Privatized Culture in Bad Times: Evaluating the American System of Cultural Patronage

CCA Bul­letin 26/09

Octo­ber 29, 2009

 

 

Just the Facts

On Tues­day, Octo­ber 20, the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA), in part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­sity of Ottawa, pre­sented a lec­ture by Pro­fesseur Kevin Mulc­ahy, Shel­don Bey­chok Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at Louisiana State Uni­ver­sity, who dis­cussed the evolv­ing model of Amer­i­can cul­tural pol­icy within the con­text of the eco­nomic downturn.

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The pre­sen­ta­tion touched on the state of Amer­i­can cul­tural patron­age, pol­icy and pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in the arts and the impact the reces­sion is hav­ing on the US model. Con­trary to Canada, sup­port for the arts in the United States comes largely from indi­vid­ual donors. Dona­tions also come from inde­pen­dent agen­cies, such as the National Endow­ment for the Arts, and foun­da­tions but these are to a much lesser extent.

It was pointed out that, once again con­trary to the Cana­dian model, the National Endow­ment is actu­ally a minor grant giv­ing author­ity, despite the fact that it oper­ates at the fed­eral level. Instead, local agen­cies typ­i­cally give out more money and sup­port to the arts.

For the first time since 1987 there has been a drop in money for the arts, either through grants or indi­vid­ual dona­tions: $306 bil­lion in 2008 down from $307 bil­lion in 2007. This drop is an alarm­ing wake up call for an exam­i­na­tion of how sup­port can be gen­er­ated and sustained.

How can that much needed sup­port be attracted? Over­all, there is a ris­ing demand in the United States for the arts to “carry their own weight” rather than rely on pub­lic sub­si­dies to pur­sue art for arts sake. Phil­an­thropic giv­ing can come with unwanted demands that may not be in the best inter­est of the arts organization.

Refer­ring to the mas­sive pub­lic money poured into the Amer­i­can econ­omy by Wash­ing­ton over the past sev­eral months, Pro­fes­sor Mulc­ahy ques­tioned why there was no eco­nomic bailout for the arts although 80% of arts orga­ni­za­tions have reported some level of fis­cal stress. Dona­tions are falling and it is clear that many arts and cul­ture orga­ni­za­tions are using their endow­ments for daily oper­a­tions. Pro­gram­ming has been affected as well and is becom­ing more con­ser­v­a­tive in an effort not to alien­ate the peo­ple who are giv­ing money. This trend strikes a blow to the avant-garde and the explo­ration of new and mod­ern ideas.

The real­ity of falling sup­port for the arts is “Cul­tural Dar­win­ism,” a phe­nom­e­non that would weed out all but the strongest or, para­dox­i­cally, the small­est arts and cul­ture bod­ies. Mulc­ahy con­firmed that per­form­ing arts orga­ni­za­tions in US medium sized cities are cur­rently the most endangered.

Tied into the ques­tion of sup­port for the arts is the myth that the arts are “elit­ist”. Mulc­ahy stated that this is espe­cially prob­lem­atic in the United States where a new sports arena is much more likely to be built and sub­si­dized than a new gallery. Inter­est­ingly enough, a recent study * based on 17 Amer­i­can cities found that there is lit­tle dif­fer­ence in audi­ence demo­graph­ics between sports and arts patrons. The ath­letic audi­ence is slightly more male than female and the cul­tural audi­ence is slightly more female than male. Dif­fer­ences in age and income do not dif­fer sig­nif­i­cantly. The key to sus­tain­able audi­ences might lie in embrac­ing “Cul­tural Omni­vores,” peo­ple who go out to every­thing and are sup­port­ers of live, real-time activities.

Mulc­ahy ended with a call for entre­pre­neur­ial lead­er­ship, but with a new def­i­n­i­tion. He spoke to the need to cre­ate link­ages among stake­hold­ers in the arts and the moti­vat­ing fac­tor of “rela­tional giv­ing” – peo­ple giv­ing to what they believe in. Enhanc­ing a community’s value is impor­tant to every­one and is not just the respon­si­bil­ity of one inter­est group.

The pre­sen­ta­tion was fol­lowed by a ques­tion and answer ses­sion. Some of the ques­tions posed to Pro­fes­sor Mulc­ahy dealt with fur­ther prob­ing the issue of cul­tural entre­pre­neurs. Mulc­ahy answered that entre­pre­neur­ial lead­er­ship should be com­ing from peo­ple work­ing in the cul­tural indus­try who want to form those bonds with stake­hold­ers and cre­ate a com­mu­nity of support.

Audi­ence atten­dance was another con­cern raised in the ques­tion and answer ses­sion. Par­tic­i­pants ques­tioned the dra­matic drop off in the aver­age age of atten­dance at orches­tras and the opera before the age of 47. The prob­lem was thought to be an issue with the for­mal­ity of the venue, not the sub­stance of the art. One par­tic­i­pant cited a study at the Musée des beaux-arts de Mon­tréal which found that the great­est bar­rier to reg­u­lar atten­dance were self-imposed hur­dles and the per­cep­tion of a bar­rier rather than an actual barrier.

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* Ref­er­ence: Sarah S. Mont­gomery and Michael D. Robin­son. “Take me out to the Opera: Are Sports and Arts Com­ple­ments? Evi­dence from the Per­form­ing Arts Research Coali­tion Data,” Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Arts Man­age­ment, Vol. 8, No. 2, Win­ter 2006 pp 24–37.