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The NEA At 60, Through The Eyes Of Past Chairs

October 6, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Last week, the Arts Management program at American University released a series of video interviews with the former chairs of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) on the occasion of the NEA’s 60th anniversary.

These chairs are Jane Alexander, Bill Ivey, Dana Gioia, Jane Chu, Rocco Landesman, Maria Rosario Jackson. While the video says they interviewed seven chairs, only six videos are available. Perhaps Mary Anne Carter was interviewed but wasn’t videotaped.

There is a summary video of some of each of their thoughts which is interesting to watch.

There are also longer individual video interviews with each that I have linked to each name above. I haven’t listened to all of them as of this posting time, but it is interesting to see what each valued and brought to the job.

Jane Chu talked about how her father died when she was 9 years old and she didn’t have the words at that age to express what she was feeling, but that art provided her with an outlet. A fair bit of her focus was on the importance of the arts for social cohesion and self-expression. She cited some examples of how recognition of creative intelligence reveals aspects of people that measures of academic intelligence don’t.

Dana Gioia was apparently the first chair who set a goal to have at least one grant in every Congressional district. He said that given every district has about three-quarters of a million people in it, there must be at least one organization in there that was doing something worthy of a grant. He said this changed the relationship of the NEA with Congress and the people of many districts.

Though he also relates an anecdote where he essentially strong armed a Congressman into attending an advocacy meeting where the representative realized a lot of his campaign donors were passionate about the arts. He makes the point that legislators’ view of things is filtered through their staff so often direct interaction and advocacy is necessary.

Jane Alexander faced something of a similar situation when she was appointed in 1993 during a big uproar over the types of work the NEA was supporting. She said she realized she needed to better communicate the work of the NEA. So she visited over 200 communities soon after she was appointed. She said once people understood that NEA funds were supporting programs in their communities that they and their families valued, they began to advocate for continued support to their representatives and senators. Like Jane Chu she cited meeting people for whom the arts provided an outlet for expression during troubled times in their lives.

Rocco Landesman seemed relatively optimistic about the NEA’s future existence. Though he outright criticized the current politicization of the NEA where some of the other chairs were a little more circumspect.

Advocacy, Art(ist) Education, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity, Government Relations, Leadership

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Casino Developers Betting On Museums

September 30, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Hyperallergic had a story about a couple casino developers who offered to build museums as part of a bid open some casinos in NYC.

According to the story, one would have developed a $15 million civil rights museum and the other “….included a museum dedicated to freedom and democracy, featuring works by international artists as well as pieces of the Berlin Wall.”

Both proposals, which were among about a dozen others, failed to pass review by two committees on the basis “…. staunch neighborhood opposition, increased traffic congestion, and negative effects on quality of life in their neighborhoods. “

Many of those submitting proposals also promised to build things like schools, concert venues, affordable housing, and hotels.

Apparently, the proposed museums weren’t really an enticing feature and didn’t elicit much conversation among committee members. Though New Yorkers are likely a little jaded by the plethora of museums and galleries available to them. In other communities the museums might have been more compelling elements.

A competing developer suggested

“…that the inclusion of a cultural institution as an amenity was merely a cynical ploy for public approval, rather than a sincere effort to improve communities.

Source

This said, the group that proposed the civil rights museum said they intended to move ahead with the project which they claimed had many supporters. Hyperallergic noted they didn’t comment on the site of the museum and who those supporters might be.

One member of the committee reviewing the proposals was concerned about the casinos competing with other cultural icons.

He ultimately opposed the proposal because he feared the resort would detract from the Broadway theater industry, and because he did not trust the applicant to keep promises for future housing units.

Source

A former commissioner of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs said that pairing casinos with cultural organizations wasn’t an absurd idea, but did warn that the association may mar the image of the museum.

“Museums have to be cautious about what this does to their reputation,” Finkelpearl said, predicting that cultural institutions “will come under all kinds of fire if they’re seen as the group that opened the door for this use that people don’t want in the neighborhood.”

Source

Artsjournal.com just linked to a piece on Artnet discussing this very topic of how corporate sponsorship can be a fraught topic for museums.

“There is no clear line as to what is considered good money versus bad money when it comes to corporate sponsorship,” said Leslie Ramos, co-founder of art philanthropy advisory firm The Twentieth, …“How long is a piece of string? What is considered a potentially good company and reputable company today is not necessarily going to be considered a good company in 10 or 20 years time.”

Source

Arts Facilities, Business Models, Government Relations

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Do Ghost Lights Comfort Or Scare Ghosts?

September 29, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

I have been holding an article in reserve for quite awhile as I waited for the Halloween season to roll around. 10 years ago this week Atlas Obscura had an article about why theaters place ghost lights on stage between performances.

I had always heard the superstitious reasoning that it either placated or suppressed the ghosts in the building to keep them from creating mischief in the dark theater. As a practical reason I had heard it marked the edge of the stage so people wouldn’t fall off into the pit or on to the floor.

This latter one always seemed the best explanation given that light switches are often not placed in convenient locations in theaters to prevent people from accidentally turning them on during a performance. Thus one is often obliged to wander around a little bit in the dark to get to the switches.

The article also mentions related reasons like a burglar snuck in to rob a theater, fell off the stage, broke his leg and won a big lawsuit. I have also heard the same story about private homes. Kinda makes burglary sound like a win-win proposition. You make money if you get away with the goods or if you fall through the skylight and get caught.

There is also a claim that the Actors Equity union list a requirement for the light to be placed on stage in their contracts. Though there is no indication such a rule has ever existed.

One explanation I found intriguing with a fair degree of possible credibility is that when theaters used gas to provide stage lighting, there was always a low glow of the footlights along the edge of the stage which were never fully extinguished so that pressure didn’t build up in the gas lines.

I was wondering if anyone had heard any additional interesting folklore about the ghost light.

Arts Facilities, General Musings

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Economist View Of The Conflicting Tensions In Arts And Culture

September 23, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Economist Tyler Cowen was interviewed by his colleague Alex Taborrak about Cowen’s 1998 book, In Praise of Commercial Culture . (Transcript) Apparently this was the book that put Cowen on the map and garnered him recognition.

Cowen talks about a lot of the debates around culture and art that still continue today.

One of the first things that caught my attention was the question of doing art which is challenging and hones the artist craft vs. doing it for commercial success which I mentioned in a post about Seth Godin’s thoughts about aligning organizational practice with the values it espouses.

Cowen said those concepts weren’t considered mutually exclusive by classical musicians and artists.

If you read the letters of Mozart or Beethoven, they’re obsessed with money. They seem to be quite good bargainers. They always want more money. You might think they’re greedy, but also money is a means toward realizing your art. How good a piano can I buy or how good an orchestra can I work with, or can I travel to give a concert in Prague or Vienna?

The more an artist cares about art in many situations, the more they’re going to care about money. It’s a very simple point. At the time or even still, you didn’t hear it much. It’s always money versus art rather than you can care about money as a means to your art.

Source

In another interesting segment of their conversation, Cowen says that governments often facilitate the creation of great art at the inception of their efforts before things either become too politicized or made mediocre by the need to please the consensus.

All this came to a head in the 1990s, disputes over what the National Endowment for the Arts in America was funding. Some of it, of course, was obscene. Some of it was obscene and pretty good. Some of it was obscene and terrible.

What ended up happening is the whole process got bureaucratized. The NEA ended up afraid to make highly controversial grants. They spend more on overhead. They send more around to the states. Now, it’s much more boring. It seems obvious in retrospect. The NEA did a much better job in the 1960s, right after it was founded, when it was just a bunch of smart people sitting around a table saying, “Let’s send some money to this person,” and then they’d just do it, basically.

[…]

There are plenty of good cases where government does good things in the arts, often in the early stages of some process before it’s too politicized. I think some critics overlook that or don’t want to admit it.

Source

The whole interview is a little over an hour and covers other topics like: great art needing great audiences; artist compensation; more discussion about pursuit of art vs. creating for the market; group consumption of art is bad, you want to appeal to individual; the fact that people having greater wealth means niche artists and shows can receive support by appealing to individuals, but at the cost of fragmentation of shared culture; and the usual debate about whether modern art sucks.

It is either interesting or depressing that it is often difficult to determine whether their conversation is about the state of things today or what Cowen was observing about culture the late 1990s. It sort of indicates we are struggling with the same questions we were 25 years ago and haven’t arrived at the answers we need to move us forward.

Just the same, it is gratifying to have economists discussing the conflicting interests and views that exist in the arts and culture sector. It is something of a validation that these are real topics for consideration and not issues that have been manufactured internally.