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There Will Always Be A Few Successfully Operating At An Elite Level. As For The Rest?

by:

Joe Patti

Seth Godin made a post about elite vs. elitism a couple months ago. His argument is that people can operate on an elite level (i.e. Olympic athletes, surgeons, teachers, etc) but that this doesn’t automatically result in elitism.

Elitism is a barrier, where we use a label to decide who gets to contribute and who is offered dignity. A law firm that only hires from a few law schools is elitist–they have no data to confirm that these recruits are more likely to contribute than others, they’re simply artificially limiting the pool they draw from.

Opening our filters and seeking a diversity of experience undermines elitist insecurity and creates the possibility for even better solutions and connection.

[…]

The scientific method isn’t elitist, nor is a stopwatch used to record the 100 meter dash. Seeking coherent arguments, logical approaches and a contribution that leads to better outcomes isn’t elitist, in fact, it’s precisely the opposite.

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I need to make my usual observation that just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean the number you arrive at has validity to a claim you are making. Sports fans will happily speak for hours on the fact that a high scoring game or high win record doesn’t mean a team is operating at an elite level if they have been facing weak opponents.

Generally his thoughts align with a general conversation among cultural organizations in terms of removing the filters of tradition and past practice to explore other options. Similarly, there is a lot of conversation around making data driven decisions.

As Godin says, elitism often results from limiting the pool from which you draw after defining those pools as the source of the best product. That is one of the challenges arts and cultural organizations face today. There is a self-reinforcing definition of what is superior, but not a lot of evidence gathering about whether the product they offer has any perceived value in the community.

For a time during the pandemic I would see a number of videos of farriers shoeing horses. It was fascinating and somewhat satisfying to watch horses have their hooves cleaned and repaired so they could move about more comfortably. Many of these farriers are among the elite in their trade, but most people don’t keep horses these days so the market for their skills is fairly small. Fortunately, the supply of good farriers probably reflects demand.

A similar thing is happening with piano tuners. As I wrote in 2023, there is definitely an unmet need for piano tuners among arts organizations and the lack threatens performing arts organizations’ ability to host concerts. At the same time, people can’t give pianos away and many are ending up in the dump.

Much of this is due to changing lifestyles and expectations. So while it is likely that there will always be some arts and cultural organizations operating in traditional ways which will always find they are in high demand, the number of organizations are likely to dwindle if they are not responding to the changing lifestyles and expectations.

Art(ist) Education, Arts Facilities, Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Business Models, Management Philosophy, State of the Arts

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Not Creating Enough Of A Negative Impact To Be Worthwhile

by:

Joe Patti

About a year ago, we were contacted by a company proposing we enter a contract to use their reusable cup service. They would deliver the cups, retrieve them from the special collection bins, wash them, and provide us with more. We were told that since each cup could be reused up to 40 times we would be removing a lot of material from the waste stream.

Last week we were told they were dropping us as a client because we weren’t using enough of their cups. Basically, they expect us to use five times as many cups. We were told “we recognize that we are not achieving the environmental objectives we are targeting with small groups.”

Our consumption rate wasn’t any mystery to them. Before we contract with them they provided us with an estimate of how many cups we would use in a year. We actually ended up surpassing that estimate in 6-7 months so we are using more of their product than expected.

The suggestion that they weren’t achieving their environmental objectives with smaller customers does recall the argument that home based recycling isn’t really contributing to saving the environment and that these sort of changes need to be made by larger entities in order to have any impact.

We started on this service based on the recommendations of other colleagues. I wonder how many of them may be dropped by the company as well.

The cancellation of the service is disappointing because we have done quite a bit of work to educate our audiences about the use of the cups. There are signs all over the venue encouraging people to return the cups to the special bins. We have the information on lobby slide shows and pre-show informational displays.

We even tasked a specific group of volunteers to help collect the cups at the end of the evening. Not only because people would tend to throw them out after placing them inside popcorn buckets, but also because they would insist on wanting to take the cups home despite the cup company’s efforts to make them as unattractive as possible.

Essentially, we were getting to a point where we were finally creating a culture and practice with our customers and volunteers and now it is going to appear we abandoned our commitment. To the volunteers’ credit they haven’t hesitated to diligently hover near the trashcans and help people sort their refuse. They have also been good about encouraging people to return to the cups to their special bins when they are selling food and drinks. There was an immediate investment on their part.

As the title of the post says, it is strange to be judged as not having enough of a negative impact on the environment to be worth a company’s efforts to help you avoid it.

Advocacy, Arts Facilities, Working In The Arts

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Heist, Jailbreak, Ambush, Heartbreak, Revenge All In One Concerto

by:

Joe Patti

I got to see a performance of The Rose of Sonora this weekend. It is a concerto in five scenes performed by Holly Mulcahy and composed by George S. Clinton.  I had first written about it around 3 years ago. 

One of the things that piqued my interest was that the piece tells the story of a heist, jail break, ambush, and revenge carried out by a female outlaw in 19th Century Territory of Arizona and had its own narrative and images meant to accompany the performance.

I was a little disappointed that the images weren’t used as part of the performance. That is likely because the composer was there to read each part live.

The composer did an interview with Symphony of the Rockies conductor, Devin Patrick Hughes, about his career. Brief explanation of Rose on Tiktok and longer interview here.

The Rose of Sonora was the last piece performed by the Symphony of the Rockies as part of a whole night of Western themed music. The program included music from The Magnificent Seven and The Good, The Bad, The Ugly; William Tell Overture, and “Hoedown” from Rodeo.

The whole orchestra was dressed in Western themed clothes. At one point 2/3 of the violin section was wearing their bandanas over their mouths. The conductor made a production of drawing his baton from a holster.

It should be noted that the concert was occurring in Denver on the night the Great Western Stock Show started. So it was all very much in theme.

It also bears mentioning that Holly grew up in greater Denver and got paid to perform with the Symphony of the Rockies as a teenager. During the Q&A after the concert a young violinist asked how Holly remained so calm and poised. Holly told her she would let us know in 20 years because not only did she perform before her friends and family, many of her teachers and mentors were in the audience that night so she felt a lot of pressure.

I overheard a lot of positive comments from people around me during Holly’s performance that weren’t made during the rest of the night so the piece seemed well-received.  During the Q&A I really wished there were a way to have gotten up and ask attendees what their thoughts were on having a bit of narration between movements since that doesn’t generally happen during orchestra performances.

The conductor had made some comments at the beginning of the evening suggesting Rose of Sonora would provide an opportunity to create a story in our minds. With the one-two sentence prompts provided at the start of each chapter, I wonder how vividly the story unfolded in each person’s mind’s eye as they listened to the music.

About a year ago Holly performed the Rose of Sonora on the other side of the state in Grand Junction, CO and apparently word of mouth saw a line around the block for the second night of performances.

As I drove home Saturday, I was wondering if that was a reaction to the quality of the piece or that the imagery/narration and topic made the experience accessible. Basically, was the audience for the second day aficionados or people who really want to try the orchestra experience but were intimidated and heard a great deal of the mystery was removed in this piece?

Thinking back to the post I made on Monday about storytelling notes next to visual art works helping people focus better on the work before them, would providing similar storytelling prompts with orchestra pieces help people enjoy the music more if they are able to provide their own mental video accompaniment? Many symphonies have started using video in conjunction with performances. But I wonder if people will feel the music is more relatable if they are creating their own narrative in response to an evocative prompt.

Art(ist) Education, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Working In The Arts

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Should You Read The Gallery Labels?

by:

Joe Patti

As a supplement to yesterday’s post regarding how children interact with museum labels, there was a second short piece on The Conversation website about whether it is important to read the labels next to artworks.

Noor Gillani, Digital Culture Editor, at The Conversation interviewed five experts at different Australian universities to get their take. Three of the five said it wasn’t important.

Interestingly, two of the responds cited label content focused on children.

Kit Messham-Muir, a professor at Curtin University voted No, but said:

Curators can spend many hours writing the “why”. Some explanations are great, some are not. Those aimed at kids are usually better. Either way, I’d argue you have all the information you need from the who, what and when.

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Naomi Zouwer, at the University of Canberra, voted Yes and wrote primarily with children in mind. She cited different eye motion studies of how adults and children interact with visual art works than I wrote about yesterday.

When an artwork does grab a kid’s attention, they’ll usually want to know more about it. And my experience shows they’ll likely want to know what it’s about more than other details such as the medium or when it was created (unless it’s really, really old, in which case there’s a “wow” factor).

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However, it’s not one size fits all. My advice is to ask the kid what they want to know and approach it that way. While the label may not answer all their questions, it might help start a different conversation. That’s the great thing about art: it creates opportunities for deeper thinking.

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Other experts focused on the capacity of people to understand the labels as the basis for their response. How long visitors typically engage with a work and the label before moving on factored into their opinion on the value of labels.

Chari Larsson at Griffith University, voted Yes and put the responsibility on the museum to provide meaningful content

Labels should be able to “speak” to a broad range of audiences: from a casual and curious visitor through to a subject-matter expert. Turgid “art jargon” is notoriously difficult to decipher and can negatively impact the visitor’s experience. This is a breach in the museum’s responsibility to their audiences.

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Cherine Fahd at University of Technology Sydney, voted No for similar reasons. Poorly written labels get in the way of understanding the work in front of the visitor. She encourages people to look at the art before the label.

Many artists want viewers to bring themselves to the work, to freely interpret and be active participants. The problem is we aren’t taught how to do that with art. We expect meaning to be handed over and the didactic label sets up this expectation.

Perhaps this is an Australian condition, wherein art is often dismissed as impenetrable, or something to grow out of, or something a “five year old could have made”.

Source

Art(ist) Education, Arts Facilities, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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