{"id":1808,"date":"2020-07-14T13:38:28","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T17:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=1808"},"modified":"2020-07-14T13:38:33","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T17:38:33","slug":"the-arts-in-america-is-the-pandemic-a-perfect-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2020\/07\/the-arts-in-america-is-the-pandemic-a-perfect-storm.html","title":{"rendered":"The Arts in America &#8212; Is the Pandemic a Perfect Storm?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eHRCgfFpP88?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1987, my&nbsp;<em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/josephhorowitz.com\/content.asp?elemento_id=18\">Understanding Toscanini<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em>was the most discussed, most reviled book about classical music to have appeared in recent memory. Its subtitle was \u201cHow He Became an American Culture-God and Helped Create a New Audience for Old Music.\u201d I used Arturo Toscanini &#8212; for decades, the most famous and influential classical musician in the US, hailed as a \u201cpriest of culture\u201d and \u201cprophet of enlightenment\u201d \u2013 as an illustration and metaphor for the post-World War I failure to generate a distinctively \u201cAmerican\u201d classical music. To this day, American orchestras mainly program European symphonies. American opera companies mainly program European operas. My Cassandra warning was that the United States had proudly acquired a musical high culture built on sand.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many found my warning risible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eighteen years later, my&nbsp;<em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/josephhorowitz.com\/content.asp?elemento_id=13\">Classical Music in America: A History of its <\/a>Rise and<\/strong> <strong>Fall<\/strong><\/em>, with warnings even more dire, provoked mere ripples of vociferous dissent \u2013 including oppositional harangues from within the American symphonic community. This reception made my point: between 1987 and 2005, the American audience for serious books about classical music had diminished exponentially. And American orchestras, with aging templates and aging European repertoires, were still unwilling or unable to innovate.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After that, our Western cultural inheritance came under general attack as elitist, sexist, and racist. The precipitous marginalization of American classical music I had long predicted accelerated at a pace that took even me by surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then came the pandemic \u2013 a perfect storm. At a moment when culture could vitally contribute to national pride and resilience, the arts are newly challenged financially: concert halls and museums are closed; ticket revenues are nil. The reverberations, internationally, disclose a&nbsp;&nbsp;sudden, naked disparity in the role of long-inherited culture as a component of the national experience in the US compared to attitudes abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All this was the topic of a recent trans-Atlantic zoom chat sponsored by PostClassical Ensemble and The American Interest. If that sounds important, please consider spending eighty minutes watching and listening to what was said. Here is the<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/eHRCgfFpP88\"> link.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Days before our chat, the British government announced a $2 billion infusion into the arts sector. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: \u201cThe UK\u2019s cultural industry is the beating heart of this country.\u201d Months before, governments on the European continent had moved decisively to buttress their signature cultural institutions.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the US, the silence remains deafening. When the UK government response initially proved sluggish, warnings from Sir Simon Rattle, music director of the London Symphony, and Sir Nicholas Kenyon, Managing Director of the Barbican Center, were heard and heeded. In Washington, nothing remotely resembling a Culture Ministry exists to listen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Traditionally, Americans have believed that the arts should pay for themselves. In practice, this has meant (in contradistinction to Europe) heavy reliance on private donations, supplemented by box office and by gifts from foundations and corporations. But the charitable foundations that once supported classical music \u2013 Ford, Rockefeller, Mellon, and Knight, among others \u2013 have given up on orchestras in particular. There are some good reasons for that, and some not so good reasons. In the opinion of Jesse Rosen of the League of American Orchestras, the new emphasis on inclusivity and diversity is unlikely to allow an emergency round of symphonic&nbsp;&nbsp;grants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As for government support: Washington has twice undertaken a policy of massive arts subsidies. The first, during the Depression, was initiated by the New Deal and subsidized American artists at home. The second, during the Cold War, was initiated by the CIA and State Department and sent American performers abroad. The pandemic \u2013 a third such crisis \u2013 will according to Rosen not inspire a third such response. In our chat he said that the notion of an activist central government serving \u201cthe public good\u201d has been \u201cseriously eroded and continues to be eroded.\u201d A federal infusion of arts subsidies comparable to the New Deal\u2019s WPA, or to European initiatives today, seems to Rosen \u201ccompletely off the table. This is deeply unfortunate, but by no means surprising.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rosen also points out that tax code changes enacted in 2017 reduce incentives for private giving. He might have added that new wealth is less disposed to sponsor the arts than disappearing old wealth.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The New Deal historian David Woolner, in our chat, emphasized that FDR\u2019s notion of the arts was aggressively democratic, that the WPA and kindred agencies regarded the arts as a \u201ccultural right\u201d for all Americans. \u201cThe whole idea was to create American art,\u201d to \u201cintegrate art into the community.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As I proceeded to remark, this was a clear instance of a guided federal policy trumping free enterprise. The interwar \u201cmusic appreciation\u201d movement, called by Virgil Thomson \u201cthe music appreciation racket,\u201d was an entrepreneurial commercial initiative. Its most conspicuous leader, David Sarnoff of NBC and RCA, was a genuine visionary. But his vision was parochial: great music, for Sarnoff, meant dead European masters. It took Roosevelt, and such federal art initiatives as Pare Lorentz\u2019s classic documentary films\u00a0<em>The Plow that Broke the Plains<\/em> and\u00a0<em>The River,<\/em> to creatively celebrate America and American achievement. In the long view, I suggested, it proved too little too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(In the 1930s, Sarnoff and William Paley of CBS were instrumental in staving off an \u201cAmerican BBC\u201d that would likely have nurtured a more progressive American arts audience than the NBC\/RCA instructional bibles and recordings. Both Sarnoff and Paley were succeeded by network executives less invested in culture and education \u2013 a little-known story I tell in&nbsp;<em>Understanding Toscanini<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our chat, hosted by the historian Richard Aldous, concluded with an excerpt from PostClassical Ensemble\u2019s Naxos DVD presenting\u00a0<em>The Plow that Broke the Plains<\/em> with Virgil Thomson\u2019s score newly recorded by PCE led by Angel Gil-Ordonez: the film\u2019s ending, for which Thomson superimposes a divine tango on a parade of sad cars fleeing the dustbowl. \u201cThere you go, Joe,\u201d quipped Nick Kenyon. \u201cIt ends in the major!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so it might, if \u2013 as some of our panelists predicted \u2013 the pandemic will paradoxically ignite new thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/postclassical.com\/performances\/postclassical-more-than-music\/\">Here<\/a><\/strong> is PCE\u2019s More than Music film \u201cFDR\u2019s New Deal and the Arts:&nbsp;<em>The Plow that Broke the Plains<\/em> and&nbsp;<em>The River<\/em>\u2013 what can they teach us today?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And here\u2019s an index to the entire 80-minute conversation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:38 \u2013 JOE HOROWITZ (Executive Producer, PostClassical Ensemble; author of 10 books about the American musical experience):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Plow that Broke the Plains<\/em> (1936) and\u00a0<em>The River<\/em> (1938) are classic documentary films exemplifying government-sponsored artistic endeavor during the New Deal, in response to the Great Depression. How will governments support the arts in response to the pandemic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4:00 \u2013 JESSE ROSEN (President of the American Symphony Orchestra League):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Massive federal support for the arts during the pandemic \u201cis completely off the table.\u201d The need to rely instead on the private sector is \u201cdeeply unfortunate but not surprising.\u201d Related federal initiatives incude PPP loans, supplemental unemployment insurance. Meanwhile, the foundation community believes \u201corchestras have failed to adapt\u201d to changing demographics; \u201cthey painted themselves into a corner,\u201d were \u201cextremely slow to acknowledge what was going on.\u201d But there are \u201csome promising signs.\u201d \u201cAn intense period of learning\u201d has been engendered by the pandemic and fraught race relations. If not \u201coptimistic,\u201d Rosen is \u201chopeful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>22:16 \u2013 SIR NICHOLAS KENYON (Managing Director of London\u2019s Barbican Center, formerly Director of the BBC Proms):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The pandemic has powered \u201csome real soul-searching about what orchestras are there for.\u201d \u201cCivic engagement\u201d will matter more. International travel will matter less. Their motto might be: \u201cWe will be back, but we will be different.\u201d The recent UK arts bail-out \u201cwill get us through to the next stage,\u201d but is not a long-range plan. \u201cWe woke up in time\u201d but need \u201ca whole new model\u201d for the arts and their civic role. Before Sir Simon Rattle and others rang the alarm, the government\u2019s pandemic agenda had ignored the arts even though \u201cover 70 per cent of visitors to London\u201d say they come primarily for cultural fare, to which other economic props \u2013 e.g., restaurants \u2013 are attached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32:16 \u2013 ETTORE VOLONTIERI (Switzerland-based artists\u2019 manager whose clients include Gianandrea Noseda):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The tradition of major public funding for arts institutions remains intact in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland. Unlike the UK, these countries responded to the pandemic with \u201cfirm and clear measures [of arts support] from the very beginning,\u201d mainly in the form for subsidizing salaries even when artists are not working. In Austria, the Vienna Philharmonic is already resuming major concerts with 100 players onstage. The Salzburg Festival is on track to open August 1, albeit with socially distanced audiences. Because the Vienna Philharmonic is self-governing, the musicians can take responsibility for their own affairs \u2013 and the risk is theirs as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>44:05 \u2013 ANGEL GIL-ORDONEZ (Music Director of PostClassical Ensemble, formerly Associate Conductor of the National Orchestra of Spain):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Government support is absolutely vital \u2013 but it matters who is in charge and what criteria are applied. Similarly, individual philanthropy \u2013 not part of the European model \u2013 is indispensable. A \u201chybrid model\u201d would be ideal. Washington needs to be \u201cmuch more committed to culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>47:13 \u2013 JOE HOROWITZ:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In response to the pandemic, PostClassical Ensemble has crafted a distinctive response \u2013&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/postclassical.com\/performances\/postclassical-more-than-music\/\"><strong>More than Music<\/strong>. <\/a>We are not streaming concerts, but creating films in which past performances and recordings are embedded. This comes easily to PCE, because all our concerts are thematic \u2013 they tell stories. And our films will also be used in remote classroom instruction, e.g. at Howard University.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>48:58 &#8212; Sampling the most recent PCE film, \u201cFDR\u2019s New Deal and the Arts\u201d: the opening sequence of&nbsp;<em>The River<\/em>, with the soundtrack freshly recorded by PCE conducted by Gil-Ordonez. James Joyce praised this New Deal film for featuring \u201cthe most beautiful English language prose\u201d he had encountered in a decade. It won a first prize at the 1938 Venice International Film Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>52:05 \u2013 NEIL LERNER (film-music historian, Davidson College):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And yet the US Film Service was terminated in 1940, opposed by Congress and Hollywood. \u201cI marvel that it happened at all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>57:05 \u2013 DAVID WOOLNER (New Deal historian, Roosevelt University)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The creativity of the New Deal was something new in American government, predicated on the notion that \u201cgovernment has a responsibility to support the public good.\u201d Roosevelt envisioned a program of New Deal arts subsidies in response to a suggestion by the artist George Biddle, who cited the Mexican muralists of the twenties. Roosevelt realized the New Deal could propagate its social values via artistic endeavor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>59:58 \u2013 JOE HOROWITZ<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Classical music in America was \u201cbuilt on sand.\u201d Today, the arts remain a vital part of the national experience in European nations. In America, the place of the arts is threatened as never before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:02:12 \u2013 DONATO CABRERA (Music Director, the California Symphony and Las Vegas Philharmonic):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re all re-imagining a different path forward.\u201d By \u201creally engaging with the community,\u201d the California Symphony has realized increased subscription sales for the last for years. It also maintains a bi-lingual website because 35 per cent of the population of Contra Costa County is Hispanic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:06:07 \u2013 DELTA DAVID GIER (Music Director, South Dakota Symphony):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because of community engagement initiatives like the Lakota Music Project, the South Dakota Symphony is \u201cahead of the game.\u201d \u201cThe community is stepping up\u201d &#8212; SDSO has raised over $500,000 more than a year ago. The US is the only country in which Gier encounters no Ministry of Culture \u2013 \u201cI can\u2019t even get US funding for American culture abroad.\u201d \u201cThe gap has always been there \u2013 Americans are anti-elitist at our core. . . . The vast majority of Americans will bristle at the notion that there might be something higher or better than something else. . . . It is a hard road to hoe.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:12:03 \u2013 DAVID WOOLNER<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The New Deal challenged notions of elite art. To FDR, \u201cart belonged to the people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:15:23 \u2013 JOSEPH HOROWITZ<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The arts were both subsidized and guided during the New Deal \u2013 an improvement over commercialized \u201cmusic appreciation.\u201d \u201cA clear case of the government not only being generous, but enlightened.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:18:48 \u2013 The closing sequence from&nbsp;<em>The Plow that Broke the Plains<\/em>(1936), with PCE led by Angel Gil-Ordonez.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1987, my&nbsp;Understanding Toscanini&nbsp;was the most discussed, most reviled book about classical music to have appeared in recent memory. Its subtitle was \u201cHow He Became an American Culture-God and Helped Create a New Audience for Old Music.\u201d I used Arturo Toscanini &#8212; for decades, the most famous and influential classical musician in the US, hailed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-ta","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1808"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1814,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808\/revisions\/1814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}