly: In the current environment, when young writers are being encouraged to stay away from anything “conventional” are we perhaps falling in love with a kind of playwriting that frankly just doesn’t work? Are we judging too harshly plays that do work? And how does the audience fit into this discussion? Does it?

To which I would add two questions Rebeck asks a little later in the essay

Do we think that theater is art only if people don’t understand it?
Can art be serious and popular at the same time?

Cote then revved up the intensity:

I would rephrase this as: Playwrights who don’t learn the fundamentals of story and structure default to experimentation. Or: Those who can’t do, experiment.

Thoughtful and remarkably civilized discussion is taking place on both websites — take a look.

Cote, smartly, also took the conversation into the visual arts realm, remarking:

[Read more…] about Does It Have to Be Experimental to Be Art?

We have chairmen! The Senate today confirmed the nominations of both Rocco Landesman (right) to
be chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and Jim Leach to be chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Apologies for reporting earlier this week (here) that the NEH confirmation was moving along faster than the NEA. My only excuse is that’s what sources told me. So they were wrong and so was I.

The NEA posted this press release earlier today (link) and posted his bio, too (here). (I’m a little late catching up because I’ve been downtown in criminal court on jury duty — which is a pretty good excuse.)

I do not see the news on the NEH website yet, but the press office there did send me an email announcing Leach’s confirmation.

Both still need to be sworn in, but that is expected to happen within a few days.

Little did I know when I was writting about the lack and/or poor quality of data-based information in the arts (here, here, and here) that The New York Times was about to provide
reinforcement. It came in the form of a Page One article in yesterday’s paper, which for most of the day and even now is the most-emailed story: “For Today’s Graduates, Just One Word: Statistics.” It doesn’t mention the arts or culture, but it does say this:

“We’re rapidly entering a world where everything can be monitored and measured,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Digital Business. “But the big problem is going to be the ability of humans to use, analyze and make sense of the data.”

The new breed of statisticians tackle that problem. They use powerful computers and sophisticated mathematical models to hunt for meaningful patterns and insights in vast troves of data.

Clearly, other sectors of the economy and the culture at large are moving far ahead on collecting and data-mining numbers. Yet my posts have been met with two reactions: 

• Maybe, but — arts groups don’t have the time or the money to do this, so forget about it.
• You’re right to call attention to this, but it’s never going to change, and no one takes the
  numbers seriously anyway.

True, some do laugh at the numbers — but the cultural world is laughed at when people read or hear these crazy numbers. If arts groups don’t start getting more numbers savvy, they’re going to be left further and further behind in a very sophisticated culture.  

A recent trip to the Guggenheim got me thinking about one organizing principle for exhibitions that’s seems to be going around — showing works acquired by, or during the term of, a museum’s director. The trend seems to stem both from happenstance and anniversary-marking. The Metropolitan Museum honored Philippe de Montebello on his retirement; the Philadelphia Museum of Art honored Anne d’Harnoncourt soon after her sudden, unexpected death. The Cleveland Museum of Art recently opened an exhibition honored its legendary former director, Sherman Lee, who died last year. And the Guggenheim, which just turned 50,
is showing The Sweeney Decade:Acquisitions at the 1959 Inaugural.

Sometimes, this idea clearly does not work — at the Guggenheim, for example. The Sweeney show simply doesn’t shine. James Johnson Sweeney, who headed the museum from 1952 to 1960, acquired many works by artists whose names are well-known today: Jackson Pollock (that’s his Ocean Greyness, 1953, at right), Willem de Kooning, Eduardo Chillida, Antoni Tapies, William Baziotes and Hans Hartung, among them. The press release suggests he bought works by artists “whose work emphasized the emotional aspect of abstraction.” That wasn’t apparent to me. The works are boring, the reviews have been mixed, and the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition nearby seemed to me to be generating more interest.

But it’s not just the works that matter. I liked the way the de Montebello exhibition was organized — chronologically, according to the year they were acquired. That meant works of all styles were shown side-by-side, which is a great way to train your eye. But curators at the Met have told me that the public did not like the show.  

[Read more…] about Good Or Bad? The Trend Toward Director-Based Exhibits

Americans for the Arts, the advocacy group, has a lot on its plate, including, once a week, sending out an email of news items called ArtsWatch. Last week’s edition, which arrived on
Wednesday, July 29, has been nagging at me. The numbers in the articles just don’t make sense. I’ve written the press office asking for an explanation, but have received no reply. So I’m posting the three items here — perhaps I’m crazy, and the numbers are right; if so, please explain. If not, these are more examples of funny numbers in the arts that don’t exactly inspire confidence (not to mention some pretty lazy reporting and/or writing).

Under the heading, “The Arts In Recession”:

Iowa: Federal Stimulus Funds Save Over 300 Arts Jobs
Quad-City Times, 7/22/2009

Nearly $500,000 in federal stimulus money is being spread to 18 arts organizations in 10 cities, preserving a total of 323 jobs according to Gov. Chet Culver’s office.

AND, from the same article/item:

The National Endowment for the Arts also approved $150,000 in stimulus money for arts organizations in Amana, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, and Dubuque. The governor’s office said the stimulus money preserved 34 full-time and 104 part-time jobs, as well as 185 contract positions.”

And, from:

Rhode Island: State Arts Council Receives Stimulus Money, Foundation Funds
The Providence Journal, 7/28/2009
“Governor Carcieri and members of the state congressional delegation has joined more than 100 members of the arts community to announce the arrival of nearly $300,000 in federal stimulus money for the arts. The Rhode Island Foundation contributed an additional $100,000 to the federal stimulus package, which allowed the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts to support a total of 18 organizations. The money will allow the recipients to restore or retain 77 positions in the arts, from free performances of Shakespeare in Westerly to after-school art teachers.

Do a little division, and those numbers yield salaries that are waaaay below the minimum wage, even leaving the part-time and contract jobs out of the calculation.

So, am I missing something?

It’s not Americans for the Arts’ job to correct newspaper reporting; but it doesn’t do much good to circulate silly numbers either.

You can read last week’s entire AFA newsletter here. And I’ve written about the need for better statistics and studies here.