This fall, Boston’s relatively new (Jan. 2014) mayor, Martin J. Walsh, appointed a cabinet-level arts czar: Julie Burros, who has been director of cultural planning in Chicago for nearly 15 years, where she helped develop a cultural plan for the Windy City. Many in the arts there were thrilled. Talking with the Boston Globe, ArtsBoston executive director Catherine Peterson said: “I think it is a potential game changer for the city. It embeds somebody who reports directly to the mayor, so the arts are not just at the center of what goes on in our museums and theaters, but at the center of life in the city.â€
As the Globe wrote in September, Burros will have “…a staff of nine and an annual budget of $1.3 million, with most of it going to salaries, officials said. Burros will also oversee the Fund for Boston Neighborhoods, currently at about $1.1 million, funded largely by contributions from organizations and individuals and used for events such as First Night. She will be paid $125,000 a year.” And, it added:
The idea behind the appointment is that a strong arts sector yields cultural, economic, and quality-of-life benefits that touch everyone in the city. “This is one area that crosses over almost every single department of city government and every single piece of city life,†said Walsh.
Last month, Walsh and Burros amplified their view with an op-ed in the Globe, saying (among other things):
Together with city residents, we will look at how arts and culture can play a greater role in the lives of all Bostonians — experiencing, learning, and creating. Experiencing the arts means enjoying the beauty of that which others create for us. Learning about the arts means that children and adults can see the world around them through a new lens. And creating art means finding ways to express thoughts and feelings to heal, connect, and inspire.
Our cultural plan will be a road map of a long-term strategy for how to enrich and strengthen our civic fabric as only the arts can. We seek to make the arts more accessible to residents of all neighborhoods and to support public art and design as a key component of how we envision and develop space in Boston.
All well and good, I think. Except. I remember when the Chicago Cultural Plan was revealed in fall, 2012, and I don’t have fond memories. It was maddeningly general and full of feel-good language to make the public seem as if their words were heeded.
But the Chicago Reader beat me to writing up what was wrong with it, enumerating Ten Things Wrong with the Chicago Cultural Plan So Far. The Reader called it a wish list. A year later, that publication went back to the plan to assess progress. It found that One year in, the Chicago Cultural Plan is already receiving plaudits. But that doesn’t mean it’s not window dressing. The writer, Deanna Issaacs, quoted a Chicago commissioner saying that “half of the 241 initiatives in the plan have been addressed.” In a year?
If so, either the bar was set too low or that was an exaggeration. You may want to decide–here’s a PDF of the plan’s Executive Summary and here’s a PDF of the plan itself.
One thing Bostonians should be looking out for. Chicago hired Lord Cultural Resources to write the plan. As a global firm, it has a reputation of cookie-cutter solutions. If Burros hires them in Boston, let the skepticism begin.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Boston Globe