October 21, 2009
Brooklyn, NY
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Rocco Landesman. Photo by Michael Eastman. |
Hi. It’s good to be back in Brooklyn, where I lived happily for 18 years. If you can linger here for a little while, get to Coney Island, a colorful corner of a vanishing America – which has thankfully been marked for preservation by Amanda Burden and her enlightened colleagues in the New York City government. And you should also get to Peter Lugers for what is without any doubt the best steak known to man.
My wife Debby can’t be here today, she’s at the Salzburg Seminar, but I wish she could be. Her career has been in philanthropy and the very last thing she ever expected of me is that I would become a “grantmaker in the arts.” Needless to say, I never expected it either. However, Debby is, in a way, represented here by another grantmaker, the legendary Joan Shigekawa, whom I found through Debby’s network and whom I selfishly seduced from the Rockefeller Foundation to join me at the NEA. So far, it’s the best move I’ve made.
Our conference title, “Navigating the Art of Change” refers, with some subtlety, to our present circumstances, and since I’m always reading about how blunt I am, I will go along and translate that as “The news is bad.” You don’t need to hear from me the litany about exactly how bad the news is, you live with it every day. Your endowments are devastated; your presidents and boards are steering money away from the arts; corporations, in the interest of better optics, are having to take their names off arts contributions already committed, well, this is starting to sound like a litany.
The rational and perfectly appropriate response to bad news is discouragement. And believe me, I can empathize. I too, have found much to be discouraged about.
I’ve been at the NEA eight weeks and already I have my own litany: the NEA is funding porn in California, the agency has become a propagandist for the Obama Administration programs, and to truly add insult to injury, we’ve been told, vis-à-vis our share of the stimulus money, that we in the arts don’t even work.
One congressman summed up this view perfectly when he stated, “How can we spend 50 million dollars on the National Endowment for the Arts when we could spend that money creating real jobs like building roads?” I should pause here to note that that $50 million is one six-thousandth of one percent of the money in the stimulus bill. But more importantly, if you are, say, a musician who through long study and practice and talent has risen to play first violin in a symphony orchestra, please understand that although you have two kids to put through college, you don’t have a real job. Discouraging? Just a little.
But here’s the thing. The rational and appropriate response is the wrong one. The right response is the irrational and inappropriate one: Optimism. I will elaborate.
My first interview in the White House for the job of Chairman of the NEA was with Valerie Jarrett. I did a rather odd thing. I brought to the interview a prop (I’m a theater guy), which I placed down on the table in front of me. It was a book written 3 decades ago by a zoologist, Lionel Tiger. The title was: “Optimism. The Biology of Hope.” This book made what now seems to me to be an obvious point: that optimism is a core survival mechanism of the species. It may be unrealistic, misguided, maybe even irrational, but vital. It is hardwired into our DNA. Every day we make decisions because we assume–often foolishly and mistakenly–a positive outcome. We get married, have children, buy stocks, bet on horses, change jobs, you name it.
I’m a theatrical producer. Fewer than 20% of the shows that open on Broadway earn back their investment, it is an absolutely terrible business and the people who invest in it know that. So why do they do it? Because they’re optimistic.
Which brings me to President Obama, our Optimist in Chief. He is a writer, an artist but we’ll come to that later. His second book had a title that would resonate with Lionel Tiger: “The Audacity of Hope”. This is much more than a felicitous phrase that he found in a sermon: it is the manifesto of this presidency and will lay the groundwork for the most arts-supportive administration since Roosevelt.
Again, optimism presumes positive outcomes, the exigencies of the real world notwithstanding. The Obama campaign, and now the Obama presidency, has always been about aspiration: the idea that our current reality, our circumstances, if you will, need not determine our future.
This aspiration takes different forms: people will aspire to racial equality or economic security or educational opportunity, or more crassly, to be rich or famous or revered. We dream, we want to do better, to be better. And the most compelling expression of our desire to reach beyond the quotidian is art: the impulse to imagine, to create, to express.
Art is the most optimistic of activities: the ballerina standing en pointe or being thrown high into the air, lovers breaking into song in musicals, painters through history rendering success in war and hunting, or religious imagery or the exuberant discovery of new forms and shapes, the thrilling, spontaneous riff of a jazz saxophonist, the emotional release of comedy, even tragedy in the Aristotelian sense of catharsis and lessons learned.
Optimistic all, a deliverance from necessity and limits and everyday determinism. There is grandeur in art, there is boldness, there is even, to use a loaded word, the possibility of change, and we mortals need that.
Michelle Obama, a passionate advocate for the arts, said in Pittsburgh at the G 20 Summit: “We believe strongly that the arts aren’t somehow an “extra” part of our national life, but instead we feel that the arts are at the heart of our national life.” How true, yet in a sense the arts are an “extra”, not in the sense meant by our congressional critics, but the extra in extraordinary, a necessity if our lives are to be “more than ordinary.”
OK, I’m sure that by now you are all wildly optimistic. Well, maybe not all of you. There might be a couple of you, way in the back, that are saying to yourselves, “That’s all very sweet, very arty, but what does it have to do with the budget of the NEA?”
My answer is pretty simple. There is a new president and a new NEA. The president first. This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.
Candidate Obama was the first in my memory to establish an arts advisory committee and the first to propose an arts policy. President Obama followed that up by making a surprising, out-of-left field choice to head the NEA, a signal I certainly took to mean he wasn’t interested in business-as-usual for the arts. Not long ago he even referenced the NEA when talking about the budget deficit issue. He said, in a speech at Georgetown University: “Let’s not kid ourselves and suggest that we can solve this problem by…cutting the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts.”
And if I have anything to say about it, there is a new NEA. I actually think I’m coming into a better situation than my predecessors did because of the heavy lifting that they’ve already done.
Bill Ivey and Dana Gioia worked tirelessly to build strong relationships on Capitol Hill and to re-establish the NEA as a respected, bipartisan agency with a presence in every state and most Congressional districts. The perception of an NEA Chair cozying up to a select few of the high arts impresarios at galas in New York and Los Angeles is long gone.
The NEA has never been more ubiquitous or more dedicated to the accessibility of the arts for all Americans. But for reasons we all know well, their work, or much of it anyway, was reconstructive. The best policy was “keep your head down, and build your credibility good grant by good grant.”
If there was an unofficial press strategy, it was “no news is good news.” Heaven knows where we’d be today if not for them. But it’s time now to move the ball down the field (yes, I’m a sucker for any sports metaphor) and it’s difficult to do that if you’re always looking over your shoulder to see who might be about to tackle you.
My colleagues in Washington cringe when I use words like “pathetic” and “invisible” and “embarrassing” to describe the NEA budget, so let’s just say that the funds we have to work with are “not that large.” England is the European country that is the worst public supporter of the arts. Their budget? $900 million. That would translate with our population to an NEA budget of $4.6 billion. That’s not going to happen here in my great grand-kids lifetimes. But there are some significant things we can do with even modest amounts of new funding.
So I’m here to tell you today that we have a plan. But since this is America, before you have a plan, you have to have a motto. And it’s not “no news is good news” or the recent “A great nation deserves great art.”
It’s a simple, two-word declaration: “Art works.”
I hope you’ll soon start seeing that logo everywhere. Why “art works?” The fact is that those two words sum up everything we are, or are going to be about, at the NEA. “Art works” is a triple entendre. Of course, “art works” is a noun, which encompasses the very stuff of what we do, the achievements of artists. Great “art works” is the objective of every grant we make.
Secondly, “art works” is a sentence that describes the very activity that I mentioned earlier: art works on and within people to change – that word again – and inspire them, it addresses the need we all have to create, to imagine, to aspire to something more, to become, if only for a few moments, more than we’ve been. It is the most hopeful of human activities. And one of the most essential.
And finally, and maybe most importantly, art works because arts jobs are real jobs. The 5.7 million people who have full-time arts-related jobs in this country are a part of the real economy. They pay taxes and spend money. Obviously. But we’re going to be making a point beyond that. Any discussion of policy for coming out of this recession, any plan that addresses economic growth and urban and neighborhood revitalization has to include the arts. We know, and we can prove, that when you bring art and artists into the center of town, that town changes.
We are in Brooklyn, where right down the street, the Brooklyn Academy of Music has been the catalyst for the transformation of a neighborhood. In a couple of hours I will be at PS 109 in East Harlem, where a former public school in a neighborhood no one wanted to go near, is being made into an art gallery and performance space and what happened? The property values in the surrounding blocks tripled and the tax base increased.
Chattanooga, Tennessee, has been transformed by its arts district. In my home town, St. Louis, Citigarden a public sculpture park, has provided a reason for people to linger downtown rather than just get in their cars after a Cardinals game and drive back to the suburbs.
And Chicago, Illinois? Don’t even get me started. Mayor Daley should be the number one hero to everyone in this country who cares about art because he was a visionary in this field before it was a field.
His work, I should add, began in 1989, 13 years before New York City’s great arts advocate, Mayor Bloomberg, was even elected. Daley spent public money to restore the old vaudeville houses in Chicago and created a bustling, downtown theater district, he built Millennium Park, with its dynamic arts installations, and connected it to the Art Institute of Chicago and now both are powerful attractions for Chicagoans and tourists. It sometimes seems like he has created an arts festival for every neighborhood in the city.
Mayor Daley may love art, but he’s a tough guy, and don’t think he’s not focused every day on the ledger of the city’s economy. Create an arts scene downtown, and small towns have downtowns too, and you change the place. Artists are great place-makers, they are entrepreneurs, and they should be the centerpiece of every town’s strategy for the future. We know now that businesses follows labor, not the other way around.
Strong footnoting to Richard Florida here.
Companies seek a highly skilled workforce and that workforce seeks places with a high quality of life. And at the top of the “quality of life” criteria are education and culture. Business follows people and people follow other people. To twist the great line from “Field of Dreams” (here I am with sports metaphors again), “If you come, they will build it.”
Today, we are announcing that I will spend the next six months visiting neighborhoods and towns all across America, seeing and spotlighting all the ways that art works. I will visit downtown sculpture gardens, art walks along waterfronts, free public performances and exhibitions, historic building renovations, and subsidized artist work spaces and residences.
And I am going to kick off this “art works tour” with a visit to–where else?– Peoria, Illinois on November 6. Carol Coletta, the president of CEOs for Cities will join me in talking with political, civic and arts leaders–including Kathy Chitwood, the head of the Eastlight Theatre who has invited me to see a performance of Rent–and in looking at Peoria’s “warehouse district” that might just be the site of a new MASS MoCA or Marfa.
I already have trips planned to Missouri and Tennessee, and we are setting up visits to California, Idaho, Kentucky and Washington State.
I know firsthand that great art can come from the unlikeliest of places. A few years ago, I visited Eric, Oklahoma, where a museum was being dedicated to one of my idols, the great country music songwriter and singer, Roger Miller. He wrote the music for my first show, “Big River.” While driving the 140 miles from Oklahoma city to Eric, you pass the hometowns of Sheb Wooley, one of the creators of rock and roll, the songwriter Jimmy Webb, and Garth Brooks. What is in the water there? There are certainly no music conservatories, probably precious few music teachers, no colleges, no arts centers, nothing. Just an inexplicable concentration of genius.
But we also need to hear from you. Many of you have been working hard, doing for years what we at the NEA are just starting to talk about now.
And I hope that you will tell us about it. We are opening up a page on the NEA’s web site – www.arts.gov – where each of you, and any of your colleagues can post examples and stories of how art works in your own communities. I will also be posting dispatches from the stops on my tour.
We need to compare notes, we need to get together and find where the best ideas are–in fact we are planning a gathering in the spring on art and neighborhood revitalization and we hope to have your active participation in that–but we need to do more than talk. We need to begin lasting partnerships in this arena, and there is nothing that will give Congress more confidence when appropriations time comes than showing how we–the public and private sectors–are working towards a common purpose.
And we need to start yesterday. Between the time of my nomination and confirmation I reached out to a number of important foundation leaders and my conversations with them were more than encouraging. If there is one thing I’m sure of, it’s that there are great projects, some of them already teed up, that we can work on together and achieve some inspiring early successes. To borrow a line from the Artist in Chief, I’m “fired up and ready to go.”
Am I starting to sound like an advocate? Well, that seems to be a touchy subject. Some quote-unquote “journalists” have recently accused this agency of losing its independence and becoming a propaganda machine. While I want to state in no uncertain terms that the NEA is not a political agency and that when art becomes propaganda I lose all interest in it, I also want everyone to know that the days of a defensive NEA are over. We have a plan and we are going to, quote, “advocate” for it.
Remember, please, that the NEA is an unusual agency within the federal government. We have always been considered the champions of the arts and artists in the public sector. In a sense, we do “advocate” for them in a way that the IRS doesn’t advocate for taxes or the FCC for bandwidth. We promote the arts.
We are grantmakers, not a regulatory or enforcement agency. And will we “advocate” for the President’s agenda as well? If it’s a particular program – e.g. health care reform – no, of course not. But the President picked me for a reason and I decided to go to Washington and sign on with a federal bureaucracy – ugh! – for a reason. And that reason is that within the ethos of this White House, where words like change and hope and aspiration have real meaning, the arts can play a starring role. Whatever might be said on television, radio or blog sites, I have no intention of walking away from the compelling themes of this presidency and a historic opportunity in arts policy.
Will we realize our hopes? Hey, I’m an optimist. I produced “The Producers,” so I’m sure Mel Brooks would give me permission to appropriate and butcher some lines from that show. We are optimistic, irrational, unrealistic and delusional. But we can’t help it. We’re grantmakers in the arts.
On your trip to Memphis, make a visit to the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. It is the city’s flagship museum, with an encyclopedic collection that provides a powerful resource for the various educational institutions in town. Indeed, the museum has become a destination for our diverse population, one historically challenged by differences in race and class. With significant outreach and a changing group of exhibitions, the museum provides a means to reflect on the diversity not just of the United States, but of the world. A good example of this was the recent exhibition of photographs from the Memphis World, a black newspaper from the 1950s and 1960s. The museum interviewed many members of the local community, who appeared in the photographs, to provide a portrait of the city in a perid of historic changes. It was a model for combining scholarship with community building. And the turnout was wonderful. This is one of those great success stories that comes when learning is grounded in the local.
ART WORKS…
I can’t imagine it working without optimism.
Optimism is the fuel of inspiration. Nothing worthwhile in art or science gets done well without them both.
I just wanted to say thank you for reminding us that, sometimes, specially when those times are lean, optimistic encouragement may be the only driving force remaining to sustain good works. Lean times financially can, also, with that optimistic encouragement, like necessity is the mother of invention, be a positive driving force as oppossed and contrasted to surplus… Surplus too often does lead into contented comfort or even excessive waste in many forms.
On your visit to Missouri, we welcome you to the St Louis Artists’ Guild located in a magnificent building at Oak Knoll Park.
Invaluable as a resource for artists of all genres, it is cherished for exhibits such as the Best Hands of Missouri which I attended this weekend.
WOO HOO! I am thrilled to have some one speak so passionately about supporting the arts. Please, please, please don’t screw this up. Certain “journalists” are just waiting for you to slip up.
Thank you so much. I’m looking forward to a new renaissance in American culture….
Susan Bainbridge (working in the arts in Southern California)
Excellent points, and the “art works” theme seems to me to appropriate at a time when all institutions are expected to deliver ROI (Return On Investment). Art works, and not only today, but over the long haul. In one way, the great art of a culture is often the longterm legacy that delivers return on investment for centuries after it is created. When you come to Kentucky, please do not forsake the smaller cities (Elizabethtown, Owensboro, Bowling Green) Often it seems that art investments are concentrated in Louisville and Lexington and much driving is required for the KY citizens to view it if they do not live in these two cities. Distribution of arts investments across the state may even save fuel and reduce carbon emissions by reducing the need to drive! Thank you again for your informative and inspirational remarks.
Roger Conner Jr.
I read the blog with great interest, and was compelled to share.
While walking into Attitude Exact Gallery in Washington, DC– with much too much in my hands, a young man offered to help carry my load. When I looked up to say thank you, He said, “You know me!” I realized that I did, but I remembered his face on a much smaller boy. He beamed as we entered the gallery, and was anxious to show me his work. I marveled as I viewed it. I actually cried. He had been my student, and the gallery was busily preparing his artwork for a show.
Every teacher wonders at one time or another if students are paying attention. As an Art teacher for the District of Columbia Public Schools from 1987-2002, I wondered sometimes if the concepts I was sharing were sinking in and making an impression, or falling on deaf ears, but I was on a mission. I fought the inclination to feel as if my services were merely to provide a planning period for my overworked and underpaid colleagues. I cringed every time I heard the term “special subject” as if Art had no core place in the curriculum, but had to concede that Art really is special. For years there were no text books, so I used the ones from which I studied as a college student, and tailored the lessons in a way that the little ones could understand. After all, Mr. Daniel Austin was nothing if not enthusiastic about Art when I was an elementary school student at Abram Simon School, and I wanted to share that enthusiasm with my students as well. As a student, I don’t ever recall anyone considering the Arts a waste of resources or time.
The helpful young man at the gallery entrance was Shaunte Gates, a former student at the now closed Patricia Roberts Harris Educational Center in SE Washington, DC– all grown up, and a professional visual artist.
Attitude Exact Gallery, a small, but bright light on 8th Street in SE, near Capitol Hill, was a friend to me when I was a teacher. For no charge, the staff happily framed the work of my students for exhibitions, contests and their personal use, and welcomed them any time I happened to bring students in for a visit. It gave the students great pride to see their work so displayed. (Not that there’s anything wrong with refrigerator art!)
I witnessed a great argument in favor of investing in Arts programs in the nation’s public school system. It warmed my heart to see the magnificent paintings of Shaunte Gates, and to know that, yes, someone truly was listening. Kudos to Barry Lester, owner of Attitude Exact for recognizing the importance of extending a hand and opening his business to school children, and for encouraging the careers of local artists. I’m also very proud to share Shaunte’s work, recently commissioned by the Howard University School of Law.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=9561725&l=24658b4166&id=566960141
This optimistic artist took great pleasure in reading your article, Mr. Landesman! Thank you. With the new “Art Works” motto, things have to be looking up! I live in a suburb of Philadelphia Pa, and I encourage you to learn about the many interesting stories from the murals in this area, regarding how art changes lives for the better. The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program (MAP) is one terrific organization that you may want to investigate further.
Headed by Jane Golden, MAP has accomplished an amazing amount of improvements and social change in many parts of the city through community murals. I recently attended a premiere screening of a film co-produced by Jane’s husband, Tony Heriza. Entitled “ConcreteSteelPaint,” this movie portrays the challenge of communication between prisoners and victims of crime.
URL for movie:
http://www.concretefilm.org/
URL for Mural Arts Program:
http://muralarts.org
I optimistically look forward to hearing more about the new Art Works Attitude. Thank you!
When in WA, be sure to visit Seattle and check out the great work happening at The Vera Project. As the lone venue for all-ages music shows, workshops on live and recorded sound, support for visual art in the form of screenprinting and a gallery, and much more it’s a prime example of what kind of good can happen when grass-roots dedication watered w/ good ol’ sweat gains a foothold in local community expression. Plus, it’s volunteer-run by a diverse staff!
I know first-hand the positive change that stems directly from getting kids involved locally w/ music and community-oriented volunteering. It keeps them/us out of trouble and focuses all that exuberant energy on the surrounding environment, be that the city itself or a more internalized notion of community. Good, good stuff that’s EXTREMELY necessary in our times.
I have read and re-read your post over the last week. The executive director of the Arts Council of Kern posted it on her Facebook and I shared from there. Have received thoughtful comments that mainly include the theme, “make sure he comes to Kern County when he comes to California.” Who should we contact regarding dates for your CA trip and possible items for the itinerary?
Check out the Arts Council of Kern website (kernarts.org) and also the Facebook page for Taft Oilworker Monument. The monument will be the largest bronze in CA and has caused a ton of interest in that community and throughout the country because of the artist, Benjamin Victor. The Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra is world-class. An Arts District has been established in downtown Bakersfield and light-pole banners featuring local artists proclaim it.
I have always been a “cock-eyed optimist” and am learning just how much your Art Works idea is right on point. To get more art in schools we have been approaching it from a vocational angle. We have teamed up with our local Regional Center to conduct film workshops (in conjunction with Joey Travolta) for the developmentally disabled. We have mural and signal box projects to stave off graffiti. It is my job to find funding for two summer programs that the underserved exposed to the “optimism” of art, giving them hope to do their work and be the first in their family to attend college.
I enjoyed reading and have been inspired by all the comments here. Am off now to craft our year-end giving strategy with an optimistic ~ Art Works point of view. Thank you and hope to see you in Kern County in 2010!
When you go to Washington be sure to check out the Vera Project. It is one of the most innovative non-profits out there. Not to mention one of the coolest.
Mr. Landesman,
I’d like to invite you to visit the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. The museum’s vision statement—Transforming lives through the power of art—informs everything the museum does. The mission statement lays out our charge to enrich the lives of our diverse community, and we do just that with exhibitions ranging from Jewish Life in Ancient Egypt, and Pissarro: Creating the Impressionist Landscape, to The Quilts of Gee’s Bend.
The museum also recently organized an exhibition deeply personal to our city, which had a profound affect on the community. Photographs from the Memphis World, 1949-1964, highlighted an African American newspaper published in Memphis during the Jim Crow era. One of the most satisfying parts of developing the project was working with community members to identify and locate the individuals pictured, and to conduct oral history interviews with them, which were then excerpted in the catalog and in the exhibit text. I’ll let some of our visitors talk about how meaningful it was to see these photographs on the walls of a museum that was segregated until 1960:
“My hope is that there is more to come of this. Memphis has a history to be proud of. It should showcase it as often as possible and start moving towards a just as proud future.” Melissa B.
“Thank you for displaying history outside of Black History Month. This is what art is all about.” Felicia H.
“Thank you for giving space and sight to art that was once invisible or not privileged. Amazing.” Erin,
As you can see, the Brooks Museum takes seriously the charge to present artistic excellence in an engaging manner that attracts our diverse community. Art Works. We see it here at the museum every day. I hope you’ll come and visit and see that charge being addressed in person.
Marina Pacini
Chief Curator
Not one dime should be stolen from tax payers and spent on the arts. If people want to fund the arts they can reach into their own pocket and fund the arts. Politicians reach into other people’s pockets and then act like they are personally being generous.
Have any of the politicians in DC actually read the Constitution? You cite Europe’s spending on the arts as a comparison to make it seem we are spending too little. Ridiculous. European history of funding the arts is a remnant of the days of monarchs. We were formed as a representative democracy not a monarchy. Beyond that government funding of art (or newspapers, etc) leads naturally to censorship.
I’m sure you’re excited about the new job and all, but I’m going to take issue with this:
“This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.”
What makes you think you can just make stuff up?
Lincoln never wrote a book. There have been many Presidents since Roosevelt to write their own books. Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. JFK accepted a Pulitzer Prize for Profiles in Courage.
For a completely different view and a fact check see…
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/10/024805.php
It’s worth a read. If you get these facts wrong which ones do you get right? Using the people’s money taken by force and away from their families to make art borders on immoral if not downright theft. Why is it those in the art community think it is the role of the government to support art as if it is some higher moral calling. If it has a value, and I believe it does, it will be supported by those people and and private organizations that love it. Our federal deficit for 2009 is 1.8 trillion dollars and 1.4 trillion for 2010. Spending money on non-essentials (and don’t give me “art is essential” – get serious no one dies if the NEA goes away…) is like taking your family to Disney World after you’ve declared bankruptcy.
John B.
Mr. Landesman, you spoke the following:
“There is a new president and a new NEA. The president first. This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.”
First. let’s get the factual mistakes out of the way first. Lincoln never wrote a book. Woodrow Wilson wrote two important scholarly works, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics in 1885
and The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics 1889. Richard Nixon wrote 9 books after he left office, most of which dealt with substantive foreign policy issues — as opposed to the works of our current president, which are about his favorite subject — himself. Finally, I recommend Ronald Reagan’s book — Reagan in His Own Hand — an assemblage of his writings. While not a book per se it demonstrates the power of Reagan’s plain, straigtforward prose.
Second, I know you work for the guy and all, but is it really necessary to do this kind of bootlicking of our President. And comparing him to Julius Caesar? An emperor? You have got to be kidding…but I think you are are hopelessly sincere..and misguided.
“This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.”
Uh — Lincoln didn’t write a book qua book (though his speeches at the Lincoln Douglas debates were later compiled in book format). Wilson, Hoover, Eisenhower, and Nixon (all who were President after TR) all wrote books before becoming President.
More importantly — what is the correlation between having a political leader who is a published author and “good for American artists”? This
isn’t the first time a political leader was a published author prior to becoming a political ruler. Disraeli, Churchill, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, and Havel (among many others) all were published authors prior to assuming power (and I am not comparing Obama in any other way so do not misconstrue my point). I don’t think we look back and say “artists must have had it good — there was an author in power.”
It seems the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premise — Political leader is author does not equal good times for artists.
“But more importantly, if you are, say, a musician who through long study and practice and talent has risen to play first violin in a symphony orchestra, please understand that although you have two kids to put through college, you don’t have a real job. Discouraging? Just a little.”
While I enjoy the symphony and am a struggling musician myself and therefore most definitely appreciate the skill and time vested, perhaps one shouldn’t hitch one’s sole source of income to a government subsidized industry in order to make a living. Economies change and your subsidy may dry up. Just sayin’.
Scary. Art+Government= Corruption, Propaganda.
The “Optimistic” Romantic disease continues…always to be replaced by the “Pessimist” one. It has been in cycles that way in last 250 years.
“Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar”. I understand that you are conflating political power and artistic competence, but the panegyric quality of that statement is still a little disturbing.
I applaud your optimistic attitude and your understanding that “art works”. Please visit ArtWorks while you are in St. Louis to see an example of how art as a workforce development tool is so successful. We have experienced that art works every day for the last 14 years, training hudreds of teens in the arts.
Businees of art? You bet! Check out our award winning social enterprises Boomerang Press and BoomerRacks on our website at http://www.stlartworks.org. A grandparent of one of our youth apprentices told us:
“I really appreciate the fact that my granddaughter was able to participate in the ArtWorks Program. She showed me the paintings she did and I was very impressed. Each year brought a big difference in her drawings. They look so good. I hope that this program stays around for a really long time to help some other students that might want to fulfill a dream as being an artist. Being able to work on art and earn a few dollars helps some kids learn about responsibility.Thanks a bunch. Now off to college she goes.”
ArtWorks works! See you soon and thanks for the message of hope from the top.
Priscilla Block
ART WORKS, but I wonder if it works as well when hidden in a museum or a gallery. Of course, we all know those are absolutely necessary venues to both exhibit and protect the works.
However, and I believe specially during economically strained times, public art like tagging, graffiti, wall murals and even students climbing to post expressions on the “Old Water Tower” (a little exageration) need more of our attention if such young and impressionable expressions, often made out of frustration, are ever going to be cultivated and given equal opportunities to grow. I think the existing programs currently making attempts to provide just such mentoring and opportunities need to be expanded during these times.
After all, you and I may be feeling the crunch financially, but can we even imagine how much more destitute and frustrated, those who had next to nothing before, are feeling now… I am sure there are enough of us out here that can remember the first time we were out of materials with no means to acquire any and had either a major school project due or an unprecedented opportunity to exhibit some new but unfinished work.
Or maybe, we just had an epiphany with no materials to capture that first inspiration… What will they do? What did you do?
Sorry, Since Abe Lincoln never wrote a book, President Grant’s memoirs is the best presidential book.
BTW, I’ve read Gallic Commentaries, milites, impedimenta et al., and Dreams from My Father. Barack Obama is no Julius Caesar.
Mr. Landesman -
Please check your facts.
“This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln.”
Truman wrote his own (very successful) memoirs. Hoover wrote fifteen books, and then there was his translation from the Latin of “De re Metallica”. Wilson wrote “Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics”. Teddy wrote thirty-eight, including “The Naval War of 1812″ which is still in print and highly regarded. And between Lincoln and Teddy there was Grant’s “Personal Memoirs”, a masterpiece.
And, forgive me, but the following is just fatuous (and sounds sycophantic):
“If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. ”
I guess this works if you are only counting from when the U.S. became the most powerful country, so that way you can leave out Jefferson, Madison, et al. So since that can only be since WWII or so, Obama’s only competition then is Truman.
Get back to us when one of Obama’s books is still held in high regard for its writing quality, in say, 100+ years.
Great! Another tool of Obama. Calling Obama one of the greatest writers? Sheesh!
I’m 100% for increasing the budget of the NEA. I’m a Democrat, and happen to be an art teacher in HS.
But keep Obama’s agenda out of this.
Here’s to the day when all the money wasted on the NEA is used to build bombers.
“Second, I know you work for the guy and all, but is it really necessary to do this kind of bootlicking of our President. And comparing him to Julius Caesar? An emperor? You have got to be kidding…but I think you are are hopelessly sincere..and misguided.”
Yes. It is necessary. NBC does it. Chris Matthews does it. Time does it. CBS does it. GE does it. We all gonna do it.
What Dennis says is true and you need to check your facts before putting them on paper. The President of NEA not fact checking is own work….shaking my head. Isn’t the cornerstone of a good writer to check his work for accuracy. If so you Fail.
You can know get out from under Julius Ceasar’s desk…
Why don’t you artists do your creative stuff on your own dime — enough of us taxpayers supporting your garbage — you do what you want with YOUR money, and more power to you for that. Is Nobama going to pay for your work from HIS pocket?!! Absolutely not. Progressives are those folks who know what exactly to do with OTHER PEOPLE”S money!!! Shame on you artists — there is no difference between you and panhandlers on the street. You guys are a bunch of (creative) thugs, who are using the power of government to steal money from your fellow citizens/. Have you guys no conscience?!!
You wrote “I did a rather odd thing. I brought to the interview a prop… a book written 3 decades ago… title was: “Optimism. The Biology of Hope.”
You went with “Hope” for your job interview. Brilliant!
Being of the arts, and a self supporting artist who makes a living on his own merits, I am embarassed at the comment about Julius Caeser. This is a gratuitous payback for the NEA’s embarassing telephone “outing” of a few weeks ago. Art should stand on its own; to be a success or a failure. This is, in itself, a comment on our society….”Help me I can’t make it on my own”, and is an insult to the many people who are physically and mentally challenged and really need our help.
We look forward to your successes and the fulfillment of your goals. Art works. Art is essential. My family is Southern, Christian Conservative – and we have two very artistic children. We have them in a private school for many reasons – one being the Arts program that are otherwise vanishing elsewhere. Our school is building a new theater – the only one of its kind in our County in Alabama – and we will share it with the community.
My family loves the Arts. However, when ANYONE uses a passion of others to press a political agenda, it becomes poison fruit. Please work to further the Arts. President Obama is not your leader or savior. For many of us, he is the tree.
Mr. Landesman, I understand you are committed to the arts and passionate especially about getting funding. And I respect your efforts. This has for millennia been a fact of the art world: one must attract and retain patrons with lots of money. But it would be better, even for your own purposes, if you were not quite so fulsome (in a buttered-and-deep-fried way) in your flattery of the powerful. It reads like parody.
Thank you.
If art “works,” why does it need government money to survive? If that first violinist is so great, why won’t anyone pay to hear her? The NEA is a pack of leaches who will trade integrity for government dollars — you’ve all become shills for the Obama administration in exchange for a dribble of dollars.
Now, I’m sure you’re all ideologically predisposed to like Socialism (hey, if I was a first violinist I’m sure I’d want to redistribute some dollars, too), but this is just beyond the pale.
“And Chicago, Illinois? Don’t even get me started. Mayor Daley should be the number one hero to everyone in this country………”-No comment needed.
If “art works” then let it compete in a free market.
Please check your math. If $50 million is one six-thousandths of one percent of the stimulus bill, then the stimulus bill would have to be $30 trillion. I came here willing to consider your ideas, but when you get sixth-grade math wrong, I’m afraid it casts a bad light on the veracity of everything else you write.
“We are optimistic, irrational, unrealistic and delusional. But we can’t help it. We’re grantmakers in the arts.” Sort of sounds like you are bragging. I suggest you “change” to balanced, rational, realistic, with creative vision. Keep in mind that balancing resources is what private free markets do best. Government, through operation of laws that actually enhance free markets and legal order, create the social and economic climate that the arts can share.
Get a part-time job, failing artists. Have you ever thought there may be too many artists? A lot of artists who are not very good? We have hungry and sick people that are currently being neglected, but yeah, President Obama likes the arts so why not waste money on something that does nothing but perpetuate a group of bottom-feeders.
Hmmm, 0bama a great writer. How is that possible, his books are ghost-written, and his speeches, unlike the great communicator Ronald Reagan, are not written by himself, he merely reads a teleprompter.
Indeed I love and support the arts, being a registered and practicing Architect, however 0bama is no artist, but I’ll give credit where credit is due if he in fact maintains the NEA, with one caveat; as a Judeo Christian country, “art” should not violate Christianity, especially if we are not allowed to do the same for the minority of this country; like Islam or such.
NEA go away and take the funding away from PBS and NPR too, pay your own way.
Look to the NEA to get plenty of tax payer’s money or “grants” for endorsing the Commander in Chief. It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.
“”However, and I believe specially during economically strained times, public art like tagging, graffiti, wall murals and even students climbing to post expressions on the “Old Water Tower” (a little exageration) need more of our attention if such young and impressionable expressions, often made out of frustration, are ever going to be cultivated and given equal opportunities to grow.”"
I hope you are joking but I fear you are not. Graffiti is vandalism pure and simple. Would you mind if one of them wrote all over your house – but I bet you rent so you probably wouldn’t.
Taggers are recon groups for gangs.
I knew Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was a friend of mine. Barack Obama, you’re no Julius Caesar.
Gag me with a spoon – the Pres didn’t write those books, they were written by others. On top of that, the sheer syruppy-sweet worshipping at the feet of Obama makes me want to cry. Instead I will pray for all artists, “forgive them Lord for they know NOT what they do.”
The NEA cares nothing about art but only about itself. Reference Obama’s call for “art” that pushes “agenda” and the NEA’s grateful and willing acceptance of it. You denigrate all artists with such amazingly useless leadership.
Shame on you for tossing morals and ethics under the bus. As an industry you need to man up.
I applaud you for keeping the art a bipartisan mission. Art endures long past other elements of our society. Books, especially, played an important role in exposing the reality of repressive regimes that hid behind propaganda. As a Conservative, I love art because it is an expression of the individual in its purest form. Art can only come from people, not from Government. As Government in the United States continues to swell and encroach in our lives, we need the artist more than ever to give voice to the individual. You have my support, and after saying art bores you once it becomes propaganda you have my trust. Good luck with your term.
Can it really be art, if sponsored by politicians and selected by bureaucrats? If the nation does wish to sponsor art, make it tax deductible, and let individuals chose the art they wish to support — better yet, let people only support that which moves them. There is something very wrong about the idea of art being dependent on approval of the state — the temptation to engage in propaganda would be almost overwhelming, even if it is only a subconscious impulse to seek approval from the bureaucrat in charge of dispensing money.
Can you honestly claim the NEA avoids impulses toward propaganda? Can you look at your own motives, and not see that you might support art which promotes social service, or tolerance, and not support an artwork which glorifies industry or free-enterprise, not on the merits of the work, but rather on the viewpoint?
I cannot see how it would be possible to operate a Federal endowment for the arts, and not have it become merely a means of promoting propaganda. Do we support performances of Beethoven’s “5th”, but not Handel’s “Messiah,” because of the religious message? Even though much of the greatest artwork in history has had a religious theme? What about the political fall-out from funding a work which glorifies the love between gay men? How can you possibly claim to promote art, when you are a branch of the government, constrained by political considerations?
If there’s to be any legitimate use of such funds, they’d have to be limited to teaching technique to young artists, and even then, there are still innumerable political hurdles.
Art is emotion, and an expression of the soul, and, while I could see an artist finding a individual or a small group who shares his vision, as artists have found throughout history, the state does not change. The state requires the artist to change, and to ignore, and suppress his inspiration — whatever the result might be, no matter how skilled, it will have a taint of ugliness and repression about it.
“Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar.”
In addition to the presidential authors listed above, Calvin Coolidge translated Dante – and did a pretty good job, too.
As for “most powerful writers”, that Stalin fellow wrote a fair bit in his day, As did Lenin, Hitler, and Mao. I am NOT comparing President Obama to them, except to point out that they were writers who were far more powerful than he is: and none of those gentlemen were good for the arts in any way, shape, or form. Skill at writing and the wielding of political power does not automatically translate into a healthy arts environment.
Mr. Landesman,
I share many of your thoughts regarding the arts on a whole, their value to society and the love and dedication required my its practicioners. However, I, too, agree with many of Dennis’ thoughts concerning what, to my eyes, reads as little more than sycophantic hagiography of the sitting President. Besides those examples he provides, allow me to direct your attention to the works of former presidents I suspect you may not have read, those of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. I have no intent to discuss relative merit, quality or importance of any of these books, but use them mearly to question why you should choose to make such an easily rebutted statement as a build-up to blatant hero-worship.
Beyond that, I can’t help but wonder why, so shortly after bemoaning the allegations that “the agency has become a propagandist for the Obama Administration programs” you promptly choose to provide additional fuel to that very fire by genuflecting before the anointed leader. I can understand the you may like President Obama personally and may strongly support his initiatives, and that is certainly your prerogative and I will ever defend it. But you appear tin-eared in the extreme and wooden in your approach to your responsibilities vis-a-vis the public moneys you receive and distribute to off-handedly dismis the fact that of your fellow citizens, the very people who fill the coffers from which you dole out grants, are not as slavishly full of praise for the One.
You obliquely refer to the recent NEA conference call that resulted in the removal of Yosi Sergant and which the White House itself deemed “inappropriate,” yet cast it off as just another slander. Sir, it is no slander, but is instead an indictment of your organization and should be a grave warning of public sentiment. I believe that most Americans, like me, share an appreciation for the arts and that which lifts our souls, but I also believe that most Americans are deply suspicious of any government agency using their own money to tell then how and what to think. The more you and the NEA ignore this and fail to proactively work to suppress politicization of publically funded arts, the more you do so at the peril of squandering public support.
I understand you passion, but this speech does nothing to further the cause of public funding for the arts. It only adds to the perception of political bias and fans the flames of suspicions of propagandistic intent. I’m not sure what the opposite of “bravo” is, but that’s exactly what I’m thinking.
To build on Dennis’ comments: Presidential alter ego Ted Sorensen actually wrote “Profiles in Courage,” not JFK as is commonly thought. Kennedy claimed the Pulitzer and Sorensen received no credit at all until some reasearchers did some digging a few years ago.
As for Obama being the “most powerful writer” since Julius Caesar; I would suppose, then, that we can sweep Shakespeare, Swift, Marcus Aurelius, Huxley, St. Augustine, Dickens, Orwell and scores of others under the bus along with so many others who don’t supplicate themselves before the angst-ridden Hamlet that now sits and dithers in the Oval Office.
$50 million may not seem like much to you, but it is to me and the rancid argument that Europe is somehow the repository of all that’s cultural and pure is insulting. The Europe that gave us Da Vinci and Van Gogh is the same Europe that gave the world socialism, fascism, communism, nazism and a menu of imperialistic transgressions that would choke a goat.
Artists can paint to their hearts content and ballerinas can weave their magic to the delight of all; just don’t ask me to pay for the paint and the tutus.
Personally, your post is an excellent reason to defund the National Endowwment for the Arts. It has become a propaganda tool for ANY administration, but especially this one. If you don’t play ball with the government, no extra funding for you.
If your “art” won’t stand on it’s own merits, then good luck making a living at it. The government has no place in giving grants to artists. If you can’t sell, then you can’t make a living, the government doesn’t owe artist, or anyone else for that matter a ‘living’.
Richard Vail, Ph.D.
Pikesville, MD
> While driving the 140 miles from Oklahoma city to Eric, you pass the hometowns of Sheb Wooley, one of the creators of rock and roll, the songwriter Jimmy Webb, and Garth Brooks. What is in the water there? There are certainly no music conservatories, probably precious few music teachers, no colleges, no arts centers, nothing. Just an inexplicable concentration of genius.
And the NEA is no where to be found.
Yes, Americans do produce genius, but the NEA doesn’t.
No, the NEA isn’t the biggest pile of govt waste and pork, but if the best argument you’ve got is that other countries waste more….
If Chicago, St. Louis, Chattanooga, or any place else thinks that setting up an arts district will improve its community, great. Let them pay for it. If they’re correct, they’re the ones who will reap the rewards.