One of the activities the Ford Foundation is engaging in as part of their celebration of 75 years is a series of forums focused on issues of social justice. The first of these, held on May 4 had an arts focus. I have been watching the videos of the sessions on the site and still have a few more to go but I wanted to reflect on what I have seen. The event utilized Cover It Live to aggregate the observations of the social media people who were present so you can review their record of the proceedings as well.

In the lunch time discussion between NEA chair Rocco Landesman and former NY Times journalist, Frank Rich, called “Roccing Out: A Lunch Conversation” (sorry, no direct link you will have to scroll down the page), they went over a number of issues, including Landesman’s now famous comments about supply of arts exceeding demand. What I found most interesting was Landesman’s discussion of his efforts to create a private-public partnership between the NEA and private foundations to better serve the arts constituencies.

I found myself wondering if the association would constrict private foundations’ vision toward that of the U.S. government since they are obviously an influential player or if the NEA’s vision would broaden to more encompass the myriad aims of the private funders. I could see the NEA funding possibly expanding as its chair goes before Congress to mention that influential foundation X was bringing Y amount to their partnership. Or it could backfire and Congress could decide it only proved there was plenty of private money out there. Though if GE and oil companies can make billions, not pay taxes and still receive subsidies, there has to be a way to successfully frame the argument.

Landesmann also discussed how he is trying to work with other departments of the federal government to get them to emphasize and use the arts in their programs. He described his efforts as being the coo-coo bird who lays his eggs in other bird’s nests for them to raise since they have more resources than he does. Two examples he used were aligning the arts with transportation projects and housing and urban development.

The other session I watched was “Sharing the Stage: Globalization and Cultural Might.” The thing that grabbed me was the discussion of how construction of arts and cultural centers were seen by countries as a symbol of having made it. Having such buildings were seen as conferring credibility as an accomplished, modern culture and society upon the country. The problem is that some countries haven’t thought about actually inhabiting the buildings with art.

Michael Kaiser of the Kennedy Center talks about traveling to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and walking around a magnificent art center located far from the population that has never really had any performances in its 15 years of existence. He mentioned another large facility being constructed in the same country where they have projected no operating costs because it will be run entirely by volunteers. Vishakha N. Desai, President of the Asia Society, mentioned that China has plans for building hundreds of museums, but when she asked the mayor of Shanghai what would be put in them, she was told they would figure that out.

The point they were making was that there was something of a misunderstanding in governments in whether the value in art resided in the buildings or the artists. There was some discussion, especially when they opened up the floor for questions and comments, about the importance of having places to exhibit and perform work as well as to train managers to properly empower and enable the work of artists.

My first reaction to this talk about the building bringing prestige was the thought that this is what comes of promoting the economic value of the arts. This came mostly as a result of thinking about all the money and resources that went into the construction. I soon realized though that what the governments really sought was not the tangible value, but to trumpet the intangible value of their country’s culture. They have world class facilities in which to feature world class artists, heavily represented by artists of their own country.

In the US we have been arguing that arts and culture are one of the things about our country that make it great and strengthen the national character. It is difficult to criticize a government who agrees with that and wants to invest huge amounts of money to draw world wide attention to that fact.

Except, of course, that the Field of Dream expectation that if you build it, the artists will come to inhabit the facility and bring life to it is somewhat erroneous. It takes some significant effort and planning to cultivate an artistic life for a facility. My strong suspicion is that the construction of these facilities didn’t involve a lot of input from artists who represented the type envisioned to perform/use the building and the facilities may not be suitable to their needs at all necessitating some immediate renovations.