Things Are The Same All Over

by:

Joe Patti

Two articles shared the same webpage over a Artsjournal.com today. The first is one talking about Pittsburgh Ballet’s decision to perform to recorded music to save money. The decision was made to preserve the ballet’s budget. They aren’t the first ballet company to go this route and according to the article, they probably won’t be the last.

The move has Drew McManus worried that this is not only a harbinger of the rise of recorded accompaniment, but that mission statements will be used to justify gutting artistic value for economic reasons.

Which leads me to the second article I mentioned earlier. It seems our brethern in Australia are also facing the necessity of making A Better Case for the Arts, as discussed on Artsjournal.com earlier this year in response to a recent Rand report. (I have discussed this before.)

An excerpt from a speech Prof. David Throsby made in the last couple days was printed in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Throsby’s speech sounds much the same as the discussion on Artsjournal.com and the points the Rand report makes:

More and more do arts organisations feel they have to demonstrate their financial rather than their artistic prowess as a means of obtaining funds to support their existence. Arts festivals big and small commission economic impact studies to trumpet their success in creating employment, raising local incomes and encouraging tourism; understanding their cultural impacts often seems to take second place.

Actually, he cites the Rand report right after he cites a similar report made by a British policy group, Demos, titled Capturing Cultural Value.

…John Holden, takes up these arguments, writing that “the value of culture cannot be expressed only with statistics. Audience numbers give us a poor picture of how culture enriches us.” He goes on to argue for a reshaping of the way in which public funding of culture is undertaken. He suggests the need for a language capable of reflecting, recognising and capturing the full range of values expressed through culture, drawing on ideas from anthropology, environmentalism and the debate about “public value” in the field of public sector management.

I wouldn’t be surprised if similar articles started to appear in Germany, France, Spain, et.al. (Or perhaps it is the English speakers’ epidemic.) Looks like everyone is facing the same dilemmia about how to resolve artistic sensibilities with capitalist ones at about the same time.

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Author
Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice.

I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group (details).

My most recent role is as Theater Manager at the Rialto in Loveland, CO.

Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

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