This Week in Art (FYA)

Originally published on ForYourArt on February 12, 2009

We have a complicated relationship with art and there is a lack of consistency in the discourse around its importance and value. The question, our question, is being played out in Washington. Is Art Important? The art community must articulate a response that can be understood by those who are outside of it.

In last week’s letter, I wondered if the NEA was the right long term model for the survival of our cultural institutions. This week, the Coburn amendment (which passed in the Senate by a wide majority) killed the inclusion of $50m support for the NEA, approximately one seventeen thousandth of the entire stimulus package. (Keep up with the latest on CultureMonster.com) The amendment aims: "to ensure that taxpayer money is not lost on wasteful and non-stimulative projects such as funding museums, theaters and art centers." The Los Angeles Times' Mike Boehm summed it up: "Maybe the arts just aren't that stimulating."

Never the less, the viral support for Quincy Jones' call for a culture czar crossed into prime time on Sunday when Grammy president Neil Portnow publicly asked President Obama to create a Secretary of Arts. The groundswell of support currently on the internet for this idea may very well have been the impetus to include this idea in Portnow's introduction but, again, the question of whether Washington has the solution to the funding problems of cultural institutions in America needs to be addressed. A fundamental issue emerging for museums and cultural institutions is that although they are bound by their connection to material culture, they need to think themselves out of that box in order to draw people in. It all comes down to execution and leadership. A "white paper" on what this will look like is yet to emerge.

I was heartened by Music Center/Big City Forum's Leonardo Bravo's, who is one of many grappling with the problem of redefining the mandate of cultural institutions in this economy, response to my email last week:

I think for too long cultural institutions have relied on inefficient models of interface with their audience. One of the positives of this economic meltdown is that most of our assumptions about value are falling into disarray, which provides an incredible opportunity for institutions to become more nimble and responsive to audiences that are used to manipulating and engaging with content on an active basis.

Public program directors of many of our leading cultural institutions convened at the Hammer Museum in preparation for Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980 (PST). My encounters with them reaffirmed my belief that this sentiment is strong on the ground in L.A., and we are uniquely poised to act upon it. But only a collective response will succeed.

Marcia Stepanek (via Beth's Blog) who writes the CauseGlobal Blog mentioned an interview with new media guru Clay Shirky who described the importance of new activist leadership:

What I think is coming is a new type of leadership style that will expand into other kinds of collective action—in particular, real-world collective action. And so, for a traditional institution, this is really a moment where, if the organizational structure doesn't change, then the institution is essentially going to find itself working at cross-purposes with many of its members.

Tuesday, I joined a group of local arts administrators at Los Angeles Art Association's Gallery 825 for a meeting with Fractured Atlas, the national non-profit services provider to artists and non-profits. Their programs, like Place+Displaced, represent forward thinking approaches to cultural production and engagement.

This week we announced that ForYourArt will bring Postopolis! L.A to Los Angeles for Los Angeles Art Weekend which takes place in April. The brain child of Joseph Grima, the Director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, this event will bring six influential art and architecture bloggers – David Basulto, ArchDaily, Plataforma Arquitectura, Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG, Dan Hill, City of Sound, Bryan Finoki, Subtopia, Jace Clayton, Mudd Up!, Règine Debatty, We Make Money Not Art – from the all over the world for what is potentially a model for the future. We believe that, in the future, this will be an effective way cultural organizations will reach out and engage—without walls.

The Getty is also leading the way. Tyler Green reported in his blog, Modern Art Notes, on a program which could transform the way museums catalogue their collections and share their content with the public: "The Getty's project is ambitious: It aims to replace the expensive dead-tree scholarly catalogue with an open-source, web-accessible-to-all, digital catalogue format." Getty Foundation associate director Joan Weinstein, who is managing the Getty Project, told him:

In transforming the catalogues to an online environment, they won't be just scholarly. The premise is that you can include all kinds of information online that you can't in a print volume, information for everyone from the general public to students to scholars. You don't have to wait until everything's complete to put it online. You can have multiple voices in single entries—for more recent work, you can have both artists and curators speaking. Same thing for older collections. You can have conservators speaking and you can put the conservation documentation online. You could even super-impose an x-ray onto the image of a work of art itself.

I'm hooked on Kevin Kelly's Lifestream, which I conveniently added to my "igoogle" home page. In a recent post, he pointed to more examples that systems are changing:

We now live in a new economy created by shrinking computers and expanding communications. This new economy represents a tectonic upheaval in our commonwealth, a far more turbulent reordering than mere digital hardware has produced. The new economic order has its own distinct opportunities and pitfalls. If past economic transformations are any guide, those who play by the new rules will prosper, while those who ignore them will not. We have seen only the beginnings of the anxiety, loss, excitement and gains that many people will experience as our world shifts to a new highly technical planetary economy.

To me, the fact that arts funding is in the realm of being considered "pork" is an indication of just how much work we have cut out for us. But together, we can lead a new charge and create nimble, inclusive models.

This Week in Art (FYA)

Originally published on ForYourArt on February 5, 2009


As part of ForYouArt’s ongoing project, Is Art Important?, we are proud to begin this week’s email with a response to this complex question from novelist Frederic Tuten, who is the author of Tin-Tin in the New World. How can we reframe the debate around the value of art? Editorials from San Francisco to Boston touched on this very issue today.


When Andy Warhol was asked what was art, he said, 'Isn’t that a guy’s name?' It was an evasion, but I understand why. Almost anything you could say about art, why it is important or what it means is doomed to sounding pretentious. With that risk in mind, I say that at the least art modifies, ameliorates the hardships, the sadness of life, and at best, it gives us joy as nothing but love can. In that sense, I think love and art are akin.

—Frederic Tuten


I read this week (via Trendcentral) about a project called I Love You More Than Blank, which aims to assess how people measure love. The metrics of capitalism (money) surely don’t apply.

Many believe that the U.S. slowdown will be longer and deeper than Europe’s. Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economics professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, pointed out at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week that the U.S. has structural adjustments to make.

MOCA is a microcosm of these issues. Amidst over 100,000 layoffs in the U.S. last week, the Museum announced it would cut 20% of its staff. Saturday morning, the new CEO Charles Young addressed a group of donors and stakeholders, including MOCA Mobilization co-founder Cindy Bernard, as part of his effort to restore confidence. He laid out his plan to turn the corner and add to MOCA’s endowment. He asked everyone to pull together to ensure the future of the Museum. Young was impressive, and as he talked about doing more efficiently and effectively, the message was clear – MOCA is under new leadership.

Although the number of temporary exhibitions will be reduced, the permanent collection will be on view at all times. Some were disappointed, but I think it’s critical that Angelenos have an opportunity to form relationships with works of art in their museums that are in the public trust. As the discussion turned to attracting new donors I wondered if, in an experience based on economy, perhaps giving is the new collecting.

Saturday night, during a warm gathering hosted by Catherine and Jeffrey Soros, I spoke to Creative Capital’s director, the incredible Ruby Lerner, Sean Elwood and Watts House Project’s Edgar Arceneaux about “reframing the debate” around the value of art. Lerner was in town for the Santa Monica Museum of Art’s wonderful conversation series "Collection of Ideas". Although philanthropists who prefer to see their names on buildings dominate the headlines, it is people like the Soros', whose quiet leadership and spirit (her REDCAT, him Creative Capital and MOCA) create the foundation for the future of cultural engagement and sustainability in L.A.

Stewards of cultural philanthropy are more important than ever. Edward Winkleman (via MAN) reflected on SFMOMA’s decision to attach an “unusual” wall-text to Emily Jacir’s Where We Come From: “I believe a museum should reflect the values and opinions of the people who support it and patronize it. I believe a museum should present thought-provoking exhibitions and challenge its public, but not intentionally offend it. Having said all that, however, I feel a museum owes it to the artists whose work they acquire to stand behind that work, without apology or excuse. In other words, the forum in which to ‘contextualize the piece acknowledging the sensitivities that surround it’ is before the acquisition committee, not before the public. If you decide it's right for your institution, stand behind it unequivocally.”

An essential quality that seems to be shared by effective patrons is an innate belief in the immeasurable contribution of artists and value of art. The Art Newspaper recently reported the French government has allocated an extra 100 million euros to the ministry of culture to spend on arts and museums, part of a 2.9 billion euro plan to help revive the ailing economy. The U.S. stimulus plan includes $50 million for the NEA. You do the math.

This Week in Art (FYA)

Originally published on ForYourArt on January 29, 2009

Brandeis University announced its intention this week to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its collection. The institution is financially autonomous from the University, and, according to its Director, Michael Rush, financially sound. This has drawn expected rage from all sides. Rush spoke to the issue of re-evaluating “success” in an interview with Tyler Green yesterday. “The point of the greatness of this place is not the hundreds of thousands of people who come here in one day. But that there are hundreds of thousands of people around the world who see Rose artworks, clearly marked form as being from here, at the Louvre, the Tate, the Art Institute of Chicago, and so on. At any given time, hundreds of thousands of people are seeing work from Brandeis, from the Rose Art Museum.”

It is the role of institutions to preserve and present objects for the common good. In this way, institutions make up a much larger web; each individual artwork borrowed from another institution, like the Rose, in an exhibition is a hyper-link to the collective culture.

Over the past month I’ve been thinking and talking a lot (like many others) about how systems are changing. Of course, some of these shifts are the result of the constricting economy, but still, the familiar patterns and value systems are deeply ingrained.

We should know by now that we can’t evaluate the contribution of our cultural institutions merely by head counts and ticket sales. The freedom of a great institution is that the primary reason for an exhibition does not have to be how many people go through the door. As Rush said in his interview, some of the most significant and incredibly influential works at the Rose were originally performed for an audience of three or four people — Merce Cunningham, John Cage and The Wooster Group to cite a few examples. While these artists may have eventually drawn large crowds, that was never really the impulse for making or supporting the work. And that is an understanding that we need to bring if our cultural institutions are to survive and to flourish.

It is important to look at the struggles of other creative industries that are also facing questions on how to monetize the intangible. Wired’s Kevin Kelly (Futurismic) addresses fundamental questions of ownership and media in his recent posting Better Than Owning:

Very likely, in the near future, I won't 'own' any music, or books, or movies. Instead I will have immediate access to all music, all books, all movies using an always-on service, via a subscription fee or tax…The request to enjoy a work is thus separated from the more complicated choice of whether I want to 'own' it.…An idea can't be owned in the way gold can; in fact an idea has little value unless it is shared or used to some extent. Its value paradoxically can increase the less it is owned privately. But if no one owns it, who gains the benefit of that increase in value? In the new regime users will often assume many of the chores that owners once had to do. And so in a way, usage becomes ownership.

I would argue that our entire system of evaluating “worth” is shifting. Metrics for success on the Internet are determined not only by the agility of the interfaces we use, but also by the accessiblity and viral share-ability. It’s interesting how technology has brought our culture to these conclusions, yet museums have been expert on access and lending to other institutions for ages; that is what they do. But in the last decade, the focus on blockbuster exhibitions and ticket sales has heightened the pressure on museums to deliver numbers. Perhaps as ideas like those of Kelly and Lawrence Lessig’s Creative Commons are more widely understood, museums will hopefully have less to prove. Museum collections are arsenals of content. One thing is for certain, content is king.

Originally published on ForYourArt on January 22, 2009

It’s official – things have changed and although there are serious issues to face on all sides, hope, albeit reserved, is in the air. The cultural and arts communities continue to discuss what—exactly—will come to pass, particularly as it relates to the possibility of increased public funding. As Mark Swed noted in the Los Angeles Times, “we have reason to believe we have an arts president.”

Everyone from Americans for the Arts (PDF) to Quincy Jones is chiming in on what this could, and should, really look like. Art Talk’s host Edward Goldman suggested on his KCRW weekly show that the President and First Lady could start by simply taking the girls on a stroll through the National Gallery. With all the special events in Washington this week, they could also, of course, join the hundreds of other visitors who have contributed to Yoko Ono's Wish Tree for Washington D.C. at the Hirshhorn Museum or stop by the Smithsonian which features the timely and poignant exhibition Road to Freedom.

Whether Obama appoints an “Arts Czar” or not (and there are arguments on both sides), it’s clear that arts non-profits must re-examine the way they function in relation to each other, their audiences, and the for-profit sector. It remains to be seen how the current model in the U.S., which relies heavily on private funding, will fare.

As we face the reality that much of the wealth of the past years was largely imagined, or virtual, we welcome a new President who is not afraid to wield the power of perception. Novelist Lynne Tillman argues on artforum.com that through Obama’s clever manipulation and use of media, from his video messages and creation of a "virtual" office before he took oath on Tuesday, (and now whitehouse.gov) he has helped usher in a linguistic shift: virtual is the new actual.

Considering Obama’s messages of responsibility and remembrance, and the fact that he used the media to draw attention to service, saying things like “it’s not ‘I’ it’s ‘we’,” how will this spirit impact the art world system and, in a broader sense, art and culture's role in America?

Yesterday, President Obama announced a salary freeze at the White House for all employees making more than $100,000. This gesture brings reality to rhetoric and symbolizes that we are all in this together. With the crisis over money, pay-cuts, lay-offs and thinner wallets, support for the kind of conceptual work whose success is not measured by money but by the intensity of the discourse it inspires is sure to rise.

This week we are pleased to announce weekly contributions from photographer Joshua White and the anonymous blog Art and Fart. Check foryourart.com for updates and more additions on the way!