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Resolve To Be More Respected in 2016

December 28, 2015

by:

Joe Patti

As I was looking back in my archives for some content to post about, I came across Dan Gioia’s 2007 commencement address at Stanford.

He acknowledges there had been a little controversy about his choice as commencement speaker due to his lack of celebrity.

If you weren’t aware he was the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003-2009, you may have proven his point.

He notes that at one time, public figures came from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines.

Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O’Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and especially Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

[…]

The same was even true of literature. I first encountered Robert Frost, John Steinbeck, Lillian Hellman, and James Baldwin on general interest TV shows. All of these people were famous to the average American—because the culture considered them important.

Gioia doesn’t entirely blame the fickle nature of the media and general public:

Most American artists, intellectuals, and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture.

It started me thinking that perhaps things have improved marginally since 2007 given that astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson has developed a profile as a public figure.

Now as we move into 2016, I was thinking that between the current thought that artists need to embrace more entrepreneurial practices and the fact that control of media and communication channels are so decentralized, it may be possible for a wider array of artists and intellectuals to realize success investing more effort increase their profile.

It may not necessarily be “themselves” that they need to put forth

Dali may have received recognition for his talent as a visual artist, but he also cultivated DALI! as a separate persona from Salvador Dali.

Similarly, there is the Lady Gaga who wears skirt steaks as a skirt who is slightly different from the Lady Gaga that sings Sinatra and duets with Tony Bennett who is different from Stefani Germanotta.

Granted, sustaining those persona takes a lot of will, energy and time and not everyone is interested in that. Nor do they necessarily need to.

For 2016 it will be enough to resolve to raise your personal profile among those who live around you. Raise awareness among those who don’t know you, let those who do, know you better.

State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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When You Hit The Sculpture, Break Right Past The Expressionists

December 23, 2015

by:

Joe Patti

I am traveling to see family for the holidays so I have a couple retrospective posts scheduled to cover my absence.

If you are traveling or just have a little time off over the holidays, maybe you might want to try something new like visiting a museum or visiting a museum you haven’t been to before.

Back in 2007 I posted an entry that contained links to posts that Tyler Cowen and Donald Pittenger had written about how to walk through an art museum.

About a 18 months ago, The Art Assignment made a video about visiting art museums.

The primary content of each is interesting, but there is some really great stuff in the comments sector of each, especially The Art Assignment video.

If you ever wanted proof that how people enjoy art is dependent upon their relationship with the idea of art and the people with whom they are experiencing it, it is all there.

Everyone has a different rules for themselves when entering a gallery, but it is clear that the social rules they set for themselves also influence their enjoyment.

One person writes that because his style and that of his significant other differ, he spends a lot of time waiting for her at the portal to the next gallery. Another person says their rule is not to accompany or wait for each other at all other than to rendezvous at an agreed upon time.

After reading all the content, I started to think that anyone who says viewing art is a passive experience is a prisoner of their own rules and expectations because there are plenty of options available. (One of the more extreme essentially advocated a zone defense of whatever you were looking at to prevent others from encroaching) May those options need to be promoted more widely.

Art(ist) Education, Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, State of the Arts

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I’m Selling Out!

December 22, 2015

by:

Joe Patti

Erm, I mean, I am featured on Goldstar’s Selling Out blog. A post with an interview they did with me went up online yesterday. I had a lot to say and I give them credit for including it all.

They contacted me with the request right after Thanksgiving so it is been hectic preparing for that, plus writing my own blog postings, doing Christmas shopping….

In addition, Barry Hessenius asked me to write a guest post about what I had learned over the course of my career for Barry’s Blog.

Keep your eyes open for it. My guess is that it will come out some time around the new year. I guess I still have a lot to say because there is only about three sentences overlap between the post I did for him and the Selling Out interview.

I will be heading off to visit family for the holidays starting tomorrow. Not to worry, I have prepared and scheduled posts to appear as normal.

Hope everyone has a great holiday season and a prosperous New Year.

General Musings

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It’s Not About Our Great Dark Ale

December 21, 2015

by:

Joe Patti

About a week ago I was at a conference that was addressing creative placemaking and revitalizing communities. Mary Cusick from TourismOhio made a presentation on the new tourism campaign that is being worked on.

As she talked about marketing the state, I was interested to see how similar the attitudes research participants expressed about Ohio were to attitudes people express about the arts.

While people were generally neutral about Ohio, having no positive or negative associations about the state in general, they did feel there was a degree of tribalism. If you aren’t plugged in to the Ohio State University culture, erm I’m sorry, THE Ohio State University culture, you feel left out. In addition to the stress on THE, there is also the O-H—I-O cheer, among other identifiers that one can invoke at any occasion over a fairly large geographic area and receive a response.

We know that people have similar feelings about the arts with language, behavior and particular dress code which feel exclusive.

Another thing that Mary Cusick noted is that nearly every travel destination ad features the beauty and majesty of their outdoor attractions with people doing outdoorsy stuff.

However, research shows that people are aspirational in their responses about what they want to do on vacation. When you ask people about their plans, they talk about outdoors activities, but when you sit them down and ask what they actually have done and what the most important goal of a vacation is, the answers are a bit different.

And by sit them down, I mean literally. The tourism office research involved talking to people from Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania in their living rooms. They showed us video excerpts of the interviews.

I had a sense that the responses on arts participation surveys may also be on the aspirational side and was a little depressed that there wasn’t funding to do deep research like TourismOhio did. (I will say that part of me suspects arts participation surveys have included that degree of deep surveying. It’s just that seeing even brief video of the process during a presentation made a deeper impression than being told 100 people were surveyed in their homes)

What was important to people when they traveled on vacation was that it was an opportunity to de-stress and connect with family and friends. These are exactly the reasons given by people surveyed about what they valued from participation in an arts or creative activity. (graphics on pages 10 & 13).

Cusick reinforced Trevor O’Donnell’s constant message about advertising focusing on the patron/participant/consumer experience when she talked about the philosophy behind the ad campaigns being developed. She said it wasn’t about the great roller coasters, microbreweries and awesome ice cream shops in the state. It is about getting scared out of your wits, sharing your darkest secrets with your best friend over a pint of dark ale, and ice cream mustaches on your kids’ faces.