The people at Createquity have put together a great piece on different ways of thinking about what has surely become the hot discussion topic in the art world: diversity. They reveal the depth and complexity of the issue, and provide many links worth pursuing. A good read.
But still…
Go ahead and talk about diversity all you want. But in the end, the representatives of the elite art world, writing for a national newspaper, will still say:
But let’s be serious. You are supposed to like this art, not that art. This meaning ‘the inherited canon [sic] of paintings, sculpture, music, dance or theater.’ And if you don’t, even if you have accomplished a thing or three in your two terms as President of the United States (but not, you know, for ‘the arts’), well, I won’t say we are mad at you. Just ‘disappointed.’
Where are we now? Right where we started.
How could we be anywhere but where we started? Which political party is advocating that the USA have a comprehensive system of public arts funding like EVERY other developed country in the world has long had?
As with most forms of human endeavor, funding systems form the foundation and ethos of how those endeavors develop. It is thus notable that the article by Ian Moss you link to barely mentions public funding at all. We want equity while remaining within the strictures of inherently inequitable systems.
For me, the more pressing question is why even people like Moss have trouble thinking outside the box of a plutocratic system of funding – especially when it is so obviously dysfunctional and used only by the USA? How does this blinkered view and self-censorship become so strong?