I am writing a book about The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts. My first diary entries are here and here. How did I come to be writing on this topic? Let’s go way back…
In high school I was one of the band room kids: French horn in band, bass in jazz band, chamber choir, musical theatre, rock and roll on the side, and the minimal amount of academic subjects I could get away with. My music teacher, Mr Burritt, remains the most influential teacher in my life. And with that, I applied to the university music school, in the hopes of myself becoming a high school music teacher. Passed the audition, and began my undergraduate career as a voice major.
Did not last a week. I realized in the very first days of classes that I was simply not going to be cut out for the rigors of that life. And so I quickly made the move into general arts and sciences, reckoning I could figure out a major later (parenting note: I have made clear to my own children that changing majors is perfectly cool).
In my second year I signed up for Econ 101 (more on that below…). Although my father worked his entire career in a bank, I didn’t really know what the subject was about. But my friends had taken it and said it was interesting. And so I stuck with it, through BA, then MA, then PhD. My supervisor was also very influential, and is now a leading scholar on happiness around the world.
My fields of specialization were labour and public finance, and those were my early teaching and research areas. I was working in the Econ department at the University of Regina, in Saskatchewan, and one day there was a ceremony at which the university chamber choir was performing. I said to the colleague next to me they sounded very good, and he made a point of introducing me to the conductor. The choir, as so often happens, was short of tenors. And after an audition, I was back in the music world.
I got to know the faculty in the music department, and it came to pass, due to a sabbatical leave, that they needed an interim department chair for a semester. They didn’t have anyone on staff readily available, and so I got a phone call, maybe a week or two in advance, from the dean asking if I could do it. And so now I was really back in the music world.
Well, the position of dean of the school of fine arts (which included music) came open, and I was nominated for that. I was still young, and was quite honored to make the short list. In the interview I was asked by the VP of Research: but how will you continue to establish a research career in economics while being dean in an art school? I had a fast, and, to be honest, rather vague answer: there are really interesting economic questions in the arts, and that is where my research focus would be.
To my great surprise, I was offered the job. I kept my promise, and since that interview and appointment, in 1995, my scholarship has been in the economics, policy, and management of the arts. I’ve not regretted it for even a second.
There were two sorts of reactions when it was announced that an economist with no deep background in the arts had been made dean of the school of fine arts. And they are telling.
One reaction was positive: this will be really helpful, as the arts, so often treated as a frill, underfunded, will now have an economist who will be able to persuasively make the case for the economic impact of the arts. On this count, I have been a terrible disappointment.
The second reaction, this from a lot of students, was that beyond there being a problem of a dean without scholarly or artistic background in any of their disciplines, even worse it was an economist. A professor of chemistry or linguistics or Roman law would be bad enough, but an economist brings a particular mindset, a cynic knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing, who would see commercial success as the only kind of success.
How to ease their fears? I’m not sure I ever did. I was dean during a time of great fiscal austerity throughout the province and our public university, and so every budget cut was met with “you see?”
So what would I say now? This is tricky. There are different ways of doing economics, even within what we could call the “mainstream” (which is where I swim). Noah Smith came up with, or at least popularized, the term Econ 101ism, which treats most every economic issue as a simple one of supply and demand curves, competitive markets, and minimal “market failures” (I will be dealing with market failures extensively in my chapter on the economics of arts funding). He calls it 101ism because it is the economic model generally covered in the first few weeks of an introductory course before moving on to all the various things that make our world complicated, including the notion that there are many aspects of our world that even the most sophisticated economics will not adequately explain.
And so, former arts students (no hard feelings – and I still have works you made in my home and I cherish them!) I say I am not a 101ist. I’m not even a 401ist or 701ist, because while I think economic models can tell us something interesting about the arts, arts policy, and why government support of the arts is a good thing, I don’t think economics is the only way to look at this. That’s why my book will have but one chapter devoted to economics, and all the rest of the chapters to other ways of seeing the world.
But there is that one chapter, on which I’m working out the best way to explain what value economics can bring, and to explain its moral underpinnings, and its limitations.
That’s my next entry… here.
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