Archives for April 2010

I’ve strayed again into opera: Today’s Wall Street Journal has my Cultural Conversation with Renee Fleming: Aria on the Future. In it, she discusses where she is in her career — thinking strategically about her remaining years as a singer — and whether operas should be reinterpreted. Plus, she talks about traditional opera’s appeal to youth, her venture into indie-rock, and how HD simulcasts are changing opera. We talked about “Armida,” in which she’s currently starring. (Overall, I liked the production below, which I saw Monday, though it’s not perfect, and I do agree with critics who said her voice did not fill the house.) 

It was a sweeping interview.

Even so, some things were still in my notebook, and I pulled them out for this post.

Fleming called herself “a big art lover” and said she frequents museums, especially for 20th Century Art. She claims Chuck Close and Elsworth Kelly among her friends. She’s fascinated by artistic collaborations among people in different disciplines, citing John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and Merce Cunningham as one example.

More important, Fleming voiced her regrets that popular culture and mainstream media have squeezed out the arts, and misses the days when Johnny Carson not only put Beverly Sills on the Tonight Show, which was then far more powerful than it is today, but had her as guest-host. “I’d love to have a chance at that,” she said, adding that hosting for the Met’s simulcasts is “so much fun.”

Fleming asserted that she was not an elitist, but she noted that knowledge of the classics — not just opera and classical music, but Shakespeare, literature, poetry, and visual arts — is no longer valued as it once was. 

“It was not that long ago when to be upwardly mobile meant playing the piano, reading and other things like that,” she said. “And then it became about having material possessions, as opposed to having an education.”

How do we get it back?

It has to start with education, she said: “Children are completely open-minded.”

UPDATE: Opera Chic has linked to my WSJ piece, and commenters are commenting — you might to have a look (here).

Photo Credit: Armida promotional photo (top); Act III (bottom), Courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera

 

I was wrong. I said the other day that Rocco Landesman’s testimony before Congress about the NEA budget on Tuesday would be “interesting.” That was my hope.

Instead, it was a total bore. Landesman not only said nothing, but what he did — closing most of the “American Masterpieces” program to find money for his “Our Town” initiative — will amount to nothing, too.

I can not attest to the efficacy of American Masterpieces, but at least its idea — bringing performances, visual art exhibitions, erc. to communities around the country — was a good one, especially for small communities that lack access to great art. “Our Town,” which is supposed to create local arts districts, isn’t. Or doesn’t seem to be — Landesman is supposed to provide details soon. It strikes me, so far, as too commercial. Although I agree that arts provide real jobs and create economic activity, I don’t think that’s what the NEA should be spending its small budget on.

Which is why I’m writing this morning — I had no intention to blog again until this afternoon/evening. But an email from NEA just arrived that seems like more movement in the wrong direction. To wit:

The National Endowment for the Arts announced today that Jason Schupbach will join the NEA as Director of Design at the end of May….

…Since 2008, Mr. Schupbach has held the first-in-the-nation position of Creative Economy Industry Director for the Massachusetts Office of Business Development where his accomplishments include coordinating the growth of new industry cluster groups, such as the Design Industry Group of Massachusetts (DIGMA), and launching a Design Excellence initiative, an effort to improve procurement processes in Massachusetts in order to build more sustainable and longer-lasting buildings and communities, and increase the number of designers being offered contracts….

Etc. That’s not the kind of art that needs bolstering. (Read the whole press release here.)

I’ve got nothing against Schupbach. But I don’t like the commercial drift, which is the direction the NEA is going.

 

 

I wandered over to Sotheby’s over the weekend, and came out aghast. I had overlooked or forgotten the news, in January, about the dimensions of tomorrow’s sale of historical documents from the James S. Copley Library. It is a tragedy. This immense library collection, of about 2,000 items, is being sold by the Copley Press newspaper chain. Heaven knows, newspapers need the money nowadays, and I don’t begrudge a company a sale of assets it was always the unlikely owner of, but…

These documents — which include letters and manuscripts signed by Washington, Lincoln (see his letter to George McClellan, below), et. al. — are likely to go to many private collectors. They include a broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence ($600,000 to $800,000) from that July of 1776 and a 1776 Congressional document signed by Button Gwinnett (a signer, picture at left, who died in a duel within a year, leaving few autographs) valued at $500,000 to $700,000.  

Who knows when they will be seen again?

And they’re unlikely ever to be seen together, as they were in the Copley Library in La Jolla, which apparently has been suffering from neglect.

One measure of the richness of this collection, whose manuscripts cover literary, artistic and scientific achievements as well as historical ones: It will take Sotheby’s eight sales to disperse it: four big sales and four single-lot sales. Sotheby’s created a sales video about the collection (here) that tells more.

Copley, the adopted son of the utility magnate Colonel Ira C. Copley and his wife, collected for less than 10 years before he died, and his interest was sparked by, of all things, service as chairman of the U.S. Bicentennial Commission.

“This library is a love lettter to America,” said David Redden, vice chairman of Sotheby’s, on that video. Later, he added, “He was absolutely inspired by the story of America.” Redden said it’s unlikely that a collection of this size and quality could ever be assembled again.

So where is someone who will step forward with the $15 million total estimate, and buy it for a public institution? Hundreds of paintings have sold more more.

I’m not sure whether I hope that places like the NYPL and the Ransom Center at UTexas have been out there beating the bushes for a willing billionaire to buy it for them or not. Failure, at such a low price, considering the value, is incomprehensible.

If it doesn’t happen tomorrow, there are more chances with the rest of the sales. Here’s the press release.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sotheby’s (bottom)

A couple of weeks ago, the Nonprofit Finance Fund, which makes loans and provides financial consultations, released the results of its annual State of the Sector survey. In this year’s edition, of 1,315 nonprofit leaders, it found most were bracing for a tough 2010. No surpise, there.

But it also found, in the arts sector, that many want help with their boards — maybe that’s no shock either, but it speaks to an issue I’ve mentioned before as worrisome.

In general, across all kinds of non-profits —  arts, human services, environment, education, animal welfare, etc.:

Nearly 90% expect 2010 to be as difficult or more difficult than 2009; only 12% expect 2010 to be financially easier for their organizations.

80% of nonprofits anticipate an increase in demand for services in 2010; 49% expect to be able to fully meet this demand level.

Only 18% of organizations expect to end 2010 above break-even; 35% of organizations ended 2009 with an operating surplus.

The majority – 61% – have less than three months of cash available; 12% have none.

Arts groups made up the biggest component — 32% — of respondents, but I still wanted to see just the arts’ picture. I asked the Nonprofit Finance Fund for the results just from those 417 arts leaders, and it obliged. Here are a few interesting points I pulled from them:

–54% experienced an increase, slight or significant, in demand for their services in 2009, but 64% expect an increase in 2010.

–In 2009, 37% had an operating deficit, while 26% expect to have a deficit this year.

–In 2009, 32% had an operating surplus, but only 26% expect a surplus this year.

–28% could not fully meet demand last year, and 34% do not believe they will this year.

–13% have no cash reserve, and only 16% had more than six months’ worth of cash in reserve. The vast majority — 65% — have less than 3 months cash on hand.

[Read more…] about Worrisome Numbers For 2010 Budgets And Boards

NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman is making news again, and I’m not talking about what he said in The New York Times’s Sunday Arts & Leisure piece. It did say that he had become “perhaps more politic” since taking office. And it quoted him as saying he had to cut down on his whining. Both good.

The article also disclosed that Landesman is “hoping to make an end run” around his budget constraints by forging collaborations with agencies that have more money, like the Housing and Urban Development and Transportation departments. Let’s hope he does get that on down on paper.

But by paying close attention to what Landesman said on Friday, when he spoke at the Arts Education Partnership’s Spring 2010 Forum, I saw a little more evidence that he has evolved since, well, August.

For a start, then he told the Times that in contrast with his predecessors, who had pointedly spread NEA funds to every Congressional district, he would instead focus on funding the best art. That’s when he made his famous comment about the probable lack of good theater in Peoria. “I don’t know that we have to be everywhere if the only reason for supporting an institution is its geography,” he said.

Fast forward to Friday, when he said:

I have challenged my staff to see if we can make sure that there is at least one arts education grant in every Congressional district.

OK, arts education should indeed be universal, but isn’t he implying that good art isn’t? If he has to make choices about funding the best in one area, shouldn’t he also fund the best in another? Or has Landesman simply learned that it is good politics, if bad policy, to court Congress with NEA funds, no matter how small they are?

Look at it another way: Landesman noted that NEA had $15 million for arts education grants which, divided by 435 Congressional districts, equals less than $35,000 per grant. That’s not even one art teacher’s salary. Maybe larger, innovative pilot projects would have more impact.

In Friday’s speech, he also made this point:

At the NEA, we will shortly be releasing data that shows that arts education drives arts attendance, and the producer in me thinks that butts in seats is reason enough to do anything. But there are more reasons: in addition to audiences, arts education creates arts administrators and artists.

And loosely summarizing experts like Daniel Pink, Howard Gardner and Mark Stern, he said:

The arts provide us with new ways of thinking, new ways to draw connections. They are important social capital, and they help maintain our competitive edge by engendering innovation and creativity. So an arts education grant in every Congressional district is an important goal.

And he went on to endorse the idea of turning STEM, the emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math, into STEAM — adding art. And then on to making it TEAMS, meaning learning based on collaboration, and then on to allowing failure, using “the arts to give the luxury of failure to our students.”

And that brought him to this odd statement: “How many water lilies did Monet paint, trying to get them just right?”  

Huh? Not sure that’s what Monet was doing there….

The NEA emailed the speech to me, and it’s not (yet) posted online, so I can’t provide a link. All in all, it shows Landesman’s heart is in the right place. But that may not be enough to make him an effective chairman.

UPDATE, 4/12: The speech is online (thanks to commenter, below) here.

He’s supposed to testify on Capitol Hill on the NEA budget on Tuesday. That ought to be interesting.