So President Obama is proposing cuts of $22 million each in next year’s budgets for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for Humanities, dropping them to $146 million in FY 2012 from $168 million in FY 2010 (Congress has not yet approved the 2010 budget), according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. We knew it was coming, and — barring some dramatic intervention — the two will be lucky to escape the Congressional budget process with even those amounts intact. (Here’s a link to the budget page, which allows you to view it in PDF, Kindle, Nook and other devices. But neither the NEA nor the NEH occupy a line.)

With such steep cuts, though, even culture lovers will have trouble making the argument that arts and humanities funding should be priviledged above spending for infrastructure, medical research, unemployment benefits, and so on.

But in recent days there has been good news for what I believe may be the best argument for investing in the arts: their affect on creativity. It’s an area that is both least explored and potentially most powerful.

Last week, the Bay Area Discovery Museum said it was creating a Center for Childhood Creativity. The CCC is a think tank, intent on raising “awareness of the critical need for nurturing childhood creativity;” providing “creativity-focused services for parents, educators, activists, corporations and policymakers;” generating “original research,” and setting “standards for creative programs for children in multiple disciplines;” and syndicating “content for maximum impact.”

That’s a big agenda, and I hope the “research” part doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. There’s a lot of wishful thinking that exposure to the arts contributes to creativity, but little if any proof.

This initiative probably would not be starting if America’s CEOs were not so concerned, which they are. You can see that in this press release.

As the release notes:

The Center for Childhood Creativity defines creativity as the capacity for original thought, new connections, adaptive reasoning, and novel solutions. Recent research by Kyung Hee Kim, an associate professor of educational psychology at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, noted that children’s scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TCCT) have declined over the past 20 years. “The TTCT measures the creative mind more broadly; it measures creative potential in many diverse areas such as art, literature, science, mathematics, architecture, engineering, business, leadership, and interpersonal relationships,” stated Professor Kyung Hee Kim. “The results indicate that all of the scores … have significantly decreased or have significantly started decreasing. The decrease has been more in recent years than earlier years.”

The CCC already has a website, and list of advisors, including Daniel Pink and an NEH program officer. Richard Winefield is executive director of both the museum and the center — maybe not ideally. Perhaps that will change, as the Center grows.

The CCC will not help anything in the near-term, let along budgets for arts and artists and humanities programs. Longterm is another matter.

It seems intuitive that the arts must impact both childhood and adult creativity, but until we can prove it, for sure, that intuition won’t do arts organizations any good whatsoever.

 

 

Time to check in on the Wexner Center for the Arts. Why? The Wex (below) just won a four-year  $782,300 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop multidisciplinary “trans-institutional” curatorial research and programming with visual artists and media artists in Brazil. That’s pretty substantial amount of money, and the grant reflects not only the vibrancy of the Brazilian arts scene but also the desire of many American arts groups to catch up on what’s going on in Latin America.

And that’s a good thing.

It’s unclear whether this is a new direction for the Mellon, however. The foundation has changed a bit since music historian Don Michael Randel took over as president in mid-2006, but its website gives no indication of a broad new investment in grants like the Wexner’s.

Nor do its other recent grants: Among them are a $1.25 million award to the Duke University Libraries to endow a senior conservator; $2.4 million to Emory University and $10 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, both to support the humanities; and $172,000 to rebuild the infrastructure of the Cuban Theater Digital Archive at the University of Miami Libraries.

The Mellon website holds no clues (its museum and art conservation section remains the same), and when I asked the Wexner about it, spokeswoman Karen Simonian queried Mellon. Her “Mellon contact,” Simonian said, replied: “The Foundation works on an iterative basis with lots of grantees, usually soliciting proposals from specific institutions in any of the areas we serve across higher ed and the arts and humanities after we have gone through field-based inquiries into current needs and interests. So we have no broad calls for proposals…” in this area.

The Wexner says it was one of several museums and arts centers invited to apply for a Mellon grant last fall; Ohio State, the Wexner’s home, is internationalizing and globalizing its offerings and outlook, so this initiative fit right in.

In its press release, the Wexner elaborated a bit on how it will use the money:

The Wexner Center’s Brazil project will be shaped in large measure by establishing intensive and ongoing relationships with key Brazilian artists, cultural thinkers and practitioners, academics, critics, and institutional peers in the areas of visual arts, film/video, and arts education.

Together, these efforts will result in several manifestations, among them: an ambitious visual and media arts exhibition at the Wex in the 2014 season, related print and electronic documentation, an archival or repertory film project and series, and artist residencies for film and video artists. The center will organize scholarly convenings, as well as more accessible public lectures and seminars, to encourage transnational dialogue.

Throughout the evolution of the Brazil project, the center will seek to establish new avenues for cultural exchange, critique, and commentary, and will–as appropriate–pursue broadcast-quality dissemination of programs via streaming video, social media outlets, and other online means. At the same time, while not under the auspices of the proposed Mellon Foundation grant, the center’s performing arts department will likewise pursue projects involving Brazilian artists, companies, and institutions producing music, theater, and dance to further enrich the center’s comprehensive engagement with Brazil.

As I’ve talked with museum directors over the last year or so, many have mentioned the need to do more with contemporary art from Latin America. The Cisneros Foundation is helping, both by lending art to museums like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for its new Art of the Americas wing (here) and publishing books on Latin American artists.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, under the late Peter Marzio, also distinguished itself with the creation, ten years ago, of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas, a research institute focused on Latin American art.

I don’t believe in cookie-cutter museums — so not every museum needs to focus on Latin America. But some should, and make it one of their distinugishing characteristics. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Ohio State University

A belated happy 50th birthday to the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth.

On Jan. 24, 1961 — described recently by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as ” a frostbitten January day” — the museum opened its doors, though only 400 people came for the inauguration. Amon G. Carter Sr., a self-made millionaire who was publisher of the Star-Telegram, had gifted the city with money for the museum, which was to be free, open to all comers, and a champion of American art. (Here’s the link to that article.)

“As a youth, I was denied the advantages which go with the possession of money,” he stated in the will, according to the museum’s website. “I am endeavoring to give to those who have not had such advantages, but who aspire to the higher and finer attributes of life, those opportunities which were denied to me.” He died in 1955.

Carter had grown interested in Western art, primarily Frederick Remington and Charles M. Russell, through his friendship with Will Rogers. The museum tells more of its history here. Pictured here is a gallery during the inaugural 1961 exhibition.

It’s worth noting in this day and age that Fort Worth was lucky to have such a civic-minded collector. At one recent gathering of art world denizens, the discussion turned to the lack of this sense in certain cities today, where collectors have not aligned their interests with the city’s. Instead of helping to cultivate an environment that is favorable to the arts, these collectors have been thinking mostly about themselves.

But Amon Carter, and his heirs, created an American art treasure, not only because its collection and its ambitions have grown (have a look at highlights of its paintings collection), but also because it remains free and accessible. It’s an anchor of the Fort Worth cultural district, which also includes the Kimbell Art Museum (also free and the gift of another wealthy Texan).

The Amon Carter is celebrating all year with special exhibitions, starting with The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision, which will include Asher B. Durand’s Kindred Spirits, on loan from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. That’s followed by The Allure of Paper: Drawings and Watercolors from the Collection and John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury.

Apparently unwilling to chance the weather again, the Amon Carter plans to celebrate its birthday in August — on the 13th.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Amon Carter Museum   

Yesterday, by chance, I was with someone who works at one of the Google 17 — the museums in the Google Art Project. She said visits to the museum’s website had skyrocketed since the announcement.

Not surprisingly, I’ve also heard that other museums are clamoring to be invited in by Google. People really think GAP is a gamechanger.

Though I am not so sure, long-term, that it will be, I decided that it makes sense to share a Q and A I read the other day with Jason Brush, executive vice president for user experience at Schematic, which was Google’s partner on GAP. Schematic, according to C-Net News, “helped integrate many of the technologies that together form Google Art Project” and “took on a lot of the heavy lifting in dealing with the various museums.”

Much of C-Net reporter Daniel Terdiman’s interview, posted here, is technical, but here are a few excerpts that reveal Brush’s sensitivity about dealing with art, about what the site is not, and :

I was awestruck by the idea itself…I could just imagine a child at a public library, somewhere in the world, who might never be able to afford airfare to travel to these museums, and who might not even have access to high-quality reproductions in books, being able to wander the halls of the great museums that the site brings together.

 

…I’ve worked on projects before that were groundbreaking, for which there was a great deal of pressure to get the experience right–the site we built to broadcast the Beijing Olympics online, for example–but this was different…Partially, it was because of the restraints. It wasn’t just a matter of putting up the artwork and making it accessible. There was also a lot of pressure to make sure that we weren’t making any explicit curatorial decisions. An interface can of course say something specific in and of itself, and we worked very hard to make sure that we weren’t imposing a point of view on the display of artwork.

…one of the first issues we had to face was making sure that the site wasn’t itself a meta-museum. The museums themselves have the cultural and civic onus to present the artworks in their collections in whatever way that’s appropriate to their mission….So, the pressure stemmed from not just making sure that the site was enjoyable and easy-to-use because of it’s [sic] cultural value, but also because we needed to create a model that drew a clear distinction between the live, in-person museum-going experience–which we hope the site will encourage people to have–and the experience you get online. We were in essence creating a whole new model for viewing art, which was a great responsibility.

I couldn’t agree more.

 

As we all know, perception is reality. I don’t really think museums, as a class, are elitist institutions. A few may be, but not most. But I think some people have been saying it for so long that many others believe it without a second thought, or first-hand knowledge. A friend of mine once overheard an adult leading a group of schoolchildren toward the Metropolitan Museum, telling them “isn’t it big and a bit scary?” And then something along the lines of “rich people go there.”

Opera companies are in the same position, only worse — they do charge upwards of $100 a ticket, sometimes way upwards of $100 a ticket. Yes, I know about subsidized tickets, but only so many people can get them, and the way they are sometimes distributed leaves out people who work and can’t stand in line.

But I am off point, which is about an initiative by the Houston Grand Opera called HGOco. It was started by Anthony Freud (at right), the British-born general director who took over there in 2006 (surprising everyone who said it’s really tough to follow a local legend, in this case David Gockley, who now runs the San Francisco Opera).

Let’s start with a big number: 600,000. That’s the number of people Freud says he has reached over the last three years with HGOco, whose most innovative initiative is called “Song of Houston.” It has so far resulted in three new operas, written in a collaboration, sort of, with Houston’s ethnic communities. (There’s a taste of “To Cross the Face of the Moon/Cruzar la Cara de la Luna,” a bilingual mariachi opera, below.)

Freud laid out his management philosophy several ways in the course of my recent interview with him, saying:

• Every opera is a cultural services company.
• Opera in general, the art form, is strong, but we have to be prepared to think laterally and radically.
• We can’t exist in a hermetically sealed bubble. We have to break down barriers and engage people on their own terms, not ours.
• HGOco is a lab and a playground, an initiative to reach a very large number of people who may not normally get involved with an opera company.

There is much to be admired about those statements, and some that troubles me as well. For a start, he seems to sketch things in an us vs. them way. And the three new operas, so far, have not been fully produced on the main stage; rather, they’ve been performed in concert version or in community centers and other venues — which to me seems like a two-tier system: grand opera for the grand folks; something less for all others.

Freud disagrees, saying only a company like Houston could have produced the new works, and, “It’s not a matter of either/or, It’s both. We can do more than mainstage opera.”

Ok, I agree with that last part. I also agree with this statement: “I don’t believe in a generic approach to a generic opera company, but what we’re doing here should have relevance in every U.S. city.”

The same feeling applies to museums and other arts institutions, too. No cookie-cutter approach works, not really.  

You can read my Cultural Conversation with Freud, “Opera That Bridges the Divide,” in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal. 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Houston Grand Opera