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Intrinsic Value of the Arts

Return To The Valley of Intrinsic Impact

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about the important thoughts Carter Gillies had about the concept of the intrinsic value of the arts.

In light of that, I wanted to look back at where the idea of intrinsic value of the arts all began. Well, at least for me.

The first attempt to measure the intrinsic value of the arts I was aware of was a study by WolfBrown on behalf of the Major University Presenters consortium.  I wrote about WolfBrown’s presentation of the study results, Assessing the Intrinsic Impacts of a Live Performance at the Arts Presenters conference back in 2008.

In writing about the report at that time, I related the concerns expressed by then president of Arts Presenters, Lisa Booth,

And while she was glad that there was a new metric of success being developed that wasn’t based in dollars or butts in seats, she was also concerned that in the eagerness to justify the value of the arts in some quantifiable way, the arts community was trying to measure what can not be measured.

This last bit was very interesting to me because Lisa Booth seemed to recognize the inevitable if these measures became widely used. If foundations and governments start basing their funding on the intrinsic value a performance has for a community, arts organizations will probably try to measure everything imaginable to show all the levels on which a performance meets funding agendas. Just as the arts aren’t well served by showing economic impact, they probably will be equally ill-advised to create numeric values for changes in things like self-actualization, captivation, social comfort level and questions raised.

I am not sure if it is fortunate or unfortunate that funders aren’t focused on improvements in intrinsic value measures.

If you want a quick primer of WolfBrown’s process and how they define things like readiness to receive, self-actualization, captivation and social comfort level, you can take a look at the website they have created for the intrinsic impact portion of their consultant work. (It looks like they have refined some of their terminology in the last 8 years.)

In terms of whether one can accurately assess any of these things so that it results in a meaningful measure of intrinsic impact, I don’t know. Even if it does, it is likely to lack the relevance to policy makers and others who are not involved and invested in the arts that Carter talks about.

What I do think their process does is get closer to bridging the communication gap between why arts people like the arts and those who don’t see any value in the arts. When you are having conversations with people where you are paying attention to things like Emotional Resonance, Captivation, Intellectual Stimulation and Social Bonding, you can start to find common language that communicates value beyond economic stimulus and cognitive development.

Do You Love Opera For It’s Economic Impact?

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In addition to responding to comments he makes on the blog, I have had some email exchanges with artist Carter Gillies. Many times in the course of our correspondence, he will say “I think we are talking about the same thing, just in different words.” I am not always sure that we are, but I often get the impression he is operating a few steps ahead of me.

That feeling of disconnect is actually a central feature of a guest post he wrote nearly a month ago for Diane Ragsdale’s Jumper blog.

Since it was a long piece, I bookmarked it for later reading. I am somewhat embarrassed it has taken me close to a month to read it, but I encourage everyone to do so, even if it means coming back to your bookmark a couple months hence. Having read it, a lot of what he was trying to get at in our correspondence became clearer to me.

What Carter does is take a really deep look into the way we define the value of the arts. In doing so, he bolsters the argument that we should avoid talking about the value of the arts in relation to economic, social, educational, developmental etc., benefits.

To heavily summarize what he says, he notes that people in the arts have a clear sense of the value of the arts. People who are not aware of this value and even perceive the arts as valueless, do not share the same language and metrics for evaluating the arts. Communicating the value is therefore as difficult as the challenge of describing a color to a person who in unable to perceive that color. (my emphasis)

The way we mostly talk to these people is we have found that our ends, the things we value in themselves, can be the means to their own ends. They value the economy? Well, the arts are good for the economy! They think that cognitive development is important? Well, the arts are good for cognitive development! We make our own ends the means to their ends.

But this never teaches them why we value the arts. It is not a conversation that discusses the arts the way we feel about them. Its not a picture of the intrinsic value of the arts, because in talking about instrumentality we always make the arts subservient. That’s never only what they are to us. Sometimes we just have to make the case for a lesser value as the expedient means to secure funding or policy decisions. It’s better than not making any sense at all.

I don’t wake up excited to go to work to stimulate the economy. I am not eager to go to a museum opening so I can have my cognitive abilities developed. In this context, it almost sounds ridiculous.

This illustrates the disconnect between shared metrics and terminology. As an arts person, I can understand the argument that I need to pay taxes to help stimulate the economy and contribute to the cognitive development of others, but I can’t convince the government to provide funding for the arts based on why I value the arts. I get them, but they don’t get me. I need to talk about economy and cognitive development to be able to receive that tax money.

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to the arts. When we talk about why we love our parents and siblings, we may talk about how well they treat us but that doesn’t truly explain why we love them. The reasons are just external metrics we know others can understand and identify. The real reasons are ineffable. There will be people with whom you become romantically involved who may treat you much better by those same standards than your family ever did, but you will never love them the way you love your bratty sibling.

Citing Archimedes famous quote, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world,” Carter notes:

In the arts we have thrown facts together, constructing the longest possible lever, but have seemingly forgotten we also need somewhere to place it. Those facts need to rest on values that can act as a fulcrum. The facts without value, or the wrong value, will simply have no leverage. They will fail to motivate.

He suggests what is needed is a change of perspective rather than trying to change minds. While this might be accomplished via the proposal to create public will for the arts that I often cite, Carter also notes that the arts community needs to change its perspective as well.

The confusion we are mired in is thinking that our difficulty is practical when in fact the impediment is structural. We need to better understand this to make appreciable headway. We can celebrate both the good art does and the good art is, a structural difference, the lever and the fulcrum. That is the value of intrinsic value for the arts.

I should note, whether you agree with the practice or not, use of taxes for economic development and education weren’t foregone conclusions. It required a change in perspective to implement both.

Can You Pursue The Intrinsic Value of Arts Alone?

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There was a post by KCET columnist Corbett Barklie last fall that has had me thinking and wondering if there hasn’t been enough conversation about this topic.

In short, Barklie feels that arts organizations are sacrificing a focus on the intrinsic value of art in the pursuit of “social service” related activities. (my emphasis)

Arts groups exist to interpret the past, elucidate the present, and imagine the future. To borrow from Dewitt H. Parker’s The Principles of Aesthetics, “The intrinsic value of art must be unique, for it is the value of a unique activity — the free expression of experience in a form delightful and permanent, mediating communication.”

Nonprofit arts groups and the artists that run them are not reactionary entities. They are visionary entities.

You may be thinking, “But what about art groups who work in schools? Artists who work in hospitals?” In my opinion, those are arts service organizations — a rarely made but critical distinction. Arts service organizations exist to create and provide ancillary programs that help fulfill the missions of social service nonprofits such as schools, community centers, hospitals, etc…

[…]

Because no distinction has been made between arts groups and arts service organizations, the general arts and arts policy conversation (set by funders and designated leaders) is getting more and more muddled. And artists who exist in organizations that are only concerned with artistic excellence are beginning to feel marginalized.

[…]

Unless and until arts groups find their voice of disagreement and set aside fear of funding or political ramifications long enough to speak up for themselves, the conversation will continue to focus less and less on challenges facing arts groups that are committed solely to artistic excellence. Eventually these arts groups will fade from view completely.

My first thought was, but isn’t an educational component the way it is supposed to be? Most non-profit organizations are organized under the aegis of the education part of 501 (c) 3. In a time when there is less arts education in schools, isn’t it in our best long term interest to be providing educational services? But then again, by Barklie’s definition, I have been working for arts service organizations for the last 20 odd years so this is the normal for me.

So my question to my larger audience; is it as Barklie suggests (and most recently echoed by Diane Ragsdale), have funders and others lead the arts in this direction?

After all, at one time, art was presented for arts sake and there wasn’t any efforts to supplement the efforts of education and health care.

Is this an improvement or a dilution of our effort? It can be argued that pursuing education programs helps put arts organizations in touch with their and constituencies, helping to remove ivory tower mentality and acculturate the community.

But there is also the issue of diverting resources from the core competency and mission of the company. For profit businesses aren’t expected to do this. Many get immense tax breaks with no expectation that they serve the public good.

Is it the new normal that arts organizations must split their focus in order to maintain their existence? Is there an egotism inherent to believing you should be able to pursue the intrinsic value of art alone?

Shaping oneself as an arts service organization seems about the only option for garnering foundation funding and mollifying governmental entities who want something more than pursuit of artistic excellence as a justification for being.

Thoughts?

What Pricing Is Right?

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Back in June the MIT Sloan Management Review had an article in pricing strategies. The bulk of the article discusses research on practices of companies that have sales forces that goes out to solicit business and has some degree of control over the pricing.

However, the research found some basic elements of price setting that are common regardless of industry and geography. (my emphasis)

1. Cost-based pricing. Here, pricing decisions are influenced primarily by accounting data, with the objective of getting a certain return on investment or a certain markup on costs. Typical examples of cost-based pricing approaches are cost-plus pricing, target return pricing, markup pricing or break-even pricing. The main weakness of cost-based pricing is that aspects related to demand (willingness to pay, price elasticity) and competition (competitive price levels) are ignored. The main advantage of this approach is that the data you need to set prices are usually easy to find.

To a certain extent, this is the pricing strategy used by many non-profit organizations–and their critics. I say it is used by critics of non-profits because one of the common refrains one hears is that if non-profits can’t make enough to support themselves, they should be left to fail rather than supported by government funding.

Non profits use this approach to determine what level of revenue they need to cover their costs in the context whatever other funding sources (donations/sponsors) exist. But as the authors say, it can ignore the level of demand that may exist potentially increasing the revenue stream if the price were set higher (or perhaps ignoring the lack of demand and setting the price too high.)

2. Competition-based pricing. This approach uses data on competitive price levels or on anticipated or observed actions of actual or potential competitors as a primary source to determine appropriate price levels. The main advantage of this approach is that the competitive situation is taken into account, and the main disadvantage is that aspects related to the demand function are again ignored. In addition, a strong competitive focus in setting prices can exacerbate the risk of a price war.

I am not aware of too many price wars among arts organizations, but it can be a mistake to taking your pricing cues from competitors. For one thing, just because you perceive your product to be of equal value to your competitor’s doesn’t mean your customers necessarily do.

3. Customer value-based pricing. This approach, which is also often called “value-based pricing,” uses data on the perceived customer value of the product as the main factor for determining the final selling price. Instead of asking, “How can we realize higher prices despite intense competition?” customer value-based pricing asks, “How can we create additional customer value and increase customer willingness to pay, despite intense competition?” The subjective and quantified value of a purchase offering to actual and potential customers is the primary driver in setting prices. Customer value-based pricing approaches are driven by a deep understanding of customer needs, of customer perceptions of value, of price elasticity and of customers’ willingness to pay.

The advantage of customer value-driven pricing approaches is their direct link to the needs of the one constituency paying for the respective goods or services: the customer. The big disadvantage of such approaches is that data on customer preferences, willingness to pay, price elasticity and size of different market segments are usually hard to find and interpret. Furthermore, customer value-based pricing approaches may lead to relatively high prices, especially for unique products. Though that may seem optimal in the short run, these pricing approaches may spur market entry by new entrants or create a risk-free zone for competitors offering comparable products at slightly lower prices. Finally, it is important to note that it is an error to assume that customers will immediately recognize and pay for a truly innovative and superior product. Marketers must educate customers and communicate superior value to customers before linking price to value. Customers must first recognize value in order to be willing to pay for value rather than base their purchase decision solely on price.

Despite these shortcomings, many pricing scholars consider customer value-based pricing to often be the most preferable way to set new product prices or to adjust prices for existing products

Now I don’t have any real evidence that non-profit arts organizations use customer values as the basis of their pricing decisions, but damned if the language the authors use doesn’t match the language being used in discussions of arts management issues: increasing value and customer willingness to pay for it; the necessity of understanding needs of customers/community; high prices for unique products (unique at least from the NP org point of view); audiences not recognizing truly innovative and superior product; need to educate customers/community about the superior value of the artistic product.

Factor in movies/internet/video games as competitors offering what is perceived to be comparable product with lower monetary/social/time, etc. costs and it sounds like they are describing a the situation facing the non-profit arts and culture industries.

Except that these factors are rarely connected with discussions of pricing for non profit arts organizations. While creating the perception of value in audiences does often enter the discussion, I don’t know that it is necessarily accompanied with a “deep understanding of the customer needs, of customer perceptions of value, of price elasticity and of customers’ willingness to pay,” but rather with hopes and assumptions. How many pricing decisions arts and cultural organizations make every year are based on this understanding?

This may be due to lack of will as much as lack of funds to conduct the research necessary to achieve the deep understanding. Since customer value-based pricing seems to be recognized as the best approach, perhaps research into the intrinsic value of the arts should include a greater focus on pricing to see how value and pricing are connected.

Though I am not sure if the knowledge will be of practical use to a significant number of organizations. The authors point out the information is difficult to gather and interpret. I imagine the results will probably be specific to an organization or geographic region.

Intrinsic Value As A General Value

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Recently there has been a sentiment that the arts community shouldn’t use economic benefits as an argument for supporting the arts. I agree with this because there are a lot of problems with the argument which can weaken your position. The difficulty is that in trying to reframe the argument in other terms, you are fighting a sort of cultural inertia.

Arts Alliance Illinois Executive Director, Ra Joy retweeted lobbyist Dan Johnson who wrote “Instead of using the phrase “I’m a taxpayer” to legitimize a comment about government, we should use the universal phrase “I’m a citizen'”

We have a consumerist mentality which leads us to feel we get a say in how all our money is used and should expect a certain level of satisfaction. Businesses we make purchases from extend money back guarantees to assure our satisfaction so there is a tendency to apply a similar outlook to other areas of our lives. In addition to those addressing concerns to the government, students often use the my taxes/tuition pays your salary argument with their teachers.

The problem is, people often over estimate how much of the cost their share actually covers. Hamilton College recently launched a campaign at their students showing that after February 23, someone else was paying for their education. As most of us in the arts world know, a taxpayer’s share of the National Endowment for the Arts funding is below fifty cents.

And, of course, in many cases the price of a ticket to a performance at a non-profit organization only covers about 1/3 of the cost of the production.

Johnson’s suggestion to use “I’m a citizen” is essentially the argument for the intrinsic value of the arts. It harkens back to the social compact theories of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau that influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States. (My first major was Political Science.) It is an argument that the government owes us based on the intrinsic nature of our relationship rather than our dutiful payment of taxes.

The influence of money which drives the concerns over the Citizens United decision and those of the Occupy Movement illustrate the problem of equating economic influence with general worth and merit. It is probably time to emphasize intrinsic value in general and not solely in the arts.

Arts For What They Are, As Opposed To What They Are Opposed To

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Back in April, Peter Linett posted about the development of arts organizations during the 50s and 60s, commenting:

This was a negative identity, premised on oppositions rather than intrinsic attributes. The arts were non-commercial, non-profit, “high” culture as distinct from “low.” It’s almost as if the purpose of the arts, as that category came to be defined, was to be an antidote to the rest of culture: civilized because everything else was increasingly uncivil; elegant and “serious” because everything else was coarse and frivolous; formal because everything else seemed to be coming loose.

This oppositional approach has actually brought about some pretty vibrant works as artists rebel against what their contemporaries and those who preceded them do. This is what a lot of marketing and advertising efforts base their appeal to us on- that what one company offers is better than the other options. It may be related to your self-identity or making your life better/easier for an economic price.

Somewhere along the line, arts and culture got out flanked as the appealing alternative. For a long time it was holding its own against radio and television. Other alternatives developed or perhaps there was a shift in what people were looking for an alternative to. The question of “what exciting thing can I do tonight,” may be been replaced with “my life is so busy, what can I do tonight that doesn’t require me to get back in my car.”

Since it is likely that people’s criteria about what constitutes an interesting alternative is likely to shift, and shift rather often, Linett’s suggestion about presenting the intrinsic value of the arts for its own sake makes sense.

Right now the big push is to engage with audiences. If successful, these efforts should result in a much more positive and constructive relationship with audiences. But lets face it, everyone is pretty much scrambling to engage with audiences for the purpose of shifting choices toward them over someone/thing else. The race is to offer better engagement than the next guy and engage the socks off audiences until they don’t know what to do with all the engagement they are getting thrown at them. And god knows, thanks to the support of your board, you have the resources to pull it off and make everyone else’s efforts look puny by comparison.

C’mon, admit it, that is the internal conversation you are having. You have to meet payroll after all, so while part of you is sincere in your efforts, part of you is calculating the value of engagement efforts as a tool for attracting people to you in some manner.

I suspect in spite of any self interested element, individuals will come to value the arts for themselves thanks to the changes organizations make. I also suspect that arts and cultural organizations will come to enjoy providing engagement activities for their own sake and not as a means to secure grant funding or event attendance. In the best of all worlds, there will be a greater alignment between audiences and artists as the former comes to better understand the value of the arts as the artist does and artists no longer see one of their primary roles as interpreter/explainer.

Please don’t take this to mean that I think audience members don’t possess a deep appreciation for the value of the arts. Since engagement programs of necessity need to provide audiences with a different perspective on the arts experience and greater permission to be involved and understand, I anticipate that audiences will gain insights they did not possess before and artists will come to realize they can trust audiences to be smart enough to understand on their own.

Essentially, I am extending the idea of brains rather than butts in the seats toward an optimistic conclusion. Love and understanding can be ours if arts people can get past the idea that they are the arbiters of understanding. Of course, if arts people are going to cede this control, audiences have to embrace the opportunity and make an effort to understand. Good news is, a lot of them already are.

Art=Lemons

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I just finished Neal Stephenson’s The Confusion wherein a group sails from the Philippines to California around the start of the 18th century. Not quite knowing how to get there, the crew is stricken by scurvy on the long voyage. I got to thinking about how these days you never really worry about how you are going to obtain vitamin C, but the lack of it could eventually result in your death.

It struck me that this was actually a good metaphor for the place artistic and cultural expression plays in society. We often talk about the power of the arts in a prescriptive sense. While it won’t really cure all ills, it does play an important part in our health as humans. Yet because we don’t experience a distinct sense of the benefits at every encounter, it is easy to discount its value in our lives.

I had some orange juice this weekend and while the cool tangy flavor was a nice counterpoint to the savory flavor of the sausage I was eating, I didn’t necessarily recognize any redemptive qualities. If not for the orange juice and health care lobbies which tout the healthy benefits of drinking orange juice, the idea that it might be bolstering my health wouldn’t enter my mind. Right now I am investing no thought about seeking more sources of vitamin C.

The same is likely true for most of people. Their opportunities for artistic and cultural expression and experiences are probably frequent enough that they don’t take much note of it. As the NEA has recently noted, these experiences are varied and often informal. Even if they enjoyed their last experience, they may not be actively seeking their next one. Because the arts lobby has weaker market penetration than the citrus growers, people may be unaware of the benefits the arts bring to their lives.

While a month without vitamin C begins to result in severe deterioration in health, the symptoms related to insufficient artistic and cultural experiences aren’t as clear as malaise and lethargy, formation of spots on the skin, spongy gums and loss of teeth. (Well I mean, those are my symptoms of arts withdrawal, but I am assuming not everyone has that experience.)

A year ago, Newsweek printed an article about how creativity was in decline. While the researchers who conducted the study discussed in the piece say the arts have no special claim to instilling creativity, they note there will be repercussions if the decline continues.

University of Chicago Professor Martha Nussbaum recently warned that neglecting the arts and humanities in favor of technical skills may threaten democracy. Whether you subscribe to that view or not, we often hear about how businesses value creativity as well as technical skill in their employees and are concerned with any potential declines.

The arts are important on an even more basic level than that. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haitian earthquake when people were surrounded by devastation, they came together and sang songs. The songs didn’t clear the rubble and rebuild what had fallen. The songs didn’t set bones and stop bleeding. But it did dull the physical, mental and emotional pain people felt until aid could arrive. The arts are not a cure all, but their expression brings people together and binds them in a common story that helps them relate and provide comfort as a group in a way they can’t as individuals.

Society may discount the value of the arts in their lives, but they weren’t asking the accountants to rally the public to raise funds to provide relief to Haiti or even Japan in the wake of their recent earthquake. It was the artists they looked to. Artists of various disciplines helped provide a focus for soliciting and delivering aid to people in need.

The accountants were no less important to the task of directing aid to disaster areas. Most of the artists who helped raise the money probably personally lack the skills to effectively process the proceeds. Neither the accountant or the artists are likely to be as adept as the Red Cross at delivering the services that are needed. Different groups contribute to the eventual success of the whole endeavor.

It is pretty much unthinkable that artists would refuse to perform. (In fact, recent article on the BBC reveals some musicians feel emotionally blackmailed into participating.) No one is ever faced with the full consequences of no artists supporting a cause. While I could speculate, I don’t think anyone can really fully predict the results of devaluing and diminishing the presence of artistic and cultural expressions.

In fact, for as much as we talk about them, I am not sure those of us in the arts completely understand the benefits people derive.

Broader Definition Doesn’t Mean Lowered Expectations

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As I was thinking about writing yesterday’s entry on my drive home, there was a part of me that was experiencing some internal conflict. I do wholeheartedly believe in what I wrote at the end of my entry about the arts being a two way street-people in general would benefit from recognizing that many of their activities involve the arts and those in the arts need to acknowledge their arts training allows them to express themselves in non-arts activities and vocations.

This all derives from the idea put forth by the recent NEA report suggesting that more activities need to be recognized as involvement in the arts. What this means for most arts people is that they need to try to avoid the reflex to deem anything that does not approach some Platonic ideal of capital “A” art as not being art. Sorry everyone, time to get a little humble and admit that awful performance or painting you just saw is actual an artistic effort. Real art is a messy process as well you know, though granted some people never make any progress from their failures.

So that brings me to the question that was causing me some mental grumblings – Should we as arts people expect recognition of elite performance?

Now notice, I got what I feel is the source of elitism in the arts, dismissal of perceived substandard work as not art, out of the way before I asked this. What I am asking is if there should be an expectation of discernment between different quality performances. I ask this because there seems to be an anti-intellectualism trend emerging in the U.S. and perhaps other parts of the world and I don’t particularly think this is an area in which the arts should concede ground.

Yes, classical music, ballet and Shakespeare are hard to understand from the outset. But you know, so are the rules of football, baseball, cricket, poker and a thousand other activities. Before I attended my first football game, my father took me down in the basement and drew a lot of Xs and Os on our blackboard to try to explain the game to me. I really wasn’t that clear about the rules when I attended, though I did enjoy the tailgating and hanging out with the other fathers and sons who attended with us. In time, I got a better sense of when to cheer.

It wasn’t much different the first couple Shakespearean plays I viewed. I only caught half of what was going on, but what I did struck me as pretty damn clever and I stuck with it. The first time I took up Drew McManus’ challenge for Take A Friend To The Orchestra month and went myself, I didn’t quite understand or like everything, but there were some sublime moments.

My point is, while it takes a lot of hard work acquiring enough experience and education to attend an arts event, the effort isn’t any more involved in learning the rules for sports. Honestly, I think most aspects of arts attendance are a lot more straightforward than sports rules. Much of the impenetrable obscurity surrounding an attendance experience is due to regular attendees reinforcing the perception to bolster self worth and intimidate others. Read the script, libretto or watch a snippet of the dance on YouTube and you are half way to understanding the actual performance despite the vibes you might be getting from the rest of the audience. You can feel just as out of place at a sporting event. My first exposure to sumo wrestling was when I went to a match by myself a few years ago and people there were shouting things in a language I don’t speak. It took me a little while to figure out the rules, but I loved every minute of it.

But back to the question of recognizing elite performances. As much as people’s activities might qualify as arts participation. There is indeed a difference in quality, between a talented amateur and a person who has dedicated their life to mastering their craft. This is standard that should not loosened as the arts make an effort to do a better job of acknowledging all the ways in which people participate in the arts. My concern is that there will be a move to blur lines and equate artists in a way that diminishes recognition of true ability and talent.

There are athletes that operate at an elite level that few can approach and you don’t hear many people claiming that their high school or college teams are as good as professional boxers or basketball/baseball/football players. You will hear people claim a performance is as good as anything on Broadway. This may cause you to cringe that Broadway should be the gold standard when so many other exemplars exist, but the real problem is that the comment may be charitable at best. There is a perception that hard work over a short term and heart is enough to earn A’s in school or an acting/dancing/singing position. Shows like American Idol may perpetuate this idea, but it is definitely a misapprehension shared by people pursuing arts training and degrees. Regardless of the profession, there are only a few who can operate at an elite level and fewer still who have invested the effort to do so.

I am no more interested in starting a conversation about whether a classical musician is a superior artist to a jazz musician/a rock musician/country musician than I am about debating whether the marathoners and decathletes on the U.S. Olympic teams are better athletes than the sprinters and high jumpers. I do think it is clearer to people that this particular group of track athletes operate at the highest levels than it is that Itzak Perlman does as well. Even if these athletes lose their events, people whose only exposure to track and field is watching it once every four years can explain why they are superior performers. When he is playing a solo at Carnegie Hall, context just as prestigious as being the US representative at the Olympics, can people with a casual relationship to classical music explain what about Perlman’s performance makes him superior?

That is where some of the onus to educate falls. As we know, it takes more than just a single exposure to make someone appreciate the arts. Educating them about quality requires even greater work. Yes, we want people to know the arts are for everyone and everyone is participating in the arts to a greater degree than they imagine. But we have to maintain heroes for them to idolize and they have to clearly know why the person is worthy of being admired. This doesn’t detract from the recognition the star of the local community theatre production receives any more than Major League baseball stars diminish the glory accorded the powerhouses on the local softball team. No one confuses one for the other though.

Interconnected Fates

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You may have heard that the police in Madison, WI are in sympathy with many of the union members who have gathered to protest their governor’s push to end collective bargaining rights for state workers. Over the weekend I heard an interview on NPR that mentioned both police and firefighters were turning out in support of the protest even though the governor wasn’t proposing to take away their right to collective bargaining because they figured it was only a matter of time. The fire fighter interviewed said they viewed it as an effort to divide and conquer.

Earlier this month Louise K. Stevens who writes the “Arts Market On..” blog made a similar observation regarding the need for the arts to advocate in areas outside of their immediate concern. (my emphasis)

No doubt that you have and will be getting emails and calls to action about this. But probably those calls are piecemeal, asking you for you to advocate for one or another of these line items while ignoring the whole, and that’s the problem. We a splintered sector that has never to date united around the concept of our culture, and now each splinter may be too small and too isolated from its compatriots to build a coalition to save federal support for any of the splinters.

We have a few weeks to save the half century-plus of infrastructure that modest as it may be demonstrates our public commitment to the breadth and majesty of our American culture, our shared story. If we stand splintered now, we may never get a chance to regroup. If we think that saving orchestras or contemporary dance is more important or that saving library funding and museum funding matters more than poetry, or that history and heritage and historic architecture should out trump theatre…well, how will it end?

Around the same time, Arlene Goldbard (h/t to Ian David Moss) wrote a three part series titled “Life Implicates Art” which while long, I think does the best job in summing up the challenges facing the arts and the wrong turns that have been made. Other bloggers, myself included, have touched upon these issues at times but her entries are timely in the context of all the movement nationally in Congress and state legislatures in regard to arts funding. (Also, every entry she makes has an embedded music video which is kind of a cool little hook.) Her ultimate conclusion, much like that of the firefighters in Wisconsin is that there is a high degree of interconnected interests among seemingly disparate groups.

In the first entry, she addresses the problem which is mostly that arts people think that the failure to secure funding is directly related to a failure to make a strong enough case for the arts when it is often more about politics rather than money. In some respect there is actually a weakness in the way a case for the arts is made. She notes, as I have pointed out a few times, that pretty much every industry can make a claim about the economic benefits of their activity. She notes, as most of us know, that with all the money spent on combat troops in the Mid-East, maintaining a nuclear arsenal and imprisoning a large portion of the population, the expenditures on the arts is pretty minuscule but there is not enough support for the arts nationally to make it politically difficult to make cuts there first.

In the second entry, she expounds upon the forces at work that determine politician priorities. She labels the arguments suggested by Americans for the Arts recent mail-in campaign to Congress as “so bloodless and soporific that I can’t imagine anyone actually reading all the way to the end of an op-ed based on them. Yet these have been the talking points for more than three decades. The result? The real value of the NEA budget has fallen by more than half. But hey, it’s all we’ve got, right?”

Instead she suggests a more strongly worded, speaking truth to power letter to all those who voted to support the recent extension of tax cuts to millionaires the revenue of which could cover the budgets of the NEA and NEH twice over.

Here’s an open letter along the lines I’d like to see circulating in every district represented by someone who voted for the recent extension of the Bush tax cuts:

Dear Senator/Representative:

Less than two months ago, you voted for tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. They reduce tax revenues by an amount equivalent to paying out twice the combined budgets of the National Endowments for The Arts and Humanities, every single day of the year. At a time when our nation’s polarization of wealth is extreme—the top 10% own 80% of all financial assets; and the top 1% own more than the bottom 90%—I am shocked to think you care more about the wealthiest political donors than the well-being of the rest of us.

By cutting arts funding and other social goods, you are making the rest of us pay for millionaire tax cuts. It is wrong to sacrifice our children’s access to music and art classes to save millionaires from paying their fair share. It is wrong to abandon artists who have dedicated their lives to working in schools, hospitals, senior centers, and other places where their skills of imagination, beauty, and meaning lift spirits, build community, and help people find resilience. It is wrong to defund creativity at a time when we it is precisely what we need to excel in science and business, to align our spirits with hope and recovery.

It is embarrassing to be the richest nation on earth with the highest incarceration rate, prison population, and expenditure on war, and the lowest public investment in creativity. You want us to believe that you’re concerned about the economy and taxpayers, but really? Tote up the tax breaks included for millionaires: you just put $225 billion of taxpayers’ well-being into the pockets of people who already have more money than they know how to spend.

This is a shame and a scandal, and I’m going to do everything I can to let my fellow voters know about it. Restoring arts funding would be a tiny gesture to show you actually care about what the rest of us want: it’s literally the least you can do. You were elected to serve everyone, not just big donors. Here’s your chance to prove it. Don’t let America down!

Sincerely,

John/Jane Q. Public

In the third entry, she talks about reframing the arts. As you might imagine, the burden lays upon the arts community, especially in terms of expanding the definition of art beyond what is produced by non-profit arts organizations. There is an image of the arts as elitist that people who want to cut funding have evoked that many people in the arts chafe against because we know there aren’t people in black ties sipping champagne and making obscure literary references at our performances and exhibits. Except that there are some aspects of the elitist imagery we are responsible for perpetuating.

“It’s abstract, one step removed from things people really care about: many people who happily embrace words like music or movies, who sing or draw or love to dance, will respond negatively to the idea of “the arts”—Oh no, not me, you hear them say, I’m not into the arts. Ask that same person, “Do you like to dance?” or “Do you play an instrument?” and the answer will be “Yes,” with no evident awareness of contradiction.

That’s because they pick up on the exclusionary subtext. Many people who consider themselves part of “the arts” use that label to distinguish the work of subsidized organizations from commercial cultural industries and entertainments. An enormous industry generates multibillions each year from sales of music, movie tickets, video rentals, concert tickets, and the like; and enormous numbers take pleasure from making music, taking photographs, writing poems and songs, taking part in dance competitions and poetry slams, and so on.

Yet, except when they want to summon impressive figures about the scope of the cultural economy, mainstream arts advocates don’t mention any of this. There’s an embedded snobbery that presumes the superiority of nonprofit arts organizations and the work they support, a kneejerk dismissal of the rest. This discourse often has an air of unreality: I hear advocates saying that “the arts” are in decline, yet—to pick just one example—almost everyone I encounter integrates music into daily life, almost as a kind of medicine, self-prescribing the sounds and feelings that will support them through the day.”

Goldbard feels this can be reversed, of course, if efforts are made to change practice and national cultural policy. She derives hope from the fact that people are realizing that assessing value based on numbers doesn’t work in healthcare or education and that short term savings results in a long term cost. Care and education of the whole person today prevents more expensive problems down the road. Her suggested approach to employing the intrinsic value of the arts is no less holistic and intertwines with education, healthcare and commerce to bolster all these areas.

In an homage to Goldbard’s posting style, I embed the following video. It isn’t explicitly about art and many wouldn’t consider the singing to be art because it employs autotune, but that’s sort of Goldbard’s point.

“The Monster Outside The Door”

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No, the title of this entry is not another riff on my new lizard mascot in the blog header. Last month I made a post quoting Robert Hewison in an article from The Art Newspaper saying citing the economic value of the arts is bad because “But the Treasury doesn’t buy it. They can see through the “multiplier” calculations of the cultural boosters.”

Today I came across a link on Artsjournal.com to economist John Kay’s website wherein he expounds upon that subject and advises valuing art for its cultural and commercial value.

“Thousands of people build hospitals and surgeries, and many small and medium-size enterprises manufacture hospital supplies. Illness contributes about 10 per cent of the UK’s economy: the government does not do enough to promote disease.

Such reasoning is identical to that of studies sitting on my desk that purport to measure the economic contribution of sport, tourism and the arts. These studies point to the number of jobs created, and the ancillary activities needed to make the activities possible. They add up the incomes that result. Reporting the total with pride, the sponsors hope to persuade us not just that sport, tourism and the arts make life better, but that they contribute to something called “the economy”.

The analogy illustrates the obvious fallacy. What the exercises measure is not the benefits of the activities they applaud, but their cost; and the value of an activity is not what it costs, but the amount by which its benefit exceeds its costs. The economic contribution of sport is in the pleasure participants and spectators derive, and the resulting gains in health and longevity. That value is diminished, not increased, by the resources that need to be diverted from other purposes.

Similarly, the economic value of the arts is in the commercial and cultural value of the performance, not the costs of cleaning the theatre….

…The relevant economic questions are whether the cultural and commercial value of the performance offsets these costs and whether these benefits can be translated into a combination of box office receipts, sponsorship and public subsidy. The appropriate economic criterion, everywhere and always, is the value of the output.”

I have often felt that economic benefit surveys often seem to grasp at straws in an attempt to find any activity tangentially related to arts events. Though I will grant you that if a downtown area empties out at night, it doesn’t matter how scarce parking is, the spaces in a garage are worthless. Activities that put cars in that lot help keep people employed. But then, the parking company can claim they provide economic benefits to the arts by providing a safe place to park within walking distance of the venue in an area with scarce parking. Your audience may even value the close parking enough to factor it in to their attendance decision. But as the arts organization in question, do you see the parking lot as keeping you employed? You might. But if everyone starts adding up the reciprocal value they offer to each other, the result may end up being ten times the actual amount of money changing hands in that particular business district.

When you think about it in that context, then Kay’s insistence that the only appropriate economic measure is the value of the specific output becomes more apparent. And it is logical to think that value only exists when the benefit exceeds the costs. The problem the arts have is that the measure of the benefit is so nebulous that we are driven to find some concrete method with which to prove that benefit does exceed the amount granted and donated.

Plenty of people are willing to say that the arts aren’t worth very much in today’s environment. Many are just as willing to listen and believe them and that makes all of us in the arts really nervous and sends us scrambling for evidence. Kay doesn’t offer much help in making that argument and in fact, he raises the stakes a little by adding commercial success as a measure of the value. That doesn’t leave much hope for the group that only had 80 patrons, but touched them incredibly and deeply, only it is tough to demonstrate the degree.

Which is not to say he doesn’t wholly believe there is an intrinsic value to the arts.

“We need to put out of our minds this widely held notion that there is such a thing as “the economy”, a monster outside the door that needs to be fed and propitiated and whose values conflict with things – such as sports, tourism and the arts – that make our lives agreeable and worthwhile. Activities that are good in themselves are good for the economy, and activities that are bad in themselves are bad for the economy. The only intelligible meaning of “benefit to the economy” is the contribution – direct or indirect – the activity makes to the welfare of ordinary citizens.”

I am not quite sure if he is differentiating between economic value benefit to the the economy since presumably having a job cleaning a building would directly contribute to the welfare of an ordinary citizen. Assuming he is separating the two, I would use those concepts to make the following point—

Ultimately, economic benefits are replaceable and interchangeable. Back in 2007, I covered an article that noted that a group seeking funding for the arts in England cited priorities that would be served by the grant that were among the exact same benefits then Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised the 2012 Olympics would provide.

Studio 54 contributed to the economy by employing cleaning people when it was a Broadway Theatre, radio and television studios for CBS, a disco, and then back to being a theatre again when it was purchased by Roundabout Theatre. Let say all these entities existed at the same time and are arguing which gets to use the building based on economic benefit they bring. Who gets to use the building?

Now lets say the criteria used is the cultural value each organization brings. Now who gets to use the building? Maybe it is CBS both times. In the first example, they might win because they would be spending the most on payroll and other expenses. In the second, they might win because their programming reaches more households and thus touches more lives. But when it comes to determining the value offered by a night club notorious for its hedonism and excess versus theatres, the decision may be tougher to make.

My point is, while it is hard to define in concrete terms, cultural value is a much more specific property of an organization than economic benefit and is worth citing as a reason for others’ support.

Valuing For The Sake Of Doing So

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By way of the Crunchy Con blog, I was reading Sharon Astyk’s blog entry on valuing education. She had recently come across the school books her great-grandfather used when he was a young man in Northern Maine. She reflects at length about the ways in which a formal education was valued in a time when children were needed to help with farms and teachers weren’t paid well at all. Among her observations are that while her great-grandfather left the farm to go to college, his ability to support himself as a teacher when he emerged was less assured than had he remained a farmer.

There has been a great deal of debate lately on the value of a liberal arts education. It is a conversation worth watching since the value of the arts is directly related to the value placed upon the Humanities. Astyk is pretty good at not overly romanticizing the education New Englanders received in the 1800s. The bodies of knowledge then and now were different as were the subjects pertinent to one’s daily life. Her main thesis is that education had as much value to the community eking out a living in Maine as it did the individual.

Except, that it didn’t get them nothing – the benefits were not remunerative, but communal. They were competent citizens. Quoting Virgil may have been of no actual use to a farmwife in rural Maine except this – that she knew she could, that she could teach Latin to her children were she to go west, far from schools, that she would have in her head forever the story of the founding of Rome, alongside Emerson on “Compensation,” “Barbara Freitchie” and the history of the rulers of England. We can quibble with what she knew – suggest that the history she learned might have better included different stories, that there are better poems. She would live her life in a community that had, if it had nothing else, a library, able to read fluently and enjoy when she had a few minutes alone. What we cannot argue with, I think is the value that communities found in education in these times was that education had value for its own sake, in creating educated citizens…

[…]

Despite the fact that that education cost people something, they went on providing it, because it was right, because farmwives who read poetry and fishermen who knew algebra made farmwives who wrote letters to the editor and gathered for literary gatherings and community theatricals, and fishermen who recited poetry to themselves as they drew in their lines, recited them to their children at bedtime, and stood for town council at the end of the day. We should not over-romanticize the role of education in ordinary, work-filled daily lives. Nor, however, should we understate how remarkable it was.

These days, it is what you are paying for your education and what it will yield you that matters more than the education itself.

As the cost of education continues to outstrip the economic value of education, it becomes more and more imperative that we return to valuing education in proportion to its goods – these are vast. I, the product of a liberal education, give enormous credit to mine. But I had the good fortune to have a college education much like the one my great-grandfather had, one not expected to get me much…. My friends were told that they could minor in theater but had to major in computer science or economics or something that would get them a good job, because after, all, the parents were not paying 20,000 dollars a year to let them major in the humanities…

[…]

At the lower levels, the emphasis is still on the economic value of education – but we are assured at every step that free public education has no value – you *must* go on to community college, to college, to graduate school, often at stunning cost (and the not-stunning costs are rising, as states cut subsidies to education). You must do these things because a free education cannot get you a job – simply having a high school degree is nothing. And we are so caught up in the economic value of education – and in the necessity of training students for higher education or blue-collar slavery, that we’ve entirely forgotten the value of education outside the economy – of education as a way of making people.

The emphasis above is mine. Now as the arts community starts to look at the intrinsic value of the arts and move away from justifying its existence based on economic benefits, I wonder if it is too late. Will the valuing of education for its practical career applications to the detriment of Humanities studies and even education for its own sake end up ultimately contributing to the devaluing of art for its own sake?

It makes me think that if we are going to fight for the arts, (and I don’t think we are ready to cede the battle yet), we ought to consider explicitly championing the value of the humanities and education for its own sake while we are at it. These things provide context and meaning for what we do, after all.

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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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