Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Can A Web Initiative Rescue Churchill From The Dustbin Of History?

Harry Benson, well known photographer of both presidents and pop icons — he accompanied the Beatles on their first trip to the U.S. — was recalling his long career recently when he mentioned something that troubled him: When he mentions Winston Churchill, young people don’t know who he is.

He’s not the first to notice: A few years ago, a poll in Britain turned up the startling fact that a fifth of teenagers there thought Churchill was a fictional character — even while majorities believed that Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur and Robin Hood were real. Another study of Britons of all ages showed that while Churchill still tops the ranks of those considered to be most significant in history, Princess Diana, John Lennon and Michael Crawford are  not far behind.

Now imagine the results of a poll conducted outside of Britain.

This is relevant, in particular, to the Morgan Library & Museum — now showing Churchill: The Power of Words. The exhibit includes items ranging his childhood letters to his parents, to Cold War correspondence with President Eisenhower, to drafts and recordings of his famous wartime oratory. How to engage those young people?

To the web! The Morgan, along with the Churchill Archives Centre at the at the University of Cambridge, created a website called DiscoverChurchill.org and are using Twitter and Facebook.

The website begins with a trailer, a takeoff on the popular Dos Equis beer ad about the world’s most interesting man — a fictional character — and sequeing into the idea that Churchill is the actual guy.

“A REAL MAN…A man who… lacked ambition (according to his first headmaster)…but went on to lead his nation in a time of great crisis…a man who…won the Nobel Prize in Literature…” Etc.

Elsewhere there are links to video clips of Churchill’s most famous speeches, 24 rotating quotes (Sample: “We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glow worm.”), and lists of places to go, things to see and do, and other websites related to Churchill, including Bletchley Park, where the Enigma code was cracked. There are linkups to pop culture — e.g., that Angelina Jolie paid tribute to Churchill in tattoos she added for her role in “Wanted.”

“The site is intended to be a portal, open wide enough to draw people in from many different backgrounds, and then designed to channel them to the most interesting Churchill sites and to encourage them to visit the exhibition,” Allen Packwood, director of the Churchill Archives Centre at the at the University of Cambridge, told me. “We wanted to establish a clear beacon for anyone who might be interested and we wanted to experiment to see if an integrated social media strategy, with web resources, Facebook and Twitter, could be used to stimulate interest among new audiences.”

Admirable, but — I don’t think it’s working very well. As of this writing, the Facebook page they created page has only 1,222 likes — how many of them are Millennials? The site is asking trivia questions — those who post the right answer first win tickets to the exhibition — without much traffic. Its Twitter feed has 109 followers.

I’m no expert on what attracts Millennials, but I think the sites are too direct, too earnest. Marketers always say young people are skeptical of direct pitches. I wonder if, instead of tweeting “Discover Churchill ‏@DiscvrChurchill –#ChurchillNYC Don’t miss it. http://discoverchurchill.org Exhibition is limited (now till Sept. 23),” the tweets should be the man’s own quotes.

Churchill’s words—powerful, humorous, clever— still resonate nearly fifty years after his death. That’s the point of the exhibition. I am reminded of the Massachusetts Historical Society, which in 2009 began posting one-line-a-day from the diaries of John Quincy Adams on Twitter. It kept people coming back to see the next line. Just a thought.

The Churchill exhibition runs through September  23.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of DiscoverChurchill.org

Washington’s Constitution Goes Home

No two ways about it, this is a happy-ending story. 

George Washington personal copy of the U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights and dated 1789, which he had annotated, remained at Mount Vernon when he died in 1977, but was inexplicably sold at auction in 1876. Sometime later, the Heritage Foundation of Deerfield, Massachusetts, bought it, but they it sold again at auction in 1964, when it was acquired by an avid Americana collector, Richard Dietrich. On Friday, it was sold by Christie’s on behalf of his estate — and acquired by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union, the non-profit that owns and operates Washington’s historic home and museum in Virginia. Back into the library it will go.

The price set a record for an American book or historical document – $9,826,500, including the premium. It was estimated at $2- to $3 million.

The previous record was held by an autograph manuscript of Lincoln’s 1864 electionvictory speech,  sold at Christie’s for $3,442,500 in February 2009. Christie’s says the previous record for a Washington document was $3,218,500 for an autograph letter written in 1787 by him to his nephew Bushrod Washington, on the subject of the ratification of the Constitution, set in December 2009.

Christie’s said the bidding went on for four minutes, and involved “multiple buyers in the room and on the phone.”

The document, it als said, “remains in near-pristine condition, with Washington’s bold signature and his armorial bookplate. Remarkably, in the margins of the Constitution, Washington has added careful brackets and marginal notes. These notations highlight key passages concerning the President’s responsibilities, testifying to Washington’s careful, conscientious approach to his powers and responsibilities in his ground-breaking first term.”

Here’s what the Mount Vernon Ladies had to say.

No mention of who funded the purchase or if the money came out of its own resources, nor could I find that information in other reports of the sale. Bloomberg has a few other details, however.

It’s a good day for the first president.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s

 

The Federal Budget Battle Begins, Or…

Maybe it never ended.

Yesterday, the House Interior Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee marked up its initial FY 2013 funding legislation, and once again it put the budgets of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities on the chopping block. Both agencies were allocated a $132 million, a decrease of $14 million, or 9.6%, from the FY 2012 actual level of $146.3 million.

Americans for the Arts blogged that “While the arts community recognizes the challenges our elected leaders face in prioritizing federal resources, this budget proposal is disappointing as funding for the NEA has already been cut by more than $20 million over the past two years,” and said the reduction was “counter intuitive to the national call to help increase jobs and fuel the country’s recovery.” Then it referred readers to its Arts and Economic Prosperity IV study, which estimates the contribution made by the “nonprofit arts industry” to economic activity at $135.2 billion annually and 4.13 million jobs.

President Obama had proposed an increase of $8 million to the Endowments’ budgets: $154.3 million.

Americans for the Arts and the National Humanities Alliance are urging those who care to write to their congressional representatives.

For perspective, meanwhile, the NHA put together this nice chart of 15 years worth of appropriations for the NEH, which track the NEA’s. (If it cuts off on the right, you can view this NEHFundingTable.)

Table: NEH Annual Appropriations (in millions of dollars)

Fiscal Year ‘95 ‘96 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 ‘07 ‘08 ‘09 ‘10 ‘11 ‘12 ‘13
Appropriation 172.0 110.0 115.3 120.0 124.5 124.9 135.3 138.1 140.9 141.1 144.7 155.0 167.5 154.7 146.0 n/a

Wow! That Was Fast, Worcester

I had no idea yesterday, when I posted about the campaign by the Worcester Art Museum to open its Salisbury Street doors, that the goal was so close to being met.

But just now, I received an email from the museum that the $60,000 goal was not only attained but exceeded. Here’s what the museum wrote:

With the Salisbury doors having been closed for the past several years (other than on weekends and for special events), the museum initiated a grassroots campaign to raise the $60,000 necessary to re-open the entrance to the public on a full-time basis for at least the next two years. In fact, the Museum exceeded this goal raising a total of $94,113 with a total of 321 gifts ranging from less than $25-$500. [Boldface mine.]

This shows several things.

  • Directors can galvanize giving, even in small amounts, by finding and defining a cause. It’s a lot easier to do that when people know exactly where their money is going and agree with the goal.
  • Direct appeals by the director, getting upclose and personal, succeed.
  • Worcester director Matthias Waschek knows how to create excitement. Today, the museum staged a ceremonial reopening of the doors in presence of officials and community leaders “including: Senator Harriette Chandler; Malcolm Rogers – Director, Museum of Fine Arts Boston;  Anita Walker – Executive Director, Massachusetts Cultural Coalition;   Lisa Simmons – Director of PR, MA Office of Travel and Tourism; Councilor Konnie Lukes, and Erin Williams, Cultural Development Officer, City of Worcester.” Pretty good turnout.
  • The museum knows how to pay it back: Waschek announced “that admission to the museum will be free to the public through the end of August.”  It’s usually $14.
  • AND: “To celebrate the announcement, the museum will host a free summer kick-off celebration on Saturday, June 23 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with live entertainment, food and art activities from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.”

Other museums: there’s a lesson here, more than one, actually.

Coverage in the Boston Globe is here, and in the Worcester Telegram, it’s here.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Worcester Telegram

 

Giving USA Shows Where The Money Is — And Is Going

Despite the crazy, seesawing stock market, philanthopic giving is growing for the second consecutive year, according to the 2011 Giving USA report. Last year, an estimated 117 million U.S. households, 12 million corporations, 99,000 estates and 76,000 foundations gave money to charities, its annual study found — a total of $298.42 billion. That’s up 4% versus 2010, when the total was $286.91, but still shy of the record $309.7 billion given away in 2007.

The total fell to $290.9 billion in 2008 and again to $278.6 billion in 2009. Now, the rate of increase is slow, but at least it’s growing.

International affairs got the biggest boost and is the fastest-growing philanthropic sector, but funding of arts/culture/humanitites also increased last year, by an estimated 4.1% to an estimated total of $13.12 billion, which represents 4% of all charitable donations.

Giving Institute chief  Thomas W. Mesaros suggested that the appropriate reaction to these numbers was “a subdued sigh of relief.” But Patrick M. Rooney, the executive director of the study’s co-sponsor, the Center on Philanthropy,  noted that “In the past two years charitable giving has experienced its second slowest recovery following any recession since 1971.”

Not so good. Since individual giving as a percentage of disposable personal income remained at 1.9 percent in 2011, the same as in 2009 and 2010, we need personal income to grow, which isn’t really happening.

There are a few additional, relevant numbers for arts groups: Individuals comprise the largest portion of giving by far: it rose 3.9 percent in 2011 and represents 73 percent of total giving — $217.79 billion. Plus, the press release said, “When you add together what is contributed to philanthropy through American households, bequests and family foundations, that piece of the
total $298.42 billion estimated giving “pie” for 2011 comes to 88 percent.”

By contrast, giving by foundations represented 14 percent of total giving.

So why museums let foundations push them to do things they don’t want to do — which so many admit privately — continues to be beyond me.