Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States (The Public Life of the Arts)

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Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States

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Rutgers Series on the Public Life of the Arts A series edited by Ruth Ann Stewart Margaret Jane Wyszomirski Joni Maya Cherbo Joni M. Cherbo and Margaret J.Wyszomirski, eds., The Public Life of the Arts in America Jan Cohen-Cruz, Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the United States Kate Fitz Gibbon, ed., Who Owns the Past?: Cultural Policy, Cultural Property, and the Law Diane Grams and Betty Farrell, eds., Entering Cultural Communities: Diversity and Change in the Nonprofit Arts Lawrence Rothfield, ed., Unsettling “Sensation”: Arts Policy Lessons from the Brooklyn Museum of Art Controversy Susan Scafidi, Who Owns Culture?: Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law

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Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States Edite d by Joni Maya Che rbo Ruth Ann Stewart Margaret Jane Wyszomir ski

Rutge r s Unive r sity Pre ss New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London

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In memory of Milton C. Cummings Jr. Scholar, Mentor, Colleague, and Friend

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Understanding the arts and creative sector in the United States / edited by Joni Maya Cherbo, Ruth Ann Stewart, Margaret Jane Wyszomirski. p. cm. — (Rutgers series on the public life of the arts) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8135-4307-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8135-4308-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Arts and society—United States. 2. Cultural industries—United States. 3. Art patronage—United States. 4. Government aid to the arts—United States. 5. United States—Cultural policy. 6. Arts—United States—Management. I. Cherbo, Joni Maya, 1941- II. Stewart, Ruth Ann, 1942- III. Wyszomirski, Margaret Jane. NX180.S6U53 2008 700.1⬘030973—dc22 2007033580 A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library This collection copyright © 2008 by Rutgers,The State University Individual chapters copyright © 2008 in the names of their authors All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099.The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu Manufactured in the United States of America

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Conte nts

Acknowledgments Introduction

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1

Joni Maya Che rbo

Part I 1

De fining the Arts and creative Sector

Toward an Arts and Creative Sector

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Joni Maya Che rbo, Harold L. Voge l, and Margaret Jane Wyszomir ski 2

Interrelations in the Arts and Creative Sector

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Chris N. Burge ss and David B. Pankratz 3

Field Building: The Road to Cultural Policy Studies in the United States

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Margaret Jane Wyszomir ski

Part II 4

Fie ld Issue s

The Universality of the Arts in Human Life

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Elle n Dissanayake 5

About Artists

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Joni Maya Che rbo 6

Art and Cultural Participation at the Heart of Community Life

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Maria Ro sario Jackson 7

The Arts and Artist in Urban Revitalization

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Ruth Ann Stewart v

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Contents

The Evolution of Arts and Cultural Districts

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Ann M. Galligan 9

Capital, Commerce, and the Creative Industries

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Harold L. Voge l 10

Internet as Medium: Art, Law, and the Digital Environment

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Phu Nguye n 11

Historic Preservation in the United States

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Antoinette J. Le e 12

Between Cooperation and Conflict: International Trade in Cultural Goods and Services

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J. P. Singh 13

Identity and Cultural Policy

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Kevin V. Mulcahy Notes on Contributors

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Acknowle dgme nts

IT TAKES A VILLAGE to make a book, and the editors of this volume would like to acknowledge the contributions and assistance of key persons who helped bring this book to fruition.Three people in particular were essential in helping us turn a set of diverse contributions into a proper book: Marlie Wasserman, director of Rutgers University Press, has been a steady source of support, practical advice, and patience throughout the long process of putting this volume together.We are truly grateful for her encouragement and her continuing commitment to our Rutgers University Press series,The Public Life of the Arts. Christina Brianik, assistant to the director and permissions and subsidiary rights manager, has managed the complex administrative details of the book, including contracts and contract revisions and the reformatting of the final manuscript.Vivian Yela, administrative assistant to Ruth Ann Stewart at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, was indispensable in the final stages of the manuscript, reformatting and synchronizing chapters to help transform them into a consistent whole. In addition, we thank two doctoral students from Ohio State University— WoongJo Chang and Minha Lee—for the assistance they provided to Margaret Jane Wyszomirski in designing and executing the graphic figures that appear in chapters 1 and 3.We are also most grateful to our colleague Robert Leighninger of Arizona State University, whose historical essay on the origins and development of the conference group Social Theory, Politics and the Arts (STPA), helped inform chapter 3. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the commitment and expertise of our contributors and the influence and support of our colleagues and friends in the field. Over the years, many of the ideas articulated in sections of this book have benefited from informal discussions, formal presentations and comments, and continuing network connections with the scholars and practitioners who meet regularly at scholarly conferences, especially STPA, the International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies (IFACCA), the International Consortium for Cultural Policy Research (ICCPR), and the Association for Cultural Economics International (ACEI).We hope they will find this collection thought-provoking and useful in teaching the next generation of students of arts and cultural policy. vii

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Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States

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Introduction

Joni Maya Cherbo

CAN YOU IMAGINE contemporary life without art? Look around: almost everyone is doing something that could be considered artistic! Kids are drawing, presenting plays in school, taking band or ballet after school, and playing video games galore. Teenagers are listening to popular music, downloading and sharing tunes on iPods, and going to rock, rap, and country music concerts. People of all ages are attending opera, dance, theater, and symphony performances as well as art fairs and gallery openings. Most Americans are avid moviegoers, renting films for home use, watching them on television and, increasingly, on computers. When Americans travel, they visit cultural institutions and sites. When foreigners visit our shores, cultural fare is a primary attraction. Americans engage in arts hobbies such as photography, weaving, painting, and ballroom dancing. They frequent book clubs and take classes in the arts. Many engage in designing their homes and gardens, while some participate in volunteer work or join boards and committees of arts organizations. The arts are an integral part of Americans’ holidays and personal celebrations. The Fourth of July, for example, is celebrated by concerts, parades with marching bands, the display of flags and fireworks, and singing of the national anthem. Traditional weddings are decorative events. Couples exchange rings to mark their union. They and their families select floral arrangements, a dinner menu, a tiered cake, and bridal and bridesmaids’ gowns. Music is chosen for the walk down the aisle to take their vows. Every aspect of contemporary American life has an aesthetic or creative dimension. Our culture industries are thriving. The United States boasts worldrenowned opera companies, arts museums, symphony orchestras, theaters, and dance troupes that are a source of both national and local pride. Most are organized as nonprofit arts institutions, of which there are about 100,000 in this country. Our commercial arts, in particular the movie and recording industries, are internationally dominant. Five entertainment moguls run the movie industry and own numerous communication companies—TV and radio stations, live theatrical operations, and publishing houses. Broadway, the 1

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“fabulous invalid,” continues to be a domestic and international tourist magnet. Video games have become the fastest growing of all the culture industries. Many young people aspire to be artists—painters, actors, singers, dancers, film directors, screen writers, and animators. Arts programs in higher education institutions have exploded since the 1970s to accommodate these aspirations, and cities all over the country proudly claim at least one high school devoted to music and art. American movies are perhaps the dominant art form of our era as measured in terms of popularity and economic impact. Hollywood is an icon. Movie stars are celebrities. We are fascinated with their lives and their looks. The abundance of theater complexes and affordable ticket prices make movies an art form accessible to everyone. Accompanying this success are numerous questions regarding the role of the arts and culture in American life as well as a host of issues of national and international import. For example: ■

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Did a wide array of art forms and arts activities exist in other times and places historically, or is an expansive arts establishment distinctive to contemporary American life? What should we consider “art,” and who is an “artist”? Is tattooing an art form? Are videos? Would Pomo Indian basket makers be considered artists in their traditional culture? Did the craftspersons who created the extensive terra-cotta army for the mausoleum of Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (his reign was 247–221 BC) consider themselves artists? When did “art making” begin in human history? Has rescinding the 1995 Financial Interest and Syndication rule that allowed for media consolidation created undue power among a handful of entertainment/media companies? Are our entertainment moguls poised to become entertainment czars who can control content and distribution? Should everyone in our nation be given the opportunity to cultivate an interest in the classical arts, which has historically been a major rationale for subsidizing the nonprofit arts? About 40 percent of the population claim they attend a high art event at least once a year, but these attendees are mainly white, better educated, and in higher-income brackets than the general population. Are these art forms hangovers from our European heritage? Should they be considered better or higher than the popular arts and entertainment? Do they warrant public subsidies to encourage audience participation? American films are highly popular abroad. Many nations resent their popularity, referring to it as cultural imperialism, and impose restrictions to protect their native movie industries. What is the widespread

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appeal of American films? Why can they be so controversial abroad? Does our commitment to freedom of expression—including sexual explicitness and untrammeled violence in films—cross the limits of propriety for some countries? How do restrictions on American films abroad impact free trade negotiations? What is the lure of the arts for college students? Although they are aware of the high risk and often irregular pay involved in pursuing an artistic career, they continue to pursue degrees in the arts. Can the workforce accommodate the bulk of our art school graduates? What careers do these graduates pursue after graduation other than becoming artists? Artistic fare is easily accessible on the Internet, encouraging creative collaborations across borders and artistic disciplines. Insofar as copyright laws differ between select countries, how does the world community protect and promote artistic creation while making it publicly accessible in the digital era? How can society balance a need to preserve authentic cultural traditions, historic buildings and sites, and treasured artworks with the need to encourage current creativity in cultural communities in order to maintain living cultures?

An extensive organizational infrastructure sustains the arts in the United States. It includes numerous national, state, and local government departments and agencies with arts and arts-related programming—fifty state and six territorial arts agencies, and numerous local and six regional arts agencies. These entities create laws, enact regulations, provide appropriations for the arts, and establish arts programs. The infrastructure also includes about four thousand nongovernmental organizations such as arts unions and trade/service/advocacy associations that set standards and assist artists and nonprofit as well as commercial arts organizations within and across artistic disciplines. Furthermore, a wide range of occupations is necessary to make the arts happen. Intermediaries such as art dealers, foundations that give grants to the arts, agents for actors and writers, and entertainment and copyright attorneys are essential to the workings of the arts sector. Costume, set, and lighting designers, music publishers, instrument makers, auction houses, paint suppliers, copy editors, arts educators, and arts managers—to mention a few—provide crucial expertise, services, and equipment for the arts and creative sector. Clearly, the arts are a substantial sector in American life. Yet historically each art form has primarily focused on and collected data for its own constituents. While in reality there is a lot of interaction among artists, artsrelated personnel, and arts institutions as well as issues that are relevant across artistic disciplines, the arts have yet to think of themselves as part of a larger

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community or a sector. Contributing to these silos are schools of higher education that offer programs and degrees within a specific art form or discipline but only discuss cultural policies that affect their specific field, failing to identify with the larger sector and its issues. This book uses the concept of an arts and creative sector to bring coherence to the variety and interrelations of the many silos of artistically creative activity in contemporary American society. The concept of an arts and creative sector also provides a platform upon which we can survey the expanse of policies—public and private—that address and affect this sector. In Part I, “Defining the Arts and Creative Sector,” Joni Maya Cherbo, Harold L. Vogel, and Margaret Jane Wyszomirski in chapter 1 discuss some precedents in creating an arts and creative sector construct in the United States. They outline the contours of the sector, discuss the value of looking at the totality of the arts from a sectoral vantage point, and provide some facts and information on two components of the sector—the nonprofit and commercial arts. In chapter 2 Chris N. Burgess and David B. Pankratz show the frequent and broad interrelationship between many parts of the sector as well as between the arts and other nonartistic endeavors. Chapter 3, by Margaret Jane Wyszomirski, defines and exemplifies what is meant by cultural policy and traces the history and development of cultural policy studies within American academia. Part II, “Field Issues,” addresses a number of key arts issues and policies that pertain to creators, community life, and the national and international agenda. Chapter 4, by Ellen Dissanayake, reminds us of the centrality of the arts in human life documented as early as one hundred thousand years ago, and its continuing importance to human society. Joni Maya Cherbo in chapter 5 summarizes research on the status and support structure for contemporary artists, noting their specific career needs and some public and private initiatives that have addressed these needs. Maria Rosario Jackson in chapter 6 reports on her research on community participation in the arts, casting new light on the salutary effects of culture on civic engagement, economic development, education, and community cohesion. Chapter 7, by Ruth Ann Stewart, discusses the historical role of the arts in the development of cities and recent efforts to revitalize urban centers utilizing innovative arts-based planning strategies. Ann M. Galligan in chapter 8 zeroes in on the viability of cultural districts as a strategy to reinvigorate local economies in tandem with helping artists and arts institutions. Harold L.Vogel in chapter 9 dons the hat of a cultural economist, reminding us of the importance of access to capital and funding in the production of art. In chapter 10 Phu Nguyen takes on the legal complexities created by the Internet concerning cultural productivity. Chapter 11, by Antoinette J. Lee, provides a historical overview of heritage and preservation policies, emphasizing the public–private partnerships approach that has

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marked historical preservation policy in the United States. In chapter 12, J. P. Singh brings us into the international arena with his review of cultural trade treaties and the controversies and mechanisms that propel today’s $1.7 trillion trade in cultural goods and services. Kevin V. Mulcahy in chapter 13 wrestles with identity challenges faced by postcolonial and multiethnic nations in formulating and implementing cultural policies. As conceived here, the arts and creative sector is expansive. Mapping it in its entirety and identifying its wide-ranging issues and policies is beyond our allotted space, combined capabilities, and stamina. Rather, we offer a new vantage point along with a smorgasbord of illustrative examples. Ours is a holistic approach, premised on the fact that the arts are an integral part of the fabric of our social life—integral to the nation, to the functioning of community life, and to individual well-being. Based on the conviction that the arts are essential to our social well-being, we contend that they warrant serious study, discussion, and policy consideration that can best be served by viewing them not only within their distinct discipline, but as parts of a larger whole. Consider this book serious entertainment.

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Pa r t O n e

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Defining the Arts and Creative Sector

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Chapte r 1


Joni Maya Cherbo, Harold L. Vogel, and Margaret Jane Wyszomirski

The American Economy is becoming a knowledge-based one in which new technologies are connecting individuals and firms in ways that have never before been feasible. It feeds an ever-growing appetite for entertainment, media, and related content that requires the participation of artists and commercial and nonprofit arts organizations. Increasingly, technology is contributing to our potential prosperity as well as to the richness of our civic, social, and personal lives. We hear reference to the creative economy, creative cities, creative industries, concepts that reflect a common belief in the importance of innovation as an essential engine of economic and social development and integral to community and personal satisfaction in the emerging global knowledge-based economy. In recent years, the arts, taken in the aggregate, are coming to be understood as a distinct societal sector—a cluster of related arts and arts-related industries that require for production a pool of talented and skilled individuals who, along with ancillary organizations, provide products and services integral to the workings of the creative industries. Individual artists and arts organizations have tended to cluster in silos, frequently by discipline, and have viewed their concerns in insular ways. Despite such segregation, there has always been a good deal of interactivity within the arts sector: actors work in both nonprofit and commercial theater, arts managers work closely with arts service organizations and arts-sponsoring foundations, books can become plays or movies. Furthermore, the rapidly increasing interconnectivity of the digital world has led to many new opportunities for interaction between different areas of the arts. What is new is the increasing consciousness of this interconnectivity and the challenge of viewing the sector as an interactive whole. Under this new construct, the arts are gaining the attention vested in 9

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C h e r b o , Vo g e l , a n d Wy s z o m i r s k i

other formally identified sectors such as agriculture, education, and health. The arts, in all their diverse global manifestations, create wealth and jobs and permeate most areas of our social life. They are expressions of human creativity; confer personal, community, and national identification; and are sources of entertainment, spiritual enhancement, and international understanding. As arts workers begin to see themselves as part of a larger whole, they will better understand the relevance of certain policy issues, not just to their own interests but to other parts of the sector as well as the larger public interest. This recognition is occurring now for a number of reasons, in particular because certain contemporary issues are bringing otherwise diverse parties together. For instance, in the information age, the arts and other content-rich activities often take the form of intellectual property (IP), which has become a key economic resource and an issue that cuts across many arts disciplines. The arts are not only generators of IP but also stewards of vast stockpiles of cultural content such as museum collections, historical archives, performing arts repertoire, image archives, and film and music archives. In a similar vein, international trade issues are applicable to movies and music and the concern of many service organizations and unions.Visa rules apply to the exchange of artists from both the commercial and nonprofit arts. Heritage and preservation policy impacts on the nation’s identity and cultural tourism from around the globe. It is becoming increasingly clear that looking at the arts through the broader sectoral lens can have many benefits. It can widen and deepen our knowledge of how cultural affairs work, help us devise better cultural policies, and facilitate advocacy coalitions. Bill Ivey, former National Endowment for the Arts Chairman, remarked: Our concentration on the nonprofit refined arts has left “culture” as the only component of American pubic policy that has not yet been gathered into a coherent whole. We’ve resisted being pulled into a broader set of cultural questions. . . . By advancing a public interest only in relation to the nonprofit arts, we have abandoned the larger arts system to the unfettered forces of the marketplace and that abdication of engaged policy leadership is generating negative consequences for artists, art, and the public interest . . . we must take on new challenges—draw a bigger, more inclusive map of America’s arts system, redefine the “public interest” in relation to the arts, and identify new points of leverage and new intervention strategies. (Ivey 2005) When an issue is not sequestered in a particular area, its wider effects can be examined and better understood. Since the Iraq War, the credibility of the United States has been severely challenged. We have become painfully aware of the need for enhanced diplomatic efforts, including cultural diplomacy.

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Government cultural diplomacy initiatives rarely take into consideration that American films and television programs unwittingly have become the most widespread emissaries of American culture abroad, which has both benefits and liabilities. The violence and sexual freedom in much American media is offensive to many peoples.Yet much of American pop culture has magnetic appeal to the young around the globe. Surely a better road map for cultural diplomacy initiatives would take into consideration the entire array of U.S. art fare available worldwide. Copyright issues, as mentioned, cut across all the arts in the sector—from analog artistic products such as books, plays, and songs to digital products such as video games—and include institutions that hold the copyrights of artistic creations, such as movie studios, recording companies, and individuals and organizations that put up risk capital to fund a project. Other players, such as set designers or directors whose work has forged a new vision or interpretation of a production, have also made the case that their creative contributions deserve copyright protection. Protecting digital material is especially complicated. Copyright law is a complex balancing act that tries to serve the general public interest, protect and encourage artistic creators, and protect the business interests of the owners of intellectual properties. It is governed by the Berne Convention, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and rules and regulations in different countries to implement and enforce international agreements. The globalization of telecommunications capabilities and the digitalization of much intellectual property has so changed the environment that many argue that the copyright system as it is presently conceived and practiced is increasingly outmoded and in need of substantial revision. Motivated by a shared concern, commercial film studios, record companies, and their respective unions and service organizations (the Motion Picture Association of American and the Recording Industry of America) have worked together to combat domestic and international copyright infringements or piracy. Similarly, ten unions that represent many different workers in the arts sector recently joined together to enhance their ability to negotiate favorable contracts for their workers. When the Reagan administration threatened to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts in 1981, many parts of the arts sector—nonprofit arts organizations, nonprofit service organizations, public arts agencies, academics involved in cultural policy, and foundation practitioners—joined forces to protect the agency’s existence. Mapping the Arts and Creative Sector Past Efforts The centrality of culture and the arts to the knowledge-based economy has prompted a handful of scholars and practitioners from different countries as well as the Council of Europe and UNESCO to define what constitutes an

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arts-based sector. Although working assumptions, guiding frameworks, the inclusion of particular industries, jobs, services, and products, and sector names may vary, the impetus to define and map this sector is increasing. The United Kingdom (UK) remains the frontrunner in mapping the creative industries in terms of collecting data on the sector, developing policy initiatives, and making the sector more economically productive. According to a 2005 report, the creative industry is the core business of London, contributing more than 50 percent of London’s business activity. Revising and refining what is meant by creative industries remains an ongoing endeavor in the UK (Roodhouse 2006). Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as well as most European countries have also developed sector concepts, data, and initiatives pertaining to their creative industries. Many developing countries have formulated a creative industries framework, but their models do not track entirely with Western forms. China, India, Japan, and Korea all have defined their creative industries somewhat distinctly, emphasizing some parts of the sector over others and excluding or including different parts. Brazil has been central to the discourse on world policy for the creative industries and will headquarter the permanent International Forum for Creative Industries. Nationally, focus on the arts or creative industries in the United States has been meager to date. We still have not yet recognized the potential of looking at the arts as a sector and the benefits of so doing for cultural policy considerations.That said, there have been a few attempts to do this. For example, one of the main topics of the 1997 American Assembly, “The Arts and the Public Purpose,” was the extent of the arts sector in the United States.The Assembly “estimated conservatively that if one included the commercial, not-for-profit and informal areas of the sector[,] consumer spending in 1995 would be in the vicinity of about $180 billion dollars or 2.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). If the copyright industries were included these numbers would double.” Another example was a conference entitled “The International Creative Sector: Its Dimensions, Dynamics, and Audience Development,” held in June 2003 in Austin, Texas. It was sponsored by UNESCO, the United States Department of State, the Center for Arts and Culture, the University of Texas at Austin, College of Fine Arts, the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Its primary charge was to look at definitions of the creative sector and cultural industries. The 2007 Americans for the Arts report, “Creative Industries: Business and Employment in the Arts,” tracked the scope of the arts in the nation’s economy using Dun and Bradstreet data. It included both nonprofit and commercial arts—museums and collections, design, publishing, performing arts, film, radio, television, visual arts, photography, art schools, and arts service firms.The report identified 546,560 arts-centric businesses in the United States,

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employing 2.7 million people and representing 4.2 percent of all businesses and 2.0 percent of all employees tracked by Dun and Bradstreet. A number of cities, states, and regions have attempted to assess their creative industries or have included the arts as part of an economic and social overview of their metropolitan area. For example, in 2002 the New England Council produced The Creative Economy Initiative: The Role of the Arts and Culture in New England’s Economic Competitiveness, covering the nonprofit arts, private commercial enterprises, and self-employed creative people. The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation found that in 2005 its creative economy accounted for about $1 million in direct and indirect jobs, generated $140 billion in sales and $3.2 billion in state personal income and sales taxes, and accounted for $8.2 million, or 5.8 percent of the areas’ economic activity. Columbus, Ohio, convened a task force to discern how the arts contribute to the city’s welfare; its report,“The Creative Economy: Leveraging the Arts, Culture and Creative Community for a Stronger Columbus,” was released in March 2007. Along with efforts to define and assess the extent of the arts sector in the United States and in distinct communities, the National Endowment for the Arts Studies of Public Participation in the Arts have tracked audience participation in the arts since 1982.The NEA studies found that about 39 to 41 percent of the adult U.S. population attend a “benchmark” art form at least once a year. Benchmark arts include opera, symphony, musical or straight theater, ballet and other dance forms, jazz performances, and museumgoing. When the definition of the arts and arts participation was expanded to include listening to and watching a variety of arts on various media outlets, reading literature, going to the movies, taking arts classes, and engaging in arts hobbies, the overall population participation in the arts was over 90 percent. This is hardly surprising as the arts touch so many areas of our lives. Mapping Many considerations go into defining a sector. The one introduced here—the arts and creative sector—was developed by Margaret Jane Wyszomirski and was based on a variety of considerations and orientations. The goal was to be holistic: to include core artistic workers, specialized artistic industries, and the larger infrastructure necessary for the arts to thrive (Wyszomirski 2005). The focus in this chapter is to outline the contours of the arts and creative sector and present select data on two of its clusters—the nonprofit arts and the commercial arts. Figure 1.1 identifies major components of the sector and indicates some of the basic ways in which the parts relate to one another. As illustrated, the arts and creative sector consists of a core of creative workers that includes not only creative and performing artists but also the

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specialized administrative and technical workers essential to the sector’s productivity. Members of this core group work in the many organizations and companies of the sector and as freelancers, operating their own small businesses, and self-managing work portfolios that span the nonprofit and commercial art worlds and the infrastructure. Various local studies have found that this creative workforce core accounts for between 20 and 40 percent of the local economic activity of the creative industries. Seven clusters of related industries produce the majority of arts and cultural products in the American creative industrial sector. Most of these clusters are familiar to the general public. Sometimes a creative industry is part of a larger manufacturing industry. For example, publishing encompasses everything from phone books and how-to manuals to newspapers and literary publishing, but only literary publishing would be included in the creative industries. Architecture and design includes both intrinsic and applied activities, but we only include their creative activities as parts of the arts and creative sector. (“Creative activity” refers to what is intrinsically artistically creative, while “applied” refers to activities that may employ artistic creativity to advance or achieve other goals, as in the intrinsic creative aspects of design add value to the manufacture and use of furniture through furniture design. Architectural design is realized through the application and realization of those designs through construction.) Perhaps the least familiar creative industry cluster is the informal arts, which include amateur, community-based, and unincorporated arts and culture activity such as community theater, music clubs, and participatory folk arts groups.While these informal arts activities may not generate economically significant revenues, they often generate public good in the sense of identity or social cohesion. Together, the creative workforce and these seven cultural industry clusters constitute the productive core of the creative sector. The creative core cannot sustain and maintain itself. A constellation of support systems is an integral part of the infrastructure of the arts and creative sector.These are displayed in three groupings: 1. The upstream production infrastructure provides equipment and supplies to the creative industries and encompasses the network of private funders and services that provide financial support; the education, training, and professional development system that trains the creative workforce; and research and information services. 2. The downstream distribution infrastructure connects the creative industries to their markets and consumer.This includes retail outlets; media and advertising; presentation and exhibition venues; the services of agents, brokers, and other intermediaries such as critics and art dealers; market and audience research services; and an ever-changing cast of

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partners and collaborators that links the artists and arts organizations to new audiences and instrumental uses. 3. The general public infrastructure includes public funding, policy authority and legal regulations, advocacy, and professional and trade associations. Data on the sector as a whole is embryonic. Each arts discipline and area has existed primarily in its own silo and has collected its own information as needed. We have select data on only certain areas of the sector and limited or no information on other parts. Some data is public, some proprietary and thus unavailable. As well, certain parts of the sector simply haven’t been a focus of cultural policy scholars and practitioners and remain largely undocumented. For instance, we have little systematic information on the extent of the informal/community arts around the country or on intermediaries such as movie agents, arts critics, and arts dealers. Data on arts managers and arts educators exists but often remains untapped for sectoral purposes. In addition, many parts of the sector’s infrastructure—occupations essential to the workings of the arts—such as entertainment attorneys and set/costume/lighting/sound designers remain untapped. Compone nts of the Arts and Creative Sector : Highlights on the Nonprofit and Comme rcial Arts The Nonprofit Arts There are 1.4 million organizations registered with the IRS as nonprofits. Nonprofits account for 5.2 percent of the gross domestic product and 8.3 percent of all U.S. salaries and wages. To be registered as a nonprofit, an organization must have an educational or charitable mission and not be structured primarily to maximize profit. As a nonprofit, an organization is exempt from federal taxes, some state and local taxes, and can offer charitable tax deductions to donors. Nonprofits include a wide range of organizations ranging from small local organizations to multimillion-dollar entities. They can be religious organizations, foundations as well as unions, service organizations, social clubs, advocacy organizations, veterans’ organizations, and others. Nonprofits are invested in a lot of service areas—the arts, education, health care, human services, the environment. The Internal Revenue Service is responsible for determining what organizations receive the 501(c)(3) status designating them as tax-exempt entities.About half a million 501(c)(3) reporting organizations are required by law to register with the IRS and file a 990 form because they collect more than $25,000 a year in gross receipts. Nonprofit arts, cultural, and humanities organizations number about 55,000 and constitute about 11 percent of all reporting organizations. These arts and cultural nonprofits can be

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found in many of the industrial clusters shown in figure 1.1, including the performing arts, museums and heritage, visual arts and crafts, and literary publishing. This overall number of arts, cultural, and humanities organizations does not include the many informal arts organizations that do not file a Form 990, such as small community-based arts organizations or those embedded within larger organizations. Such organizations proliferate in community life. It has been estimated that the number of arts, cultural, and humanities organizations might be over 100,000 (Americans for the Arts 2007b). Some of the most prestigious arts organizations in this country are organized as nonprofits; these include the Metropolitan Opera,American Ballet Company, Lyric Opera in Chicago, Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Roundabout Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. A handful of studies have documented the economic importance of the nonprofit arts to the United States.These studies have contributed to sustaining and increasing support for the nonprofit arts, in particular among public arts agencies. The National Center for Charitable Statistics reported that in 2004, arts, cultural, and humanities organizations had combined revenues of $24.3 billion, expenses of $20.9 billion and assets of $72.4 billion (Urban Institute 2004). A 2007 report,“Arts and Economic Prosperity III,” commissioned by Americans for the Arts, found that the nation’s nonprofit arts and culture industry accounted for between 5 million and 7 million full-time jobs, $104.2 billion in resident household income, and provided billions in local, state, and federal tax revenues. Spending by nonprofit arts organizations and their audiences amounted to $166.2 billion. Furthermore, the study found that since 1992 the nonprofit arts industry has expanded at a rate greater than inflation. Financial Support for the Nonprofit Arts Nonprofits operate on earned and contributed income. Among nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, on average, 44 percent of income comes from fee-based sources such as ticket sales, space rentals, gala benefits, and gift shop sales; 43 percent is derived from private philanthropy, which includes contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations; 13 percent comes from local, state, and federal public sources (National Endowment for the Arts 2007). Public Support Public monies can come from federal, state, regional, or local governments, from a designated arts agency or from projects within other departments or agencies in the government. As noted, public monies constitute a

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small part of the overall budget of nonprofit arts organizations. Of the 13 percent of an arts organization’s budget that, on average, comes from public monies, 9 percent comes from the federal government, 7 percent from the state, and 3 percent from local government. The United States government has a distinctive way of supporting the nonprofit arts, which is often referred to as an arms-length paradigm. Many other nations provide substantial support for the arts through a centralized department of government, such as a ministry of culture—support that is recognized as a function of national patrimony. The U.S. government provides little direct financial assistance to the arts but has created a number of indirect benefits. Nonprofits, as mentioned, do not pay income tax and often do not pay state and local property taxes, and private contributions are tax deductible to the donor. These forgone tax revenues constitute a significant subsidy for the nonprofit arts and are distinctive to the U.S. system of arts support. Furthermore, grants given by public agencies such as the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) often require that they be matched by private contributions, a device that has proven very successful in leveraging more money from the private sector than might have originally been forthcoming A matching grant of $100,000 given with the matching ratio of 3 to 1 can leverage $300,000 for an arts organization. Grants from a public agency such as the NEA confer prestige, as they are usually based on a jury of peers in the recipient’s artistic discipline. The National Endowment for the Arts was established in 1965 and is the primary federal agency invested in supporting the nonprofit arts. Its budget fluctuates significantly, depending on a number of factors, often on which political party is in power. In general, Democrats have favored government support for the arts while Republicans tend to feel the arts should be selfsufficient. This is not always the case, however; the NEA budget grew rapidly under Richard Nixon and reached its peak under George H. W. Bush, who was highly supportive of the agency in a time of increasing budget deficits. Forty percent of the NEA budget is passed through to the states based on a formula that considers overall state populations and other factors.This NEA pass-through is a substantial part of states’ arts appropriations. In 2006, in aggregate, state arts agencies received $327.5 million from state legislative appropriations, and $32.9 million from the NEA. Each state, territory, and jurisdiction has its own arts agency.There are also six regional arts organizations—Arts Midwest, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, Southern Arts Federation, and Western States Arts Federation, and about four thousand local arts agencies at the city, town, or county level across the country. The NEA accounted for $124 million, the states $363 million, and local arts agencies $817 million in direct appropriations for the nonprofit arts in

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2007. Regional arts agencies reported $21 million in 2006. Public support for the arts on the local and state level far exceeds federal support for the arts. (Americans for the Arts 2007b) Not to be discounted are many other sources of public support for the arts besides the NEA and state, local, and regional arts agencies. At all levels of government, support for the nonprofit arts comes from a variety of agencies and departments. Table 1.1 shows the level of federal funding in 2006 from governmental organizations other than the NEA and programs that fund the arts and culture. Private Support Overall charitable giving to the arts, culture, and humanities has increased significantly over the years in absolute monies, culminating in 2006 in $12.51 billion, which represents only 4.2 percent of all charitable giving. This percentage (4.2) is also the forty-year historical average for private arts giving (Giving USA 2007). Private support for the arts, as noted, accounts for 43 percent of total support for the nonprofit arts. Of the 43 percent, individuals account for the largest share of private support at 35.5 percent, followed by foundations at Table 1-1 Federal Appropriations for the Arts and Culture from Sources Other than the NEA

Government entity

Appropriations for the arts and culture (in millions of dollars)

Smithsonian Institution

517

Corporation for Public Broadcasting

460

Institute of Museum and Library Services

247

National Endowment for the Humanities

142

National Gallery of Art

95

Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

18

Department of Education (Arts in Education)

13

National Capital Planning Commission

8

General Services Administration (Art in Architecture Program)

7

Advisory Council on Historic Preservation

5

Department of State (Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs; cultural exchanges, presentations, and diplomacy)

5

Commission of Fine Arts

2

Source: National Endowment for the Arts, How the United States Funds the Arts, 2007.

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5.0 percent, and lastly corporate support at 2.5 percent (Americans for the Arts 2007b). The arts are not high on the list of preferred areas of support among individuals, foundations, and corporations. Education and health are favored, and among individuals, religion is the preferred charitable area. Sixtyseven percent of the nation’s households make charitable contributions, but just 8 percent of them give to the arts with the average gift being $215 (Giving USA 2006). Among high net worth individuals the story is dramatically different. According to a study done by Giving USA in 2005, about 70 percent of high-net individuals (households with an income of $200,00 or more or a net worth of $1million or more) give to the arts representing 10.8 percent of all charitable contributions among this group, with the average gift being $16,657 (Giving USA 2007). In the last decade, the larger foundations gave about 12.7 percent of their charitable grants to the arts and culture (Grantmakers in the Arts Reader 2007). Community foundations and small family foundations may give more to the arts than large corporations, as their giving focus tends to be more local, including support for community arts organizations and artists. Only select corporations favor giving to arts institutions and arts programs. It is difficult to know why one corporation favors the arts and others do not, let alone to track corporate giving patterns. Monies come from a number of places within the corporation—corporate foundations, sponsorships, employee matches, marketing and advertising budgets, workplace giving, and in-kind services such as volunteer accounting (Americans for the Arts National Arts Policy Roundtable 2006). Over the years, nonprofit arts organizations have proliferated across the American landscape. There is some concern that the nonprofit arts are overgrown, that they have strained the available financial resources necessary to sustain their growth and numbers. Nonprofit arts and cultural organizations have had to become more creative and aggressive in tapping public and private funding and in enhancing earned income. In turn, one hears complaints that they are becoming more like commercial organizations than missiondriven institutions. There is a loose consensus among the nonprofit arts community that representatives of the arts are not well versed at explaining their worth to the general public, government officials, and funders. There have been ample studies designed to show the economic impact of the nonprofit arts, but concern remains that the arts have to better articulate their intrinsic worth and value to community life, personal well-being, and contribution to the national agenda. Comme rcial Arts How do commercial arts differ from those in the nonprofit sector? The general answer, of course, is that commercial enterprises are legally structured

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with the specific intent of generating profits, whereas the nonprofit sectors are legally structured to advance an educational or charitable mission. But this is simplistic. Despite their names and primary purposes, in reality, nonprofits must earn about 40 to 50 percent of their income, and commercial arts organizations are often concerned about the quality and social impact of their products. A commercial art product—be it a book, painting, television show, movie, or DVD—must create a profit; that is, the total income generated from physical product sales and licensing of rights must exceed the costs of producing, distributing, administering, and marketing the item.This is not a primary concern of nonprofit arts, most of which, as noted, are partially subsidized by governments and individual patrons. As indicated in figure 1.1, the range of activities that falls under the commercial arts label is broad, but with a tendency to be clustered in terms of artistic content, methods of operation, historical lineage, and other such nonfinancial characteristics. The size of commercial arts companies, however, varies widely. A oneperson commercial enterprise might be a television scriptwriter, a painter, or a novelist who places the created product on the market in the hope that someone will purchase it at a price that exceeds its costs of production. Or, a commercial arts organization could be a Broadway theater, or an art gallery, or a multibillion-dollar corporation that sells video games, music recordings, and books. Because of this diversity among commercial arts firms and activities, it is difficult to define and to accurately count the total amount of sales and profits generated in the entire commercial arts sector. Each significant commercial sector has—over long periods of time and following Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) guidelines—evolved with different accounting structures and distinctions, which have been designed to provide key pieces of operational information that are specific to that business. And classification systems are not globally standardized. As a result, it is often difficult to make direct comparisons across industry sectors or countries. Nonetheless, it is possible to make an educated guess that aggregate worldwide commercial arts activities have, as shown in table 1.2, generated at least $180 billion of sales as of 2008. If smaller commercial arts enterprises— for example, firms involved in sales of paintings and other visual arts products and worldwide arts publishing—were to be included, the total would rise substantially. Unfortunately, data are not readily available for most such privately held enterprises. It is also important to note that indirect contributions to the economy from the commercial arts may be just as large as direct sales. Indirect contributions include expenditures for services such as advertising, marketing, and promotion; design; legal and accounting; talent representation; management;

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Table 1-2 Projected Worldwide Retail Sales for Select Commercial Arts Industries for 2008 (in billions of dollars)

Industry

Domestic

International

Total

Theaters

10

16

26

DVDs and other individual media

25

25

50

12

22

34

Film

Recordings Paintings/sculpture

5

6

11

Commercial theater, opera

13

13

26

Video games

11

28

Total

39 186

Source: Compiled from various publicly available industry sources including the MPAA, RIAA, IFPI, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and private research sources.

architecture; transportation; catering; and many other affiliated activities. Many artistic inputs are often needed by these indirect participants. For instance, to attract new clients, accounting and marketing organizations, and even legal firms, need to prepare attractively designed brochures and other selling materials. Two dominant long-term trends in the commercial arts sectors are evident, however: 1. The quickening pace of technological innovation, with media becoming more mobile (for example, available on cell phones and other handheld devices) and also more geared toward visual rather than textual (that is, print) presentation. 2. Continuation of corporate consolidations, especially in markets where large middle-class populations are emerging as a result of rising disposable income availability. Technological Innovation The pace of technological change is so rapid that in virtually any commercial arts sectors, new competitors are constantly popping up. Apple’s iTunes and iPods, as examples, have forever changed the way people buy, listen to, and share music and video experiences. And the development of sophisticated video games, played online and off, have enabled the formation of a new global communities of players. As wonderful as all this is for consumers, however, it makes for a challenging and much more competitive environment for businesses that have

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come to depend on earlier-developed (legacy) technologies, business models, and strategies. Indeed, seismic technological disruption has recently been seen in industry segments that include music, newspapers, broadcast television, books, magazines, and advertising. Internet advertising, for example, has grown rapidly, and much to the detriment of newspaper advertising and circulation. And music has to a great extent been shifted from physically distributed, mechanically played units such as CDs to Web-delivered services, with the result that many large retail music stores have already been forced out of business. The film industry is, moreover, already beginning to see a similar shift away from DVD sales toward Internet downloads, even as broadcasters and advertisers worry that personal video recorders like TiVo are making it possible for viewers to skip over promotional messages—the ones that support the expensive production of all the creative content that is available in the form of scripted series, documentaries, and comedies. Tremendous growth and public interest in new video distribution, with YouTube being a prime example, has also further hastened a move away from print-based media to presentations that are not only quicker but also more visually based. All of this has been greatly enhanced by new phone and network technologies that make everything more mobile.Along with their traditional television episodes, producers today are busy creating Webisodes and other “digital snacks” that include cell phone games. These shifts all make it easier for artists to reach new audiences and to find new commercial opportunities and global platforms. On the Internet, artists of many stripes—authors, publishers, singers, actors, dancers—can become independent contractors working outside the aegis of a company or the licensing required by a government agency. Indeed, the Internet, especially, has made traditional restrictions on geography, display device, and location increasingly irrelevant. Formerly, broadcast television programs could only be seen at one time and at one place; now they are beginning to become available at any time, everywhere. Similarly, in the past, movies could only be seen in theaters; now people often take movies wherever they go. Such mobility and enhancement of information distribution, however, does come with a price: it has, inevitably, led to trade disputes, and sometimes resentments of and restrictions on distribution of American entertainment products in countries that do not share the same mores and interests. In other words, there are often great differences in what Americans and people in other countries take for granted or find acceptable in terms of sexual content, depictions of violence, or political values. This is an important issue because the potential for growth is much higher abroad for both traditional media companies and for newer ones in large developing countries such as China, India, Brazil, and Russia.

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Corporate Consolidation In the for-profit sector, companies are always seeking ways to boost profits and/or reduce losses. And in striving for greater operational and financial efficiencies, it is not unusual for enterprises with competitive heft, capital resources, and diversity of product and service offerings to acquire many smaller and newer firms. Such consolidations are often classified as being either horizontal or vertical in type.“Horizontal” refers to takeovers of weaker competitors in the same business. But consolidations might also be of the vertical kind, which is when companies in a different but usually related line of business acquire, for instance, their suppliers or distributors. This trend toward consolidation has resulted in what is known in industrial economics as an oligopoly structure, in which only a few companies dominate a business area. In films, in the United States, about 90 percent of the box office revenues are generated by six domestic distribution/production companies, and, in music, at least 80 percent is generated by four companies. By 2007, for instance, Time Warner owned Warner Bros., CNN, and HBO; Disney owned the Disney theme parks, 80 percent of cable network ESPN, Pixar, Miramax, and the ABC television network; Viacom owned Paramount Pictures, and cable networks Nickelodeon and MTV; News Corporation owned the Fox studio, the Fox television network, and several important newspapers; and General Electric owned Universal Studios as well as the NBC television network, CNBC, and Universal theme parks.1 Nevertheless, not all mergers, whether of the horizontal or vertical type, work out, and sometimes the deals themselves are barred by various government agencies (in the United States, the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission, and in Europe, the Common Market antitrust commissioners of the European Commission, located in Brussels). For example, attempts to merge music-sector companies EMI in London and Warner Music in New York have been defeated several times by one or both of these agencies. In addition, there has also been some arguable concern that media company mergers might result in a potential loss of diversity of opinions expressed and a stifling of cultural creativity. Yet recent trends toward divestitures (including the 2006 split of Viacom and CBS, and sale of parts of Time Warner’s cable business) and the injection of new technologies suggest that such concerns are probably overstated. No business strategy lasts forever, and in an open and vibrant economy no one company can control the media or ultimately limit consumer choice. Policy Implications Identifying the totality of the arts and cultural sector and its various components helps illustrate where policy has attempted to intervene in the system

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Table 1-3 Selected Major Entertainment Company Mergers

Original company

Acquired by or merged with

Film studios MCA Universal

NBC (General Electric)

Twentieth Century Fox

News Corporation

Paramount

Viacom

Warner Brothers

Time Warner

Music companies Columbia Records

Sony (Japan)

MCA Records

Vivendi (French)

Broadcasting ABC/Cap Cities

Disney

CBS

Viacom prior to spin out as a separate company

Source: Company 10-k reports.

and where it might effectively intervene in the future. Gaining a better understanding of the interactions and linkages between clusters in the sector is likely to be the subject of cultural policy making in the near future. For example: ■

■

■

■

■ ■

How are the live, nonprofit performing arts affected by copyright policies designed to address concerns of the entertainment industries? How will literary publishing be affected by the decrease in the number of book reviewers and book sections of newspapers? Will craft and design industries find legitimacy in a visual arts field dominated by museums? Are the informal arts a training ground for artists and/or for audiences for the creative industries? Does arts education facilitate workforce skills among non-arts workers? Does media consolidation limit artistic expression?

Note s 1. Much of this consolidation activity was spurred either by regulatory changes such as the ending of the Financial Interest and Syndication rule in 1995 that allowed television networks and television show producers to merge, by changes in television station ownership rules, or by the desire of large companies to gain purported efficiencies through vertical and horizontal integration.

Se lecte d Re fe re nce s Americans for the Arts. 2007a. The Creative Industries: Business and Employment in the Arts. www.americansforthearts.org.

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———. 2007b. The Congressional Arts Handbook. http://www.artsusa.org/get_ involved/advocacy/aad/handbook/2007.asp. Americans for the Arts National Arts Policy Roundtable. 2006. The Future of Private Sector Giving to the Arts in America. A report on the proceedings, Sundance Preserve, Utah, October 26–28. www.artsusa.org/information_resources/research_ information/policy_roundtable. Chartrand, Harry Hillman. 2000.“Toward an American Arts Industry.” In The Public Life of the Arts in America, ed. Joni M. Cherbo and Margaret J. Wyszomirski. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Giving USA. 2006. The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2006. Indianapolis: Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, Indiana University and Purdue University and American Association of Fundraising Counsel (AAFRC). ———. 2007. The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2007. Indianapolis: Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, Indiana University and Purdue University and American Association of Fundraising Counsel (AAFRC). Grantmakers in the Arts Reader. 2007. 18, no. 2 (Summer). Ivey, Bill. 2005. “We Need a New System for Supporting the Arts” (Chronicle Review). Chronicle of Higher Education (February 4): B6–9. National Endowment for the Arts. Surveys of Public Participation in the Arts. www.nea.gov/research/ResearchReports_chrono.html. ———. 1984. Five Year Planning Document, 1986–1990.Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. ———. 2006. Artistic Employment. Research note 90. July. http://www.arts.gov/ research/Notes/90.pdf. ———. 2007. How the United States Funds the Arts. January. http://www.arts.gov/ pub/how.pdf. Rand Corporation. 2007. Gift of the Muse, Reframing the Debate about the Benefits of the Arts, a report by Kevin F. McCarthy, Elizabeth Heneghan, Laura Zakaras, and Arthur Brooks. www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG218. Roodhouse, Simon. 2006. “The Unreliability of Cultural Management Information: Defining the Visual Arts.” In Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 36, no.1 (Spring): 48–65. The International Creative Sector: Its Dimensions, Dynamics, and Audience Development. 2007. Proceedings of a conference sponsored by UNESCO, United States Department of State, Center for Arts and Culture, University of Texas at Austin, College of Fine Arts, President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, Rockefeller Foundation. Austin,Texas, June 5–7. http://www.culturalpolicy.org/pdf/UNESCO2003.pdf. The Ninety-Second American Assembly. 1997. “The Arts and the Public Purpose.” Columbia University report on the American Assembly held in Harriman, NY, May 29–June 1. Urban Institute. 2004. National Center for Charitable Statistics, National Nonprofit Research Database, Special Research Version.Washington, DC. www.nccs.urban.org. Wyszomirski, Margaret Jane. 2005. “Defining and Developing Creative Sector Initiatives” (unpublished paper discussing considerations that went into the construction of the arts and creative sector concept). April. http://arted.osu.edu.publications/pdf_files/ paper34.pdf. Wyszomirski, Margaret Jane. 2008.“The Local Creative Economy in the United States.” In Cultures and Globalization: The Cultural Economy, eds. Helmut Anheier and Yudhishthir Raj Isar. London: Sage Publications.

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Wyszomirski, Margaret Jane, and Cherbo, Joni Maya. 2001 “The Associational Infrastructure of the Arts and Culture.” In The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 31, no. 2 (Summer).

Statistical Source s* Bureau of Labor Statistics Foundation Center IRS Business Master Files, Exempt Organizations National Center for Charitable Statistics, Urban Institute,Washington, D.C.

*Organizations that collect these statistics often lump together the arts, cultural and humanities organizations.

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Chapte r 2


Chris N. Burgess and David B. Pankratz

THIS CHAPTER EXAMINES the arts and creative sector’s highly interactive composition. Artists, arts organizations, and arts-related industries frequently interact, and in a variety of ways. They work together in creative clusters and have enough in common to be considered parts of a single sector of society—the creative sector. A dancer in a leading nonprofit, contemporary dance ensemble in New York City might well ask what he or she has in common with a dancer in a Las Vegas review. Yet both might have experienced similar initial training and must cope with issues related to job opportunities, career prospects, retirement and health benefits, and ongoing professional development. While they may think of themselves as working in different worlds, as dancers they have more in common than might otherwise appear. A Budding Care e r in the Arts and Creative Sector Let’s begin with a hypothetical artist, Susan, and see how her career might touch various components of the arts and creative sector. Susan is an aspiring actress who plays the lead in several high school plays and receives support from the school theater teacher and a private drama coach. After high school, she enrolls as a drama major in state university. During her university training, she performs in productions and also gains experience acting on an unpaid basis in several roles for a local community theater. When Susan begins her professional career, she finds work in supporting roles at nonprofit theaters in Chicago. Susan works most often at a theater in a transitional neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago. The theater collaborates with several nonprofit organizations that are trying to revitalize the neighborhood. As a result of working on a strategic plan with a management 28

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consultant, the theater commits itself to commissioning and presenting two original plays per season, including works focused on social justice issues.The theater’s artistic director identifies a contemporary novel that he thinks could be reworked for the stage. Executing the idea involves seeking advice from lawyers. One is a copyright lawyer who negotiates a contract between the novelist and the theater; the other is a First Amendment specialist, who examines whether a staged production based on the novel will raise challenges from groups who may find the piece offensive.The legal issues are settled, the show is cast and, Susan—who by now is a member of Actors’ Equity (the union for actors)—is cast in one of the lead roles. Lighting, set, stage, and costume designers are hired, along with a public relations and marketing firm. The show opens and receives glowing reviews from the local Chicago critics. Based on its growing reputation, the theater receives private foundation and state arts agency grants to develop and deliver an educational program for high school students based on the social justice themes in the play. Susan is among the actors who work in these schools, and the program is featured in pieces by journalists for local TV, newspapers, and a magazine.The theater also receives an award for educational innovation from the professional association for nonprofit theater, Theatre Communications Group (TCG). Susan does a brief presentation on the educational program at TCG’s annual conference and accepts the award. Meanwhile, the show is attracting attention from critics in New York and Los Angeles, and its run is transferred to another facility—a larger nonprofit theater in Chicago. The show has also attracted the attention of a commercial theater producer from New York who is interested in developing the play as a Broadway show.An agreement is negotiated between the producer, the theater, and the novelist, and a Broadway run is scheduled. Susan, who has been closely identified with her character during the Chicago run, tries out for the part in the Broadway production and is successful. The Broadway production takes place in a renovated theater that a group of historic preservationists and business people saved from the wrecking ball by securing public and private funds to help finance the theater’s renovation. The Broadway reviews are glowing, including those for Susan’s performance. An independent producer secures the rights to create a film based on the stage production, and a group of commercial producers takes on the project. Entertainment attorneys are engaged, along with the extensive array of occupations necessary to make a movie. Susan is interested in performing her signature role in the film version but is aware that often stage actresses are not assured of even an audition. She hires an agent who works exclusively for movie actors, and joins a movie actors union—the Screen Actors Guild. She eventually gets the part in the film, which, while not a box office hit, is received well by film critics, who single out Susan’s work for special praise. She receives Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for best supporting actress. Susan’s agent hires a

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C h r i s N . B u r g e s s a n d D av i d B . Pa n k r a t z

publicist to bring attention to her nominations, who in turn works with a Web designer to create a personal Web site for Susan to publicize her Oscar candidacy. Finally, Susan’s agent engages a top fashion designer to create an original dress design for Susan to wear during her walk down the red carpet on Oscar night. Susan’s story, while seemingly meteoric as well as blessed with tremendous good fortune, is a journey that occurred over an extended period of time through many areas in the arts and creative sector. Dime nsions of Inte ractions Within the Arts and Creative Sector We have described how one type of artist’s career involved her with various components of the arts and creative sector as an illustration of the interrelationship of many different parts of the sector essential to her budding career. Such interrelationships can be characterized in four ways: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Interrelations of individual workers within the arts and culture sector Cross-cluster interrelations of organizations within the creative core Creative core and infrastructure interactions Interrelations with individuals and organizations beyond the sector

Interrelationship of Individual Sector Workers Creative workers move across the sector forming intra- and interdisciplinary relationships with a variety of individuals and organizations. They tend not to be bound by defined parameters and expectations. A classically trained musician, for example, does not have to be bound to employment in an established symphony orchestra.1 In today’s world, there are many different and broader paths. Musicians find work not only in traditional classical music environments but also within the commercial environment, where they are used for advertisements, movie sound tracks, and live musical theater, and also perform as part of diverse musical acts. A number of established symphony orchestras schedule performances with rock or popular music acts.The San Francisco Symphony’s very successful pairing with the hard rock group Metallica in 2000 is a case in point. Not only was the concert itself a success, but the sales of CDs and DVDs capturing this collaboration have been consistently high as new audiences explore this connection between two very different styles of music. Indeed, a recent posting on amazon.com is illustrative: a fourteen-year-old writes, “I’m not someone who usually listens to symphonic music. To tell the truth, I hated [it] before. BUT, this DVD changed my mind, it gave me a new perspective on classical music.The thing is it’s really enjoyable.”2 Violinist Joshua Bell began his career as a soloist with notable symphony orchestras worldwide, but he soon began expanding and diversifying his

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musical offerings through jobs in the commercial entertainment industry. His work on The Red Violin movie sound track, as well as his appearance in the movie itself, boosted his popularity beyond the classical music field. He recently worked with pop singer Josh Groban and has made forays into the worlds of bluegrass and jazz. There are also a number of popular music artists who have become so well-known that they not only work within the cultural sector but outside it as well. For example, Grammy Award–winning recording artist and part-time film star Nelly joined forces with Reebok in 2005 to participate in advertising campaigns for a signature line of athletic footwear and apparel. Long the realm of star athlete spokespersons, the athletic apparel industry has made concerted efforts to merge music, sports, and entertainment into a single, marketable package. The collaboration between Reebok and Nelly is part of a growing phenomenon in which popular artists are utilized by businesses seeking to gain a foothold within particular demographics. The signing of Nelly by Reebok places him in a stable of entertainment stars under contract such as 50 Cent and Jay-Z, two leading hip-hop figures with signature apparel lines. Not to be left on the sidelines in this growing trend are Pony, which signed Snoop Dogg, and Adidas, which signed Missy Elliot. This developing synergy between hip-hop culture and Madison Avenue seems to be expanding to cell phone companies, which are now signing musicians to endorsement contracts as well as to ring-tone licensing agreements. In an interesting cross-cluster connection, two current film directors began their careers as dancers and choreographers before making their transition into the world of movie production. Both Rob Marshall and Susan Stroman worked on Broadway as dancers, choreographers, and directors before moving into film.3 Notably, Marshall directed the acclaimed film version of Chicago. Ann Stroman, a five-time Tony winner, directed the most recent film version of The Producers, a film based on the play based on a film. Indeed, the path followed by both directors is not unknown. Stanley Donen, Bob Fosse, and Herbert Ross all began as dancers on the stage and moved into film direction as their careers developed and their interests broadened. While each worked largely in the realm of musical films, Donen and Ross in particular made the transition into other cinematic styles such as comedy and drama enjoying long, varied directorial careers. Marshall has followed in these footsteps; his next major project following the success of Chicago was a collaboration with Stephen Spielberg on Memoirs of a Geisha, a film based on a best-selling novel set in Japan. Cross-Cluster Interrelationships Like individual artists, organizations create, interact, and partner, and do so with little concern for traditional boundaries. Following are several examples

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that again illustrate the level of interaction within the sector as different clusters within the arts join together for common cultural purposes. Partnership for a Nation of Learners (PNL) is a collaboration between the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS); the shared mission is “to serve America’s communities by encouraging and enabling museums, public broadcasters, and libraries to work together to address locally-identified lifelong learning needs and opportunities.”4 Through grant support and professional development, these independent federal agencies work to foster local partnerships that make it possible for each to serve local communities more effectively. PNL has awarded about $3.5 million in grants to twenty such partnerships across the United States.5 One example of this cross-sector partnering is Beginning a Healthy Life, a project of the Avampato Discovery Museum in Charleston, West Virginia, the Kanawha County Library System, and the West Virginia Public Broadcasting System. The project is an effort to address health issues across all age spectrums. One aspect of the program is the use of CPB-licensed Sesame Street characters in an exhibition developed by the museum exploring the human body, augmented both by in-school teaching artist residencies and a touring puppet theater. Another example of cross-cultural interrelationships within the creative sector brings together Broadway and Hollywood. What do The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, The Producers, and Hairspray have in common besides all being movies? All were movies that were made into Broadway productions, with the latter two being made back into movies once again following their success on stage. Indeed, this historically two-way street has become more one-way over the last decade.As of September 2005, nearly half of the twenty musicals on Broadway were based on films, and the trend does not appear to be slowing. As might be expected, there has been a backlash of sorts, with some critics using the term “movical” to describe these shows, and others calling them faux musicals that fall short as creative enterprises.6 Warner Brothers and the Disney Company have both created theatrical production divisions. DreamWorks film company is not far behind, with plans for a staged, musical version of the movie Shrek to debut in 2008.This interactivity within the cultural sector involves not only an exchange of product but also technical, human, and economic resources. Creative Core and Infrastructure Interactions The infrastructure supporting the arts and creative sector is crucial to its functioning. Two components of the infrastructure are considered here: K–12 and postsecondary arts education, and the professional associations that support this enterprise.Various levels of arts education train artists, students, arts managers, and arts educators, many of whom work outside of the arts sector. Associations provide numerous career services—ranging from health insurance

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benefits to job listings, advocacy, and professional conferences—to their members as they move around. Rhode Island has recently enacted a statewide graduation requirement in the arts. As a result of this policy, all students must demonstrate proficiency in one or more art forms starting with the class of 2008. This requirement is the result of advocacy efforts by the Arts Learning Network (ALN), a nonprofit organization that developed in response to a governor’s mandate issued in 1999. The mandate created a task force designed to examine the relationship between the arts and education from a policy perspective.7 Ultimately, Rhode Island’s proficiency requirement will resonate across the state’s cultural sector. The entire infrastructure is strengthened as greater understanding and awareness of the creative process is integrated into the classroom. As the governor noted upon the creation of the task force, “The arts can . . . help prepare students for living in a diverse society, teach skills necessary to the workplace of tomorrow, and play a significant role in helping children develop the skills of literacy and a love of reading. Studying the arts allows students to understand the past, experience and derive meaning from the present and envision and shape the future.”8 Rhode Island is clearly a case where it is recognized that arts education supports the cultural sector as well as helping to develop creative workers for a rapidly emerging knowledge-based economy. Serving as another example of creative core and educational infrastructure interactions, Urban Gateways, a Chicago organization founded in 1962, works with schools to bring arts instruction into areas where it has been missing or not comprehensive. Urban Gateways works with participating schools to design community-specific programming while also offering training and assistance to classroom teachers to help them integrate arts programming into the broader curriculum. In a partnership involving core and infrastructure actors, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and three higher education institutions joined together to create the NEA Arts Journalism Institute. In October 2006, Columbia University held its Third Arts Journalism Institute on Classical Music and Opera, while institutes were also recently held for dance critics at Duke University and for theater critics at the University of Southern California. Ultimately, the gatherings bring together writers and editors from diverse publications and locales in an effort to improve arts criticism through professional development opportunities and peer interaction. There are more than four thousand arts and cultural trade and service associations, unions, and guilds in the United States, most organized around disciplines, that act as a significant support mechanism for the arts and creative sector.9 These associations serve as key components of the sector by assisting in professional development, advocacy, and career maintenance.The American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL), for instance, represents more than 850

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symphony, chamber, and youth orchestras in addition to individual members. Among its many activities, ASOL has extensive training programs to address a wide range of artistic, volunteer, and managerial topics. These programs have grown in size and scope over the years, with the Orchestra Leadership Academy (OLA) among the most important. OLA trains current and future orchestral administration leaders in conflict resolution, creative programming, and other significant skills. As part of the OLA, the Orchestra Management Fellowship Program offers a year-long management-training program that includes residencies with orchestras, orientation to the music industry, course work, and a stipend of $25,000.10 Both the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) and the American Association of Museums (AAM) offer similar initiatives. TCG sponsors many different management programs designed to bring theater administrators together to share information and develop strategies to aid the nonprofit theater industry, including intensive management-training seminars led by senior training consultants from outside the sector, such as the Target Corporation. TCG also hosts a series of five teleconferences twice each year for senior management staff of geographically dispersed theaters. Teleconference topics include marketing, development, public relations, education, information services, and other management issues.AAM’s accreditation program is central in the development of industry-wide professional standards and practices. The program has been in existence since 1971 and has fostered common ideals of not only professional training in terms of sound management methods but also of excellence across the museum field. Individual commercial artists tend to be represented by unions such as Actors’ Equity or the Screen Actors Guild, which can engage in collective bargaining. Owners of commercial production companies in the film and music industries also have powerful associations that are major forces in lobbying for protection in the face of increasing global competition and threats to intellectual property rights in the digital age. Both the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have been highly engaged, often partnering, to bolster those protections for their members and artists. Despite the inherent differences between artistic disciplines regarding workforce issues, each service organization, association, or union has explicit programs in place to assist and further the professional development of its creative workers. The infrastructure is an integral part of the core: neither can be seen in isolation from the other. Interactions beyond the Sector Actors in the arts and creative sector often interact outside the sector. One example of such interaction is Creative Communities, a national project that existed from 2001 to 2004 “to expand access to serious, progressive instruction

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in the performing, literary and visual arts for children and youth living in public housing communities in order to improve their quality of life and promote skills leading to greater self-sufficiency.”11 Creative Communities was a collaboration between the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts (an association representing nonprofit, community-based arts education organizations), the National Endowment for the Arts, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Both the NEA and HUD provided significant financial and technical resources. Local support came from community schools that were members of the National Guild. They created their own partnerships with public housing authorities and facilities with the assistance of local arts agencies, state arts agencies, and a diverse range of community organizations. For instance, in St. Louis the Center of Creative Arts (COCA) partnered with the St. Louis Housing Authority and a local elementary school to provide after-school and summer arts education programs. Students living in housing developments adjacent to the school were the target population for this program, which included a variety of art forms and multicultural initiatives. In June 2003, the governor of Michigan announced an initiative “designed to help communities across the state create vibrant, attractive places for people to live, work and play.”12 This Cool Cities initiative was designed to build on Richard Florida’s delineation of the creative class and its role in economic development.13 Florida’s basic premise is that economic development plans that target those in the creative class will bring about successful urban revitalization and attract a young, well-educated, innovative demographic to the region. His definition of the creative class is very wide and encompasses 30 percent of the labor force, including workers in such areas as science and engineering, architecture and design, arts, music, and entertainment as well as those in business and finance, law, and health care. The Cool Cities goal was to create an environment attractive to a younger demographic by establishing culturally diverse, bustling social environments. In effect, the Cool Cities initiative sought to attract and retain not only recent college graduates and young professionals but also emergent families looking to establish roots in an area that provided a safe, welcoming, and culturally stimulating environment. Under this initiative, public funding was made available as catalyst grants for projects that are engaged in renovating, improving, creating, building, and preserving spaces that contribute to the creation of vibrant and culturally inclusive urban districts. Multiple stakeholders, especially state agencies, are involved. Not only were areas of the state that have long maintained a cultural presence seeking to expand their visibility; areas that have been neglected or underutilized were also looking at this new initiative as a window of opportunity to reestablish themselves. Although the arts and creative sector is arguably at the center of

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the Cool Cities model, business and economic development are just as ingrained. The model is a clear illustration of how sectors can interact—in this instance, economic development interests from the business sector working with the arts and creative sector to advance community revitalization.Although the program is in its infancy, Grand Rapid’s Avenue for the Arts Project is a good example of the Cool Cities approach at work in Michigan.This initiative involves historic renovation, streetscape and façade improvements, the development of thirty-five loft apartments, and the creation of public art and murals. A look at the partners for the project is a vivid indicator of the multisectoral perspective of the Cool Cities model.There are a total of nineteen partners, including traditional foundations, business interests, arts organizations, arts collectives, schools, and social interest groups. Other examples of the interaction between domestic and international arts partners are plentiful. For instance, there are multiple arts exchange partnerships in which artists, arts groups, and arts managers travel abroad to work or engage with partnering institutions to better understand differing approaches to their craft. CEC Artslink is a well-established service organization with an international focus that promotes art exchanges between the United States and Central Europe, Russia, and Eurasia. Cultural workers interface with governmental departments, nongovernmental organizations, arts groups, higher and secondary education programs, foundations, and other organizations related to CEC Artslink’s mission and purpose. One of the programs in which the organization participates is Open World Cultural Leaders, created in 2003, which involves the National Endowment for the Arts and cultural organizations across multiple states, as well as the National Peace Foundation, congressional leadership, and cultural organizations across Russia. Russian cultural leaders are brought to the United States to work collaboratively with arts professionals throughout the country to better understand management practices and to facilitate future cultural exchanges and joint exhibitions. Because of the relative newness of this program, these collaborations are only beginning to emerge.The cultural aspect of the program is on equal footing with other Open World activities in which the business, legal, and economic sectors all work to facilitate exchanges. CEC Artslink also provides a residency program in which international arts workers are invited to the United States for five weeks and placed with various arts organizations. These arts workers might be choreographers, public relations managers, directors, production managers, musicians, project coordinators, general managers, or others. While here, they participate substantially in the workings of the organizations while also teaching workshops and creating new works. Additionally, CEC Artslink supports American artists and arts managers financially who undertake projects in Central Europe, Russia, and Eurasia.14

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There is considerable emphasis on placing American and international artists, arts groups, and arts managers together in the hope that new relationships might be formed and new opportunities made available for collaborations and interrelationships across transnational boundaries. Recognition of a global community with a shared identity is increasingly taking hold. These cultural exchanges might assist in breaking down false preconceptions between countries and facilitating openness to other sociocultural values and practices. Conclusion In this review of different interactions both within the arts and creative sector and outside the sector of generic interactions and specific partnerships, we have attempted to demonstrate the interdependency that defines the arts and creative sector. Individual artists and arts workers, guided by various motivations, move easily within and beyond the sector in pursuit of their artistic interests and purpose. Increasingly, individual artists are exercising a high degree of entrepreneurship in pursuing a diverse range of activities that expand traditional vocational paths that create new collaborations. Arts organizations— both nonprofit and commercial—are also utilizing a variety of old and new collaborations to expand their missions, their reach, their relevance, and their bottom lines. Not all of these partnerships are successful.We are just beginning to understand what makes for successful organizational collaborations, but they are certain to persist as the sector finds creative ways to address its needs and goals in an ever-evolving world. Note s 1. See Adam Baer,“Classical Music: Playing the Field,” Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2005. 2. Specific quote from text may be unavailable as customer reviews are routinely rotated by Amazon. Nevertheless, for a representative sample, see http://www.amazon. com/gp/product/B00002ZMNV/104–2250051–0355924?v⫽glance&n⫽130&v⫽ glance. 3. See Charles Isherwood, “And Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Action,” New York Times, September 11, 2005. 4. See http://www.partnershipforlearners.org. 5. For a list of partners and projects see http://www.imls.gov/news/2006/091906_ list.shtm 6. See Jesse McKinley,“Fast Lane to Broadway Begins in Hollywood,” New York Times, September 11, 2005. 7. See Ann Galligan and Chris Burgess,“Moving Rivers, Shifting Streams: Perspectives on the Existence of a Policy Window,” Arts Education Policy Review 107, no. 2 (2005): 3–11. 8. Office of the Governor [Rhode Island], news release, July 9, 1999. 9. See Joni Maya Cherbo, and Margaret Jane Wyszomirski, “The Associational Infrastructure of the Arts and Culture,” Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 31, no. 2 (2001): 99–123. 10. For more information, see http://www.symphony.org/ola/careers/index.shtml# orchestra.

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C h r i s N . B u r g e s s a n d D av i d B . Pa n k r a t z http://www.creativecommunitiesonline.org/mission_h.html. http://www.coolcities.com/pilot/summary. See Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002. Eligible countries: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovak Republic, Slovenia,Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. See http://www.e-guana.net/organizations.php3?orgid⫽100&typeID⫽870&action⫽ printContentItem&itemID⫽8569.

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Chapte r 3

Field Building The Road to Cultural Policy Studie s in the Unite d State s Margaret Jane Wyszomirski

VARIOUS STREAMS OF SCHOLARSHIP have contributed to the construction of cultural policy studies in the United States. Understanding these intellectual roots is important to students and young scholars entering the field. It is a history and evolution that many authors in this volume lived through and helped shape within the academic community as interests in artistic practice and management, policy and planning, and disciplinary and interdisciplinary research came together. Indeed, one can think of these interest areas as the three pillars of the cultural policy community. Each pillar has influenced and interacted with the other pillars. In large part, cultural policy studies in the United States followed the practice of cultural policy, that is, as cultural policy issues emanated from different arts fields and policy areas at different times, they developed their own policy-making dynamics, and separately began to attract scholarly attention. It has taken nearly four decades for various streams of academic activity to grow, diversify, and professionalize. During the past decade in particular, increased communication and interaction have fostered boundary crossing, cross-fertilization, and collaborations that have linked many separate professional and disciplinary areas, or silos, of knowledge, practice, and policy into a loosely coupled cultural policy issue network and an adolescent policy community. The study of American cultural policy is characterized by pragmatism, instrumentalism, and a public–private emphasis.This approach to culture differs from many European countries, which tend to have stronger theoretical and philosophical roots and longer traditions of public support for and value of the arts and culture. Let us begin by first considering the key terms of “culture” and “policy.” 39

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M a r g a r e t J a n e Wy s z o m i r s k i

What Doe s “Culture” Mean in Cultural Policy? “Culture”—as Raymond Williams, the Welsh critic, observed—”is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” (1981). Three of its meanings bear on this discussion: 1. Culture ⫽ a whole way of life: material, intellectual, and spiritual 2. Culture ⫽ a general state or habit of mind; a state of intellectual development 3. Culture ⫽ the general body of arts as a whole. The first meaning is sometimes referred to as the anthropological sense of culture. This definition is not the generally accepted one implied in the emerging field of cultural policy studies in the United States. Ideological conservatives have a tendency to treat cultural policy as being virtually anthropological in scope. For example, when former National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Chairman William Bennett published his Index of Leading Cultural Indicators (1994), he was not talking about the arts and culture; rather, his indicators concerned issues of crime, family, and education such as statistics on juvenile crime and drug use, divorce, abortion, single-parent families, and scores on math and science tests. To avoid confusion with this conservative sense of culture, we will pair the term “the arts” with the term “cultural policy,” thus effectively defining cultural policy studies as being specifically concerned with the arts. The second meaning—referring to a general state of mind or of intellectual development—is sometimes taken to mean culture with a capital “C.” This definition suggests a sense of elite status and appreciation, as in the sense of being a cultured person. From this perspective, select arts such as opera and symphonic music were determined to be cultured and sometimes called high arts, elite arts, or classical arts. In contrast were popular culture, mass culture, folk art, and entertainment. Indeed works of high art, professional arts management, fine artists, and elite institutions were the implicit focus of arts-funding policy at the time of the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the mid-1960s. Initially, its funding policy gave first priority to providing public financial support for professional artists and professional nonprofit arts organizations that demonstrated standards of artistic excellence. (In other countries, the cluster of artistic activities considered eligible for public funding is called “the subsidized arts.”) The theory held that the nonprofit arts were prone to market failure—they cost more than they could earn to pay for themselves—and thus were in need of public subsidy. Equitable public access to these arts was another priority of early NEA arts funding policy. The agency’s enabling legislation enunciated the goal of increasing artistic

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opportunities for citizens nationwide “that would otherwise be unavailable . . . for geographic or economic reasons” (20 U.S.C.954 (c) (2)). During the early years of the NEA, the arts were treated as virtually synonymous with the elitist meaning of culture. With the creation of the NEA’s Expansion Arts program in 1971 in response to a new social order coming out of the 1960s, the agency extended its agenda to include a multicultural component. Subsequently, NEA Chairman Livingston Biddle (1977–1981) turned to a more populist and inclusive sense of the arts, developing programs that supported such non-elite art forms as musical theater and folk art (Mankin 1984). During the next fifteen years (1981–1996), the NEA and the nonprofit arts community were preoccupied by the struggle to maintain the agency and its budget in the face of a major onslaught from conservative critics. By the 1990s, elitism, populism, and multiculturalism would link with other cultural policy issue areas and evolve into the third common meaning of culture—that is, pertaining to the general body of the expressive arts, which was more inclusive. During the second half of the twentieth century, issues such as humanities funding, heritage and historic preservation policy, the commissioning of public art, public broadcasting policy, cultural diplomacy, and arts education arose, expanded, and attracted a policy community. Other cultural policy issues had a constitutional basis—such as copyright protection and freedom of expression, which were neither limited to nor focused upon the subsidized arts. Thus, arts and cultural policy became more expansive and inclusive than the original focus on funding and more defined in scope than the holistic and anthropological sense of all cultural phenomena. Cultural policy has come to encompass virtually all aspects of the ever-evolving artistic creativity that occurs across the nonprofit, commercial, heritage, and public sectors. It involves the activities of many individuals whether they are professionals, semiprofessionals, or amateurs working in the fine, popular, digital, or folk arts and crafts. It does not include sports, religion, or language, as is the case in some other countries. What Doe s “Policy” Mean in Cultural Policy? Public policy is a process that involves a set of political decisions by government concerning the selection of goals, the methods for addressing them, and the allocation of necessary resources for accomplishing them. It is the sum of government activities and decisions, whether acting directly or through agents.When public policy focuses on the general topic of the arts and culture and its set of interrelated issues, this process is referred to collectively as cultural policy.The process should not be understood as a unitary, comprehensive whole. The United States has no single, definitive cultural policy directed

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toward achieving a singular goal. Public policy in other areas such as the environment, transportation, education, foreign policy, and energy is understood to be a collection of policies and programs that may complement, contradict, or simply focus on different goals, issues, or constituencies. Cultural policy is no different. While governments make public policies concerning the arts and culture, private institutions make private policies that also affect the arts and culture. Such institutions include private foundations, nonprofit arts and cultural institutions, commercial media and entertainment corporations, and professional and trade organizations. In the United States, the prevalence of such private arts and cultural actors means that cultural policy must be understood as the sum of the decisions, actions, and inactions of both public and private actors. For example, foundations make policy almost inadvertently by their choice of which programs and grants they undertake. Between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s, The Ford Foundation’s arts and culture division invested nearly a hundred million dollars to develop regional theater companies, dance companies, and symphony orchestras across the country. Once the National Endowment for the Arts was established in the mid-1960s, it joined in pursuing this goal, if only informally. Thus, a private policy decision and program was complemented by a public policy initiative; between them, the two organizations helped to expand public access to the arts in the United States by building a national network of performing arts producers and presenters. Commercial media and entertainment corporations also inadvertently make private cultural policy through their choice of the products and services they market and distribute. Each year the movie studios and television networks decide what slate of films and programs they will offer the public; these decisions, in large part, determine the range of choices available to the viewing public. In addition, these corporations have a significant stake in government policies concerning intellectual property both nationally and internationally, as they want to protect their rights to use of their artistic products. The lobbying of the government by such copyright industries is influential in determining how copyright protections are enforced in relation to activities such as downloading music and movies off the Internet as well as in establishing the U.S. negotiating position on trade policies involving the import and export of cultural products. Hence private institutions not only make cultural policy but also influence the character of U.S. public cultural policy. Trade and professional associations that represent the interests of individuals and organizations in arts and culture are another source of cultural policy. Unions, such as Actors Equity, are consulted by the immigration service about the granting of work visas to leading foreign actors and actresses who seek to

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come to Broadway to star in a play. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) voluntarily established and administers the movie rating system.Television broadcasting is subject to a publicly mandated rating system that is implemented by a parental screening process using a V-chip, which the government has required on new television sets since 2000. The American Association of Museums (AAM) sets standards for professional conduct of museums through its code of professional ethics. The mixed system of both private and public support sustains nonprofit arts and culture institutions in the United States; it might be viewed as a public–private policy partnership. As a matter of government policy, many arts and cultural organizations are eligible to be recognized and registered as nonprofit charitable organizations by the Internal Revenue Service under the 501(c)(3) section of the U.S. tax code. As 501(c)(3) organizations, they are exempt from most federal, state, and local taxes, including property and sales taxes. This benefit reduces a nonprofit organization’s annual operating costs. Nonprofits are also eligible for discounted postal rates, which reduces their direct mail marketing costs. Most importantly, contributions to 501(c)(3) provide donors with a tax deduction from their annual federal income taxes (relative to their marginal tax rate). Typically, only nonprofit organizations are eligible to receive government grants. Commercial entertainment corporations, like other types of corporations, can claim businesses expenses and charitable contributions as tax deductions. Local tax policy can also have significant impact on the arts, as cities often provide tax incentives to lure movie studios and film crews to their area. What Curre nt Issue s Are the Focuse s of Cultural Policy Studie s? Arts and cultural policy is a collection of many issues, a number of which are discussed in this volume. Both individual policy issues and the overall dimensions of cultural policy are varied and dynamic. New issues arise from new social conditions such as demographic shifts, changes in arts production and management, and the impact of new technology. Public funding has been a cornerstone issue of cultural policy. Examples mentioned elsewhere in this volume represent policy issues that affect support for individual artists and foster their creativity. The arts and culture are also affected by regulatory policies such as telecommunications content and the protection and development of historic buildings, monuments, and sites. Arts education policies are an issue not only in cultural policy but also in education policy, both in pursuing education reform and performance and in developing an effective and appropriate workforce for the twenty-first century, when the knowledge and creative industries will dominate.

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How Is Cultural Policy Organiz e d and Impleme nte d? It is important to note that because of issue and structural fragmentation that characterizes American cultural policy, the political dynamics and actors in each issue area have tended to become what can be characterized as a policy subgovernment. A policy subgovernment is defined as a collection of government institutions and organized interest groups that form a policy-making and implementation system. Each subgovernment usually has three components: a federal agency that administers cultural policy programs, a congressional subcommittee responsible for overseeing the operations and/or appropriations of the agency, and a constituency affected by the agency’s actions and funding policies. In the case of direct provision of federal support for the arts, the subgovernment is composed of the NEA, the Interior Affairs subcommittee of the congressional Appropriations Committee, and nonprofit arts service organizations and advocacy groups that collectively work on behalf of the artists and professional institutions that make up the arts and culture community. The public broadcasting subgovernment includes a different lead agency, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (encompassing PBS and NPR), different congressional subcommittees, and a differently configured constituency. Under normal conditions, each policy subgovernment can operate as a mutually supportive triad (known in Washington as the Iron Triangle). During periods of controversy or instability, however, other political actors may become involved in cultural policy-making processes, as in the late 1980s and early 1990s when conservatives ignited controversies over censorship and accountability that eventually worked their way to the Supreme Court. Subgovernments can also overlap and interact. The arts, humanities, and museums/libraries subgovernments overlap because they fall under the jurisdiction of the same congressional subcommittee. National Political Principle s/Value s and Gove rnme nt Practice s that Guide d Deve lopme nts of Cultural Policy Studie s A number of principles characterize the relation between government and the arts, both historically and presently (Wyszomirski 2004), and have influenced the development of cultural policy studies in the United States. They include the following: 1. A belief in the primacy and responsibility of private organizations and individuals for the support and creation of the arts 2. An acknowledgment of the important role of local governments 3. An expanding definition of the arts 4. Being an exemplar of high esthetic standards and artistic excellence

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5. Being a facilitator of public access to the arts 6. Being a responsible steward of American cultural heritage 7. Having a responsibility for the international diffusion of American culture Along with this set of specific cultural policy principles, another trio of general political values has shaped the practice of cultural policy in government.These values include the following: 1. The dispersion of power 2. Structural variation 3. Intergovernmentalism By the dispersion of power in government we mean the set of constitutional checks and balances that separate both governing authority and policymaking power among the three branches of the national government (executive, legislative, and judicial) and the division of power among the various levels of government (national, state, and local). The dispersion of power often leads to institutional and programmatic fragmentation—which is a hallmark of how many arenas of public policy are structured in the United States, including cultural policy. According to a 2001 research report, “Policymaking about the cultural sector is spread widely throughout the government through some 200 programs in at least 30 federal agencies” (Center for Arts and Culture 2001). Indeed, this structural dispersion at the top is one reason why Americans find it difficult to recognize the construct of cultural policy and why other nations that have a ministry of arts or culture find the U.S. situation confusing (Cherbo 1992). Structural variety means that cultural policies at the federal level are administered by many types of agencies and departments, including those named below: ■

■

■

■

■

■

NEH, NEA, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (independent government agencies) Art in Architecture Program, General Services Administration (program or division of an independent agency) Corporation for Public Broadcasting (a quasi-public government corporation) Division of Educational and Cultural Exchange, State Department (division of a cabinet departments) Fine Arts Commission; and Cultural Property Advisory Commission, State Department; Indian Arts and Crafts Board, Interior Department (citizen advisory commissions) Federal Communications Commission (regulatory commission)

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Advisory Committee on Historical Preservation and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (interagency advisory groups)

Other strands of U.S. cultural policy are administered by organizations other than federal executive agencies. The Library of Congress, which includes the Copyright Office, is a legislative organization. The Smithsonian Institution is an independent trust—a 501(c)(3) no less—of the United States (Kurian 1998, 532). The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is an independent bureau of the Smithsonian whose buildings and grounds are maintained by the National Park Service. State and Local Political Principle s/Value s and Gove rnme nt Practice s that Guide d Deve lopme nt of Cultural Policy Studie s A similar structural variety can be found at the state and local levels; this variety has the advantage of helping to protect artistic freedom from government intrusion. Such an arrangement also embodies the value of localism and requires some degree of interagency and intergovernmental cooperation. On the negative side, such dispersion fragments effort and can results in overlap, redundancy, and lost opportunities for policy cohesion. Every state has a state arts agency (SAA) and a set of local arts agencies (LAA). Most states also have a number of other arts and cultural agencies, including humanities councils, a historical society, and various historic sites, along with a network of public broadcasting stations (Schuster 2003). Many SAAs and LAAs manage public art programs and sponsor a range of art fairs, cultural festivals, and arts education activities. Many of the SAAs and LAAs were made possible by federal seed money from the NEA;, SAAs continue to receive annual NEA block grants. For decades, this intergovernmental arts system took its policy lead from the NEA. But in the past fifteen years, the policy agendas, financial resources, and program emphases of SAAs and LAAs have taken on a life of their own. For example, Congress has virtually prohibited the NEA from directly funding artists, while state and local arts agencies have maintained and, in some cases, expanded their support for individual artists. Similarly, SAAs and LAAs have made collaboration with economic development agencies and creative economy development a priority in the twenty-first century, whereas the NEA shows little interest or activity in such initiatives (Wyszomirski 2007). New Directions in Cultural Policy Formulation Since 1985, the values, political principles, and administrative practices embraced by the cultural policy field have been renegotiated and redefined,

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resulting in a broader, more diverse, and dynamic arts and cultural policy field. This new direction has several key characteristics: ■ ■

■ ■ ■

■

■

A loosely coupled intergovernmental system A broadened definition that encompasses the full spectrum of arts, entertainment, and heritage activity A multiplicity of issues that are identified as cultural policy A number of issue-specific policy subgovernments Diversity in policy goals, including broadening public access to the arts, recognizing diverse cultural traditions, conserving and protecting cultural heritage; promoting, protecting, and sustaining arts organizations and cultural industries A variety of policy instruments including grants, tax incentives, regulations, and international treaties A general shift of policy initiative and innovation to the state and local levels

The political and intellectual construction of this new cultural policy and the arts paradigm is ongoing—the current phase in the evolution of cultural policy practice in the United States. The Contributions of Unive r sity-Base d Prog rams The field of cultural policy studies in academic settings initially drew upon separate discipline-based and interdisciplinary approaches.The fact that the Library of Congress only introduced the term cultural policy to its cataloging system in 1984 is indicative of the relative newness of the field (Wallach 1999). Often the trajectories of arts and cultural policy making ran ahead of the development of relevant research tools (surveys of public opinion toward the arts), conceptual frameworks (social capital), and analytical capacities (the evaluation of policy outcomes). In other instances, cultural policy and management practice sought to draw upon preexisting knowledge (economic impact studies, market failure analysis) and adapt it to its needs. Slowly specialized communities of scholars who focused on a single issue of cultural policy became aware of each other and amassed a larger body of information, experience, and cases from which to build theory, develop ideas, and become a loosely linked field of inquiry. Writer and program evaluation analyst David Pankratz chronicles the rapid growth and development of arts policy research beginning in the mid1990s through the creation of forums for policy dialogue, arts policy research centers, and improved research connections to policy makers, as well as investment in the archiving of policy-relevant information (Pankratz 2003). These developments prompted sociologist Paul DiMaggio to observe, “No one

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could fail to be struck by the rapid institutional development of cultural policy research over the past decade . . . arts policy researchers and their supporters can take satisfaction in the fact that the field has reached critical mass” (DiMaggio 2003, 21). As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the cultural policy field has a number of contributing intellectual streams, all of which have helped shape the research, curriculum, academic programs, and scholarly associations engaged in cultural policy studies. Figure 3.1 provides a diagram of many of the most notable disciplines and interdisciplinary approaches that have been part of this evolution. A scholarly interest in the arts and politics or the arts and government predates the establishment of the NEA and the development of the public arts funding paradigm, but such attention was sporadic and scattered. A full historical review of this literature is yet to be written; when written it would include the activities and research from various artistic disciplines including theater and music history; academic disciplines including cultural studies, sociology, political science, economics, and art history; and the work of journalistic commentators, critics, and such men of letters as Gilbert Seldes, Alvin Toffler, Arthur Koestler, and Russell Lynes. However, even with the writers and academics in these various fields, there was not enough scholarship about the arts to ground a field of study. Since the nation had little overt arts or cultural policy to speak of (aside from copyright protections for creators and the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of expression), there were few scholarly incentives to till these fields. With the establishment of various federal arts and cultural agencies in the 1960s, interest in the subjects of government and the arts and the arts in society Nonprofit Management With arts management Arts Administration With coursework that provides policy competency Public Administration Of public arts agencies and implementation of cultural policies

City and Regional Planning With community arts focus Cultural Policy Issues Single-issue focus U.S. Cultural Policy Studies

Cultural Studies With cultural policy implication Public Policy With courses, minor track, or specialization in the arts and cultural policy available

Business Administration With arts administration Discipline-Based Interests track that addresses For example, cultural economics, policy competency art history, sociology of the arts, arts education, history, political science

3-1. Contributing Streams of Cultural Policy Studies in the United States.

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expanded as the nation built public cultural programs and agencies charged with administering public patronage. During the 1960s and 1970s, scholarly work remained scattered among a number of academic fields. Individual research projects of particular scholars in specific disciplines pursued varied efforts to understand, explain, critique, or influence arts and cultural policy. Without a strong research, philosophical, or intellectual tradition concerned with relations between arts and government—indeed with an implicit belief that that relation might best be weak and distanced—academic attention to the study of arts and cultural policy in the United States initially followed a path of applied utility. In this applied mode, the first formal attention to developing a curriculum concerned with arts policy focused on teaching and learning how to manage arts organizations and arts agencies. Arts management programs began to appear on U.S. campuses in the late 1960s and were located eclectically within preexisting discipline areas that seemed appropriate. These included schools of business, since a goal of public arts funding was to make nonprofit arts organizations better managed and to operate more like a business. The need to train a new generation of managers for a proliferating number of arts organizations added to the incentive for business administration training. Business schools at UCLA and the University of Wisconsin at Madison were among the first to develop programs in arts management. While the program at Madison continues, many of the other arts management programs have since gravitated to schools of public policy and management, to nonprofit management programs, and to colleges of the arts. Other interdisciplinary fields—such as social theory programs or city and regional planning—intermittently noticed the emerging arts policy activity, but the timing was not right for the field to take root in these academic settings. Many of the social theory programs, such as feminist studies and various ethnic studies, were focused on establishing their own presence and intellectual foundations. Eventually, many of these research streams would become branches of cultural studies. Yet consideration of the arts was usually a sideline, and discussions of policy and the arts tended toward either an anthropological perspective or toward social criticism. City and regional planning or urban affairs was preoccupied with responding to the urban unrest of the late 1960s and the elevation of urban affairs on the national policy agenda. Geography was in the process of reinventing itself—changing from a largely descriptive field to a more methodologically sophisticated and analytical discipline. Today one can see the elaboration of these foci in places like Rutgers University, where cultural policy was incorporated into the Center for Urban Policy Research at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy; the Social Impact of the Arts Project (SAIP) at the Urban Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania; and in the

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community arts development focus of the Arts Extension Service and Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. By the second half of the 1970s every state had created an arts agency, and local arts agencies were proliferating. Since these agencies were generally small, there wasn’t enough activity in this area to attract the attention of schools and departments of public administration. Furthermore, public arts agencies had a tendency to blur the fact that they were public—a characterization that was not well understood or dealt with in public administration programs at the time. For example, the NEA cast itself as the equivalent of a private foundation, and its name encouraged that misconception. Local arts agencies were becoming plentiful but were often small, and many were 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations and therefore actually third-party agents (before that term came into common usage) of city/municipal governments. Eventually, schools of public administration developed an interest in nonprofit management and civil society. Beginning in 1981 and the Reagan administration, federal policy that promoted decentralization and devolution of federal functions to the state and local levels rekindled interest in state and local government administration. Over time, these developments created the opportunity for courses in both nonprofit arts administration and the administration of public cultural agencies to find a home in public administration programs, many of which are now called public policy or public service programs. When the United States entered into the ongoing administration of public arts and cultural funding in the mid 1960s, the interdisciplinary applied fields of public policy and nonprofit studies did not yet exist. Public policy only began to emerge as a field in the 1970s as it developed concepts and practices that differentiated it from political science and public administration. Initially, the field of public policy studies in the United States focused on program and policy evaluation that tended to be interested in how and why public policies failed—whether politically, financially, or programmatically (Ranney 1968). At the time, public arts funding was nominal and of low visibility, and thus an unlikely candidate for policy research. Similarly, the field of nonprofit management and philanthropic studies only began to develop in the 1980s. During the 1980s and into the 1990s, the nonprofit studies field concentrated on building its own broad theoretical, conceptual, and informational base. This was a massive, interdisciplinary undertaking that also attracted private philanthropic resources and was a response to financial and political threats from the rising conservative right. Although the nonprofit arts sector was included in this field development, it always had a very small presence in the nonprofit studies. Nonprofit studies, however, also cultivated an interest in civil society and voluntary action, which included the study of community or informal arts. The University of Oregon’s Institute for Community Arts Studies has been a prime example of the

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community arts focus. More recently, the Chicago Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College in Chicago has been active in research on the informal arts. Nonprofit studies reinforced the separation within the field of cultural policy between the nonprofit arts (both professional and informal) and the commercial, for-profit arts and entertainment industries. As a result, nonprofit studies address only part of the creative sector—the nonprofit and informal components. Because cultural policy making preceded the development of programs in arts administration, public policy, nonprofit studies, and many components of cultural studies, interdisciplinary efforts in cultural policy studies were delayed. Conversely, the study of the arts in business and public administration programs and as part of various historical fields and social science disciplines all predated establishment of overt cultural policies. Such discipline-based research attention mirrored the fragmentation evident in government, with each discipline focusing on its own issues and methodology.Thus, the evolution of cultural policy studies in the United States was neither cohesive nor theory-driven. Scholars with a developed interest in cultural policy from one area had to self-educate themselves in other approaches and to infiltrate other scholarly networks. Public arts and cultural agencies tended to have little interest in, even a suspicion of, academic research.Thus, a governmental impetus for the development and legitimizing of cultural policy was weak and supported only a few lines of research, such as economic impact studies and survey research on public participation in the arts. Despite these historic limitations, arts and cultural policy curriculum and graduate degree programs are taking root on university campuses. Many who helped build the field are forging alliances with departments, schools, and scholars in more established fields. At Ohio State University, the master’s degree program in arts policy and administration involves a formal partnership between the John Glenn School of Public Affairs and Art Education Department of the College of the Arts. In other cases, such as at the University of Chicago, Princeton University, and New York University, students in the public policy schools can build an individualized concentration in cultural policy from a set of topical courses on cultural policy issues and offerings elsewhere in the university. In 2003, the Center for Arts and Culture identified and convened a meeting of over two dozen academic institutions that were involved in teaching and/or doing research on cultural policy. Programs in arts administration, arts education, folklore, and historic preservation have developed an interest in cultural policy and revised their curriculum to incorporate policy material. For example, the Association of Arts Administration Educators has recently developed a set of curriculum and educational guidelines that, in addition to standard management subjects, also promotes competency in policy, international affairs, law and ethics, and

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research methods. A few universities are offering arts management and cultural policy specializations at the doctoral level, which attract not only American students but also a number of foreign students. In addition, it is not unusual to find public administration professors or state arts agency executive directors offering courses that include cultural policy and the arts in university-based programs at state universities in places like Arizona, Ohio, and Louisiana. Activity at the graduate level is also being bolstered by the burgeoning development of undergraduate programs and curriculum in arts administration, public policy, economics, sociology, and art and entertainment law, many of which include arts and cultural policy concerns. The Contributions of Scholarly Organizations Another important spur to the development of cultural policy studies was a set of four scholarly conferences and membership associations focused on art administration and cultural policy.There were, of course, many other conference and associations that included presentations, topics, and even sections concerned with the arts and cultural policy. For example, the culture section of the American Sociological Association which includes the arts is now one of the largest in that discipline. The four scholarly groups that merit further discussion here are: Conference on Social Theory, Politics and the Arts (STPA) Association of Arts Administration Educators (AAAE) Association of Cultural Economics (International) (ACE/ACEI) International Conference on Cultural Policy Research (ICCPR) Each of the first three groups started meeting in the mid- to late 1970s, and they display similar histories. STPA was started in 1974 by two sociologists in upstate New York who studied the arts and had nobody to talk with about them (Leighninger 2006). STPA started as an informal, self-organized group of scholars rather than a formal membership association. Early conferences had sessions on patronage, funding, and arts organizations, but there was hardly any policy on the agenda.At the second conference, in 1975, the name was revised to Social Theory and the Arts.Attendance grew and attracted a number of wellknown scholars, including Howard Becker, Richard Peterson, and Peter Etzkorn. In 1983, circumstances brought political scientists together with the sociologists and the group was again renamed as Social Theory, Politics and the Arts, and there was a lot more policy to talk about. The annual conference began to attract some arts administrators, arts educators, a few cultural economists and art historians, an occasional librarian, and a set of international participants. The 1983 conference led to the first conference publication.

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A decade later, a number of STPA regulars became deeply involved in a quarterly journal that became something of a house organ for the group—the Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society (JAMLS). Since then JAMLS has increasingly focused on cultural policy both in the United States and abroad. STPA has occasionally met outside the United States—in Toronto, Montreal, and, in 2006 in Vienna, Austria. STPA, now in its thirty-third year, still has no bylaws, no written policies, no officers, no committees, no dues, and is not a 501(c)(3). Instead, each year at the end of the conference someone volunteers to host the meeting the next year and, like Brigadoon, the meeting appears in a new place the next year as if by magic. The ACEI Web site notes that although cultural economics previously “received passing attention,” it was “the publication of the seminal Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma by William Baumol and William Bowen in 1966 that . . . [spurred an] . . . increasing flow of papers and books on the subject” (www.acei.neu.edu). ACEI has a history similar to that of STPA but owes much of its impetus to a single scholar. In 1979, Professor William Hendon of the University of Akron organized the first international research conference on cultural economics in Edinburgh, Scotland. Under his leadership, the conference became informally organized as the Association for Cultural Economics, without a proper constitution or charter. In 1992, the association renamed and reconstituted itself as a membership organization—the Association for Cultural Economics International. It has biannual meetings held in countries throughout Europe and in various cities in Canada and the United States. It attracts scholars and government officials, as well as some STPA regulars. Its official journal, the Journal of Cultural Economics, actually predates the founding of ACE. Over the roughly thirty-year period since the establishment of STPA and ACEI, each has grown, diversified, developed ties to a scholarly journal, and become internationalized. In the process, these scholarly networks nurtured the nascent cultural policy field, supported interdisciplinary scholarship, and cultivated opportunities for scholars in different fields and different countries to collaborate.The early involvement of established scholars in these organizations brought legitimacy to the study of the arts in traditional disciplines and helped make it less risky for junior scholars to enter the field. Publications and journals affiliated with these associations, along with scholars who frequented these meetings, helped legitimize the field and provide channels for the dissemination of cultural policy research and writings and networking opportunities for similarly engaged scholars. AAAE was founded in 1975 as a communication network among academic programs in arts administration. Its Web site notes that “recognition of arts administration as a profession is a recent development . . . [and that] . . . the profession is still in its adolescence “(www.artsadministration.org).The association

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experienced ups and downs, parallel to the history of university-based arts administrations programs. For many years, arts administration programs awarded only master’s degrees.They were small, understaffed, underfunded, and precariously straddled academia and the practice of managing arts organizations. During the early years, such programs were challenged by both constituencies. Many arts managers who came into the field during the boom years of the 1970s had learned their trade from experience and from their peers. They were often skeptical about the value and relevancy of arts management degree training (DiMaggio 1987). The faculty who directed many arts management programs had been practicing arts managers, who generally held a MA or MFA degree and often faced academic skepticism about their scholarly and research credentials. In many cases, arts administration directors were the only full-time faculty member associated with the program. The bulk of courses were taught by adjunct faculty who were themselves managers of nonprofit arts organizations. As a consequence, the development of AAAE as a professional organization was hindered by the scarcity of both human and institutional resources. In its early years, the Performing Arts Journal was informally associated with AAAE. Many program directors were associated with the journal, served on its editorial board, and were published in it. Eventually it was renamed the Journal of Arts Management and Law. In the early 1980s, disagreements with the journal’s publisher led to a break with the arts administrator educators. Instead, a new arts management journal, the International Journal of Arts Management, was created; it is affiliated with the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciale de Montreal and is a leading member of AAAE. AAAE has been enjoying resurgence in the past ten to fifteen years. Dedicated leadership by Joan Jeffri of Teachers College of Columbia University and Cecilia Fitzgibbon of Drexel University helped to revitalize the association. This coincided with renewed interest in arts administration training and a growing number of new programs. Today there are forty-five full members representing graduate degree programs. Furthermore, this membership is international, with members coming not only from the United States but also Australia, Barcelona, Chile, and Canada. Perhaps the most notable recent initiative of AAAE has been the development of a full set of curriculum and educational guidelines for graduate programs in arts administration (Association of Arts Administration Educators 2006). It is noteworthy that along with traditional management competencies, AAAE has also developed guidelines in the areas of policy, international environment, law and ethics, and research.The latter four competencies all bear on the capacity of these programs to teach and engage in cultural policy studies. Furthermore, it is becoming more common for graduate programs in arts administration to try to recruit full-time faculty with a doctoral degree— another indication of its growing professionalization in academic circles It is

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also noteworthy that job announcements in public administration of the arts have begun to seek competency in “knowledge of cultural policy system and issues” or “broad and specific knowledge of . . . public policy in the arts” and/or an ability to understand and use current national and local research in the arts. Clearly, cultural policy knowledge has become a credential for the public management of cultural agencies. The case of ICCPR demonstrates how global the scholarly network interested in arts and cultural has become. Basically a European network of the cultural policy community, ICCPR grew out of a journal, regional networks, and informal groups. The European Journal of Cultural Policy (EJCP) began publishing in 1994. The first meeting of ICCPR took place in 1999 in Bergen, Norway, at the initiative of Scandinavian scholars of cultural policy. Seeking to “establish a more stable international network of researchers within the field of cultural policy research,” the Bergen meeting was attended by 140 scholars from 17 countries (www.ICCPR2006.com). Subsequent biannual meetings in Wellington, New Zealand and Montreal, Canada, brought more Pacific Rim and North American researchers into the network. One indication that the network has expanded beyond its original European focus was changing the name of the journal—from the European Journal of Cultural Policy to the International Journal of Cultural Policy.The most recent ICCPR conference in Vienna hosted 58 sessions with presentations by 210 scholars and was attended by more than 400 participants from 52 countries, including a number of U.S. researchers. Clearly, cultural policy studies is a growing field around the world, and the cross-fertilization between American and other cultural policy researchers and those around the globe is likely to exert a formative effect on all network members over time. Concluding Thoughts The globalization of cultural policy studies raises many interesting policy questions and opportunities to deepen our collective knowledge.Today, virtually every country has arts and cultural agencies.They can learn from each other as they face similar policy issues and struggle with different phases of institutional, political, and intellectual development. Cities around the world have embarked on cultural policy initiatives to develop their creative economies, to become thriving homes for individuals in the creative workforce, and to attract cultural tourists. Cultural policy research is active in exploring these new issues, in making cultural information available from around the globe, and in helping to shape cultural policies at all levels of government. In the twentieth century, cultural policy lacked a strong infrastructure of policy-making institutions, organized constituencies, and clearinghouses of policy-relevant information.The period also gave rise to both skepticism and cynicism about the uses (and abuses) of cultural policy under the governments

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of Nazis, fascists, communists, and other authoritarian regimes. Twentiethcentury cultural policy was often on the margins of the political agenda, sometimes dismissed as a frill or a luxury. In the twenty-first century, cultural policy has moved in from these margins and is becoming increasingly important to the agendas of cities, states, and nations. It is a cornerstone of the creative economy. It has assumed new importance as globalization prompts closer attention to the role that the arts and culture play in projecting national image and identity.The efforts of half a century in building a field of cultural policy studies have paid off. The field has matured, gaining the capacity to bring current and evolving policy issues into sharp focus. Se lecte d Re fe re nce s Association of Arts Administration Educators. 2006. Standards for Arts Administration Graduate Program Curricula:A Living Document. www.artsadministration.org. Accessed April 20, 2007. Becker, Howard S. 1982. Artworlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bennett, William J. 1994. The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators Carmichael, CA: Touchstone Books. Center for Arts and Culture [CAC]. 2001. America’s Cultural Capital: Recommendations for Structuring the Federal Role. Washington, DC: Center for Arts and Culture. Cherbo, Joni M. 1992. “A Department of Cultural Resources: A Perspective on the Arts,” Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society 22, no. 1 (Spring): 44–63. DiMaggio, Paul. 1987. Managers of the Arts. Washington, DC: NEA Research Report no. 20, September. ———. 2003. “The Vital Border of Cultural Policy Studies.” In The Arts in a New Millennium: Research and the Arts Sector, ed.Valerie B. Morris and David B. Pankratz, 23–29.Westport, CT: Praeger. Kurian, G. T., ed. 1998. “Smithsonian Institution.” In A Historical Guide to the U.S. Government, 532. London: Cambridge University Press. Leighninger, Robert D. 2006.“The Origins of Brigadoon: A History of the Social Theory, Politics and the Arts Conference.” http//stpa.culture.info.Accessed June 2, 2007. Levine, Lawrence. 1988. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mankin, Lawrence D. 1984. “The National Endowment for the Arts: The Biddle Years and After.” Journal of Arts Management and Law 14, no. 2:59–80. McCarthy, Kevin F., Elizabeth Henegan Ondaatje, Laura Zakaras, and Arthur Brooks. 2004. Gifts of the Muse. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. Morris,Valerie P., and David B. Pankratz. 2003. The Arts in a New Millennium: Research and the Arts Sector. Westport, CT: Praeger. Pankratz, David B. 2003.“Values and Policy Paradigms: Foundations for Research on the Arts Sector.” In The Arts in a New Millennium: Research and the Arts Sector, ed.Valerie B. Morris and David B. Pankratz.Westport, CT: Praeger. Ranney, Austin, ed. 1968. The Study of Policy Content: A Framework for Choice. Chicago: Markham Publishing. Schuster, J. Mark, ed. 2003. Mapping State Cultural Policy: The State of Washington. Chicago: Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago.

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Wallach, G. 2000. “Introduction.” In The Politics of Culture, ed. G. Bradford and M. Gray, 1–10. New York:The New Press. Williams, Raymond. 1981. Culture. London: Fontana. Wyszomirski, Margaret Jane. 2003. “Creative Industries and Cultural Professions in the 21st Century.” Paper prepared for the 2003 Barnett Symposium on the Arts and Public Policy, Columbus, Ohio State University. http://arted.osu.edu/outreach/conferences. ———. 2004. “From Public Support for the Arts to Cultural Policy.” Review of Policy Research 21, no. 4:469–484. ———. 2008. “The Local Creative Economy in the United States.” In Cultures and Globalization: The Cultural Economy, ed. Helmut Anheier and Yudhishthir Ray Isar. London: Sage Publications.

We b Site s www.acei.neu.edu www.artadministration.org www.ICCPR2006.com

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P a r t Tw o

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Field Issues

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Chapte r 4


Ellen Dissanayake

ONE OF THE most striking features of human societies, from the Palaeolithic to the present, is their prodigious involvement with the arts. In fact, most of what we know of past societies is revealed by their plastic or visual arts—cave wall paintings and engravings, pyramids and other tombs, temples, palaces, cathedrals, Buddhist stupas, ceramics, carvings, and stone sculptures both monumental and small. Although dance, music, dramatic stories, and body decoration seldom leave traces, we can assume that they too were widely practiced from early times. Like visual arts, they are prominent today in every society of the world so that our species’ taxonomic name could just as well be aestheticus (artistic) as sapiens (wise). Indeed, a case could be made that we are more aestheticus than sapiens.Yet isn’t it strange that our artistic nature, this indelible characteristic of our species, is not part of our general thinking about who we are? Even archaeologists and other social scientists, who should know how arty a species we are, usually regard human art not in its own right as the biologically distinctive and noteworthy characteristic that it is but rather as evidence of an ability to make and use symbols or as an indication of human intelligence or degree of cultural development. Perhaps one reason for this art-blindness is that the modern concept of art is confused. We don’t know art when we see it. To some, art refers to things that are rare and valuable—made by geniuses and sanctified by their presence in museums. Others scoff that art is a kind of pretentious folderol that most people quite obviously manage to live without. The close association today between art and commerce also raises suspicion or hostility regarding what is legitimately art, as does the work of some artists who deliberately intend to disturb, challenge, and provoke. How should we regard art? As an ornament? A sacred calling? A political tool? A token of commerce? Intimations of sacredness, beauty, privilege, and refinement continue to cling to the idea of 61

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E l l e n D i s s a n aya k e

art like wisps of mist shrouding a tree’s higher reaches. Often more evident, however, is the trashy clutter at ground level—the less estimable associations of commodification, provocation, charlatanry, fickleness, and vulgarity.What is art, anyway? And why does it matter? I suggest that we can best understand human art—what it is and what has made it universal and necessary—by taking a species-centered view.That is, if we look at the arts as they have manifested themselves from the earliest millennia of our species, it becomes indisputable that they have been pervasive and integral to our nature and remain so today. As early namers of our species recognized, humans are indeed universally technological (Homo faber, or tool-using). We have also been called political (H. hierarchicus), commercial (H. oeconomicus), and playful (H. ludens). We also use language, form families, develop intimate social relationships, strive for status, create and engage in rituals, and hold moral beliefs. What we don’t realize is that pervading all these practices that make us human are the arts. Just as fish are unaware of water because it is the element in which they exist, we are oblivious to our dependence on and immersion in the arts. What Do We Mean Whe n We Talk About Art? As just suggested, an important reason for our artistic myopia is that the word “art” means such different things to different people. “Art” may refer to skill (fineness and complexity of execution, cunning, or craft); artifice (artificial rather than natural); beauty and pleasure; the sensual quality of things (color, shape, sound); the immediate fullness of sense experience (as contrasted with habituated, unregarded experience); ordering or harmonizing (organizing, shaping, pattern making, interpreting; giving unity); innovative tendencies (exploration, originality, creation, invention, seeing things a new way, surprise); the urge to beautify (embellish, adorn, display); self-expression (presenting one’s personal view of the world); communication (a special kind of language, symbolizing); serious and important concerns (significance, meaning); make-believe (fantasy, play, wish fulfillment, illusion, imagination); and heightened existence (emotion, entertainment, ecstasy, self-transcendence). Depending on the circumstances, art has been called orderly and disorderly, immediate and eternal, particular and general, Apollonian and Dionysian, emotional and intellectual, immanent and ideal.The concept seems inexhaustible. Evidently art at times is and/or is concerned with all these things, but can we say that any one of them characterizes all art? Not likely; philosophers have tried unavailingly for years. One problem is that not everything that is called art always has these characteristics. Not every instance of art is skilled (children’s art), artificial (a piece of driftwood displayed on a shelf), beautiful or pleasurable (a painting of war or suffering). What is more, each of the

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proposed characteristics can be included in another activity without invoking the concept of art at all. For example, play need not be artful (a game of pinochle), and, as a concept, play can cover such features of art as fantasy, illusion, and make-believe. Exploration and curiosity can account for instances of innovation and creativity. Heightened existence can be found in experiences that few would call artistic or aesthetic, such as achieved ambition, sporting events, catastrophes, carnival rides, even childbirth. An assumption that any of these defining features is synonymous with art or is always provided by art is untenable. A more precise identifying characteristic still eludes us.To claim that something is art one must go further and say what it is that makes artistic play, artistic order, artistic perception, and artistic significance different from nonartistic examples of these features. In other words, one must still determine what is artistic about art. A species-centered view that embraces the arts of all times and places does away with the frequent but mistaken assumption that art exists in a special rarefied sphere—serving no purpose other than its own existence: art for art’s sake. In no previous civilization or traditional society that we know of have works been made to serve only as art objects, valued primarily for their power to evoke aesthetic contemplation and enjoyment. Even though people may have required aesthetic excellence in a work, this was so because it was already intrinsically important for other reasons, perhaps to reflect the glory of God, to indicate the depth of a donor’s piety, or to show respect for the deceased and assure a tranquil afterlife. Until relatively recently—the early nineteenth century—beauty was not its own excuse for being. The arts did not reside in solitary splendor, like the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London. Instead they had work to do. The functionality of the arts is massively evident in premodern societies, where the arts are inseparable from daily life as well as being integral to ritual observances.Their variety is as great as the kinds of economic activity (hunting, herding, fishing, farming) and the types of ritual practices (ceremonies to ensure success in a group venture or to encourage reunification after group dissension, rites of passage, accompaniments to seasonal changes, memorial occasions, individual and group displays) found in human societies. All such rituals usually require singing, dancing, drumming, improvisatory versification, reciting, impersonation, performance on diverse musical instruments, or invocations with a special vocabulary. Decorated objects may include masks, rattles, costumes, ceremonial vessels, human skulls, and objects of use such as headrests or stools, paddles, dilly bags, spear throwers, calabashes, baskets, fabric and garments, mats, pottery, toys, canoes, weapons, shields; transport vehicle interiors and exteriors; cattle; manioc cakes and yams; or house walls, doors, and window frames. Songs may be used to settle legal disputes or to extol warriors as well as for lullabies and the expression of high spirits. A large part of the environment

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may be rearranged and shaped for initiation or funeral rites; theatrical displays may go on for hours or days. There may be painting on a variety of surfaces (ground, rock, wood, cloth); piling up of stones or pieces of roasted and decorated pork; careful display of garden produce; body ornamentation (tattooing, oiling, painting). Many activities on this list have counterparts in the modern developed world, although we typically don’t think of these as art. But neither do the premodern people who engage in the activities just described. They have no single, all-embracing word to cover them all. However, they certainly have words for dancing, singing, storytelling, decorating, carving, and painting—as do we. Could our problem about recognizing the importance of the arts be that for our own reasons we have been trying to unite in one obscure concept (art) a number of disparate instances that do not really deserve or require this unification? For example, the Victorian word “vapours” is now obsolete, replaced by terms for a number of separate unrelated female complaints: depression, PMS, menstrual cramps, hypochondria, anxiety disorder, headache, and various similar ailments. Perhaps art is our culture’s vapours. A broad, species-centered view suggests that, like people in other parts of the world, we abandon the vaporous word or concept art and think instead of the arts. Doing so will allow us to know what we are talking about—dancing, singing, making music, carving, using vivid or impressive language, embellishing, performing, to name a few of the arts—and to recognize that our arts are continuous with those of other cultures over space and time. A species-centered view considers the arts as verbs (or verbal nouns)—an activity that people do. It is hard to think of art this way in part because English and other European languages don’t have a verb “to artify.”Trying to determine what such an activity might mean will also help us to understand and appreciate how widespread and important the arts are to us, both as individuals and as a species. Let us say that artifying occurs when something ordinary (for example, ordinary materials such as wood, stone, fiber, clay, flesh, skin, or bone) is made extraordinary or special. Attention is drawn and emotion is expressed or aroused by special or additional shaping and embellishing.Thus quite ordinary objects like those mentioned earlier—weapons, canoes, shields; human bodies; vehicle interiors and exteriors; cattle; manioc cakes and yams; or house walls, doors, and window frames—become special through artification. In dance, ordinary bodily movements of bending, turning, reaching, or stepping are artified or made extra-ordinary (repeated, formalized, exaggerated). Similarly, when repeated, formalized, shaped, and sustained, ordinary tones and intervals in the melody of voice become song.The words of ordinary language, when artified through rhyme, assonance, and alliteration, become poetry. Released from the necessity to be rare and elite, the arts can be detected all around us—on our bodies, in our homes, coming from our sound systems.

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After the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, ordinary Americans—not only professional artists—came together in special places like churches, parks, and public arenas where they participated in the arts.We listened to music and poetry or liturgy of different faiths, joined others in song, and moved silently and slowly in procession. Many people wrote poems, some for the first time in their lives, and displayed them with candles, flowers, and flags in public places, including on special websites. Moved to the depths by something incomprehensible and extraordinary, Americans showed that art was a natural thing to do. Their artifications helped them to cope with a traumatic experience. Arts’ Orig ins As the 9/11 example shows, people engage in the arts when they care. But when did artifying and the arts begin? Art history books have usually begun with the astonishingly powerful painted bulls or horses from Lascaux, which is probably the best-known of the more than two hundred Paleolithic art caves in present-day Europe, predominantly France and Spain. But Lascaux’s images will now have to give precedence in time to equally magnificent animal depictions in Chauvet cave in southeastern France, discovered in 1994. Chauvet’s paintings date to about 33,000 BP (Before the Present)—twice as old as those in Lascaux. In Australia, rock paintings of animals and humans have been dated to nearly the same age, and in Africa, in present-day Namibia, to 26,000 BP.Yet these sophisticated images of animals are not the earliest art. Around 77,000 BP, an abstract pattern of repeated X’s bound on top and bottom by horizontal lines was drawn on a palm-size rock discovered in 2001 in South Africa. Similar patterns can be seen in decorative bands on pots and fabrics from different times and places. At the same location in South Africa, at about the same time, half-inch mollusk shells were found; they had been carefully bored with a central hole, probably to be strung for a necklace as is done with seeds, stones, and shells today. Prehistorians have discovered shaped pieces of red hematite (suggesting that they were used for drawing or at least for coloring the body) from sites dated to 100,000 BP. That is more than three times earlier than the earliest cave paintings. Before 100,000 BP, early members of our species made some of their functional stone tools of fine-grained and highly colored materials, even though there was more abundant and easier-to-work flint at hand. An arrowhead made of glowing orange agate, an expensive trade item, was recovered in 2004 from an archaeological site, Tse-whit-zen, in Washington State. On the rock walls of Daraki-Chattan cave in central India, archaeologists have discovered nearly five hundred carved cup-shape indentations that may be well over two hundred thousand years old. Human-made cupules occur in every part of the world, sometimes in their thousands, as at Jinmium in northern Australia. It

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was calculated that each circle would require at least an hour to carve; just one of the displays, 3,200 circles on one rock face, would take 3,200 man-hours (or 400 eight-hour days for one person) to complete. On other Jinmium rock faces were similar numbers of cupules. A quarter of a million years ago, the ancestors of present-day humans noticed unusual fossils embedded in pieces of rock, deliberately picked them up, and carried them to their living site just as we pick up an unusual shell or stone on the beach to take home and keep on a shelf or mantelpiece. Which of these instances might be considered the beginning of art (artification)? And these examples concern only relatively permanent material objects.What about artifacts made from wood or clay or reed? The earliest evidence of weaving, from 27,000 BP at a site in present-day Czechoslovakia, shows a fineness that suggests a long tradition. Then there are art behaviors that rarely if ever leave a trace—dancing, singing, and miming. These could have occurred well before and almost certainly at the time that people were making marks, boring holes in shells, and drawing images—perhaps even when they were carving cupules or picking up pretty or strikingly unusual fossils. If we agree that it is art when something ordinary (an ordinary cave wall, boulder, stone tool or shell, hair, skin, bodily movement, uttered sound) is made extraordinary or special, then the human species has been susceptible to art and making art for tens of thousands of years. If we count as art simply recognizing that something is extraordinary or special, we can identify our species as Homo aestheticus 250,000 years ago. Further evidence that we are naturally artful is right under our noses.While it is difficult to determine when art first arose in our species, it is easy to see in our babies and toddlers. Almost from birth, babies will become quiet and listen to singing and other music; a little later, even before they can sit up or walk, they want to vocalize with and move to almost any music that they hear. Without being taught, two-year-olds know what to do with a crayon or colored pen— make marks on available surfaces, including their own bodies. As they develop motor control, they happily decorate their bodies and possessions.They like to dress up and to make believe. They love wordplay, whether as rhymes and silly phrases that are told or read to them by adults, or in their own experiments with language. The rudiments of music and dance are developed and perfected in the rhythmic face-to-face play between adults and infants that is sometimes dismissively called baby talk. As adults talk, make silly faces, sing, and play with them, babies respond with kicks, wriggles, and smiles. Another striking observation with babies is that our spontaneous performances for them use the same aesthetic manipulations that artists in all media use to attract attention and to shape and mold emotion in adults— exaggeration, repetition, elaboration, and formalization. The fact that infants are innately receptive to our playfully exaggerated, repeated, elaborated, and

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formally simplified sounds, movements, and facial expressions is as significant for their future lives as arts participants as their readiness to investigate objects and their urge to babble is to their future lives as users of tools and language. Arts Infinitum Truly, arts are inexhaustible and omnipresent constants in human society. In body decoration, the ordinary material—human flesh, bone, and hair—is made extraordinary with such practices as tattooing and scarification, piercing, tooth filing, and head or foot binding. Clothing and costumes similarly transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Humans everywhere make their surroundings extraordinary. Alreadyextraordinary surroundings like mountaintops or cave chambers are made even more extraordinary by placing temples, shrines, and monuments there. For their ceremonies, people excavate pits, raise mounds, lay out paths, circles, and rectangles, place lines of stone, erect poles, build structures of boughs, light fires, disperse smoke from camphor or incense, cut, paint, or mold figures, and—particularly in the present-day United States—make piles of flowers, ribbons, and stuffed animals to express their emotional response to devastating events. Poetic language immediately marks an utterance as important, as does an altered voice. The Kwaara’ae of the Solomon Islands distinguish between “speech vinelike” for everyday speaking and “speech taproot” for important speech—marked by a grave tone, low pitch, special intonational contours, and special phrasing and vocabulary. Old-fashioned preachers and stump speakers in the United States are known for their own version of taproot rhetoric. In smallscale nonliterate societies, poetry is usually chanted or sung, and indeed song and music of all types are accompanied by movement. Most bards, like those who well into the twentieth century earned their keep, like Homer, by telling (singing) stories in coffeehouses in countries around the Mediterranean, could not compose their thousands of poetic lines without simultaneously strumming an accompanying instrument.Tibetan throat singers have become well-known in the West through recordings and even concert appearances. Singing styles from crooning to be-bop to rap have been popular in twentieth-century North America. Music everywhere shapes or gives form to feeling and has associations with bodily life that are beyond the resources of talk. To dance together in a group is to participate in a greater unity, as the Dogon of Mali visually demonstrate in their Sigi dance, where each individual male (in order of age) becomes a vertebra in a long, composite serpent. And all human societies present dramatic performances, from simple storytelling to complex ceremonies, that take place over hours, days, or weeks and are suffused with arts—that is, with things made extraordinary. In a traditional North American wedding, for example, the church or hall may be specially

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decorated with flowers and candles; bridesmaids wear special clothing and walk solemnly in a measured tread to a musical background before the more splendidly attired bride, who is accompanied by her father. Using formal, archaic language (or specially composed marriage vows), the officiating cleric follows a prescribed sequence of actions and words. Guests also are specially garbed, occupy prescribed places depending on their relationship to the bride or groom, and sit or stand at prescribed times. All these components of the ceremony take their ordinary contexts (for example, occupying shelter, covering the body, moving from place to place, interacting with friends and parents, falling in love, deciding to marry, speaking), make them special and distinctive (with flowers, music, fine fabrics, arresting language, artificial movement, and prescribed spatial and temporal arrangement), and recombine them in a formalized or stereotyped event that participants recognize and experience together as “a wedding”—an occasion that affirms to all that marriage is an important, life-altering event. We may not consider ourselves to be artists when planning a wedding, but when doing so we do what artists do—engage in shaping and embellishing persons, objects, occasions, places, movements, words, and ideas. The Arts and Human Ne e ds The arts have characterized human societies for thousands if not tens of thousands of years. What do they accomplish? Why should people carve thousands of small, concave circles in stone or paint images of animals on walls in inhospitable caves? Why write or read or listen to a poem when stricken by loss and grief ? Prisoners in concentration camps and people during wartime make art. The amount of time, physical effort, and material goods that our species has devoted to the arts over millennia indicates that they must be essential. If not, H. aestheticus would have been long since superseded by H. pragmaticus. Recent events have demonstrated that sometimes the arts can contribute directly to physical survival. In the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004, it was reported that elephants and other animals that lived in coastal areas escaped the tidal wave because they had moved inland to a higher elevation before it arrived. Apparently these creatures could sense—with their hearing or through vibrations in the ground—that danger was approaching.The humans on the coastlines, of course, did not have such senses. It was later discovered that several different groups of aboriginal island people had fled safely to higher ground because they recognized unusual and dangerous behavior of the ocean from stories that had been transmitted over generations. A legend of the Seven Waves had informed the Moken, nomadic seafarers who live on islands off the coasts of Thailand and Burma, that before the “the big wave that eats people” comes, the sea recedes.The Onge on Little

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Andaman Island knew that evil spirits cause floods by taking huge boulders out of the stars and throwing them at the sea, causing the water to move around. When they saw an exposed seabed, they knew that, like breathing in and out of the body, the ocean would have to come back very rapidly. Unlike official media warnings or instructions printed in information manuals, traditional tales have been made special: storytellers use vivid images and striking metaphors in memorable language to captivate audiences so that their messages will be remembered and heeded. The human desire for interesting storytelling was addressed as a matter of course in older times but is often inadequately met in contemporary lives. Although the artful stories of the Onge, Moken, and other islanders are a dramatic example of the contribution of the arts to physical survival, it is possible to describe fundamental psychological benefits that the arts provide as well. We can list and describe some universal species needs that have been and still are addressed and satisfied by engagement with the arts. Play and Entertainment Humans do not live by bread alone, and they feel deprived without avenues for play and entertainment. This catch-all category refers to the fun, pleasure, and refreshment that are frequently to be found in actively engaging in the arts as well as in being entertained by them. During Christmas and other holidays, every family has its own ways of observing the yearly event with special foods, special home and yard decor, and special activities. Making cookies and ornaments for the Christmas tree, stringing cranberries and popcorn, and caroling give pleasure and satisfaction. One might say that the success of the Martha Stewart phenomenon lies in the artification of ordinary domesticity: everything from the front door to the bathroom wastebasket can be made special. Theater, or dramatic storytelling, in which a society presents itself to itself, is one of humankind’s early distinguishing activities. From our remotest past, stories and narratives of the imagination have been depicted as visual images or told and acted out over and over again, providing lessons about life wrapped in enthralling packages. Despite differences in time, geography, cultural type, or material circumstances of the tellers and audiences, the concerns and the emotions they arouse are recognizably the same. Details of the plots or characters in stories may differ—they may take place in a slum or a mansion, in spring or fall, on a tropical island or in the Arctic, in seventeenth-century France or 1950s Brooklyn—but all deal with similar themes or subjects that are important and interesting to all humans: among them, adventure, danger, love, death, attachment to others, status and reputation, justice, morality, human suffering and redemption, desire, loss, change, risk, hope, helplessness, the mysterious and unknown, memory, gratitude, fear, and awe. Popular fantasy epics like the books

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and films of the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter series create for their readers and viewers entire worlds from these always-potent themes.They are found also in every culture’s sacred texts, which seduce the mind and senses through their crafted words and mental images. Belonging Humans bond or attach to others. In a small-scale society, everyone is an integral part of a family or group.Through stories and other arts, a shared understanding of “who we are and what we believe” is passed down through generations. Social acceptance is often reinforced through the arts of music and dance that take place in time and physiologically create the sense of social bonding or unification. Psychologists have recently found that a group of people who watch thirty minutes of an emotionally arousing film have remarkably similar magnetic resonance activation patterns in the same areas of their brain. Such a finding gives neurological confirmation to our subjective feelings of physical and emotional coordination when we move, dance, or even simply listen to music with others. Such pathways to coordination and commonality are routes to belonging.They begin in infancy with playful, artlike sequences like “This Little Piggy” or “Round and Round the Garden,” shared with caretakers who arouse, shape, and manipulate our emotions over time until the familiar yet suspense-filled narrative comes to an end. Other ways to reinforce feelings of belonging are through identifications shared with others. Coat lapels, car bumpers, or trees artified with yellow ribbons indicate that someone else, even a stranger, is concerned and hopeful about the safety of soldiers in dangerous lands. Memorials everywhere, from Egyptian pyramids to Etruscan sarcophagi to the headstones in local cemeteries, are a continuing reminder that the dead have not been forgotten and are still a part of our group, as we shall be remembered in our turn. Social and Individual Identity Humans require an appropriate role and place in life that is recognized and accepted by themselves and others, and they feel uneasy without such recognition. In a small-scale society, people know each other, their kin, their past, their strengths and weaknesses. Roles and occupations are prescribed by tradition, and rites of passage confer additional identity as adult, wife, elder, and so forth throughout life. In modern societies, by contrast, individuals are expected to make or find a place for themselves. People use arts to create and display their membership in a group by special dress, insignia, body piercing and tattoos, and particular verbal and musical styles.Think of bikers, with their fringed black leather jackets, long hair, and penchant for heavy metal music. Then there are tags such as suspenders on Wall Street brokers or leather sandals worn with wrinkled cotton skirts by free-spirited, long-haired, back-tothe-earth women.

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Resolution of Conflict Individuals need physical safety and emotional security and cannot flourish in a milieu of unpredictability or persistent conflict. Our ancestors lived in small social groups of fifteen to twenty-five individuals who had to get along with each other in order to deal successfully with the challenges of everyday subsistence. Many societies have invented ceremonies that build to a climax through drumming and dancing, providing a catharsis for antisocial or otherwise disruptive emotions. Regular rhythm attained with others in coordinated movements and sounds (and brain rhythms) signifies good working order; it feels good and encourages good feelings toward others. People who otherwise violently disagree with one another over religious or other differences may come together to enjoy a celebration, as in the elaborate Gèlèdé masquerade festivities in Nigeria where Moslems, Christians, and adherents of traditional Yoruba beliefs socially interact and collaborate artistically. Physical Use of Hands and Body Humans evolved in and adapted to a “hands-on” physical world of nature that required active manipulation and participation, and they are psychologically deprived when physically inactive. For our species, hands and handwork have been essential. We see this urge in babies, whose inborn need to touch and manipulate is indomitable, as every parent knows. But we don’t as readily recognize the continuing need for manual and full-body activity in ourselves. Even though our temperature-controlled, push-button lives are very different from the lives of our ancestors, few would deny the feeling of competence when we make (or even successfully repair) something.We treasure the hand-stitched quilts and other needlework of our grandmothers and our grandfathers’ heirlooms made from wood with hand tools. Although there is no longer any necessity for it, people today still find pleasure and satisfaction in gardening and in other handwork that makes something special from ordinary materials. In knitting, embroidering, and even cooking, the activity itself—not only the result— is important. Stitching, sanding, and other repetitive activities can be enjoyable as we see the emerging results of our work. Like making things, people find that dancing, singing, and keeping rhythm are their own rewards. Using the Whole Mind Humans have a multiplicity of aptitudes. In premodern societies, the broad range of human cognitive abilities is apt to be used more than in contemporary life, in which they are often underutilized and undervalued. Educational psychologist Howard Gardner has identified additional intelligences that operate alongside and are integrated with the more commonly recognized abilities for verbal and mathematical analysis that schools and IQ tests reward. These include mechanical, spatial, kinesthetic, musical, oral-speaking, interpersonal, and intrapersonal skills that provide rich rewards to their owners

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and to society. It is significant that these are largely nonverbal ways of knowing that are intrinsic to the arts. In modern societies, although we retain this potpourri of aptitudes that were crucial to us as hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of generations, many go wanting. Many people did not go to school before the Industrial Revolution. They learned instead by watching adults. Sitting all day at a desk is not something humans are naturally designed to do, and not everyone is gifted in the three Rs, which are relatively recent inventions. It is a waste of human ability if the remaining aptitudes are neglected or even undiscovered.The arts not only draw upon these ways of knowing but in fact use them for alternate ways to solve problems and learn. Coping and Catharsis In their lives, humans inevitably undergo loss and disappointment and require ways of coping with distress. Ceremonies and their arts can be understood as an important way for people to gain psychological control over what seems disturbing, uncertain, and inexplicable. They provide something to do in times of danger and anxiety—before a hunt or battle, when ill, or before childbirth—and they make people feel better. In societies far and wide, ritualized laments provide a way for the bereaved to work through grief and loss. The success of contemporary arts therapies with traumatized and troubled individuals illustrates art’s ability to provide solace and even to heal. In a secular age it is easy to be cynical or dismissive about religion.The skeptic might consider such relief or healing to come from suggestibility: art as placebo.Yet to feel that one is coping with the source of anxiety reduces the very real adverse physiological effects of the stress response that compromises the immune system, growth, health, and sexual function. In modern societies the arts remain effective ways to articulate private concerns and address significant life events as in the deeply felt poems and displays following September 11 or the personalized squares of the AIDS quilt. Meaning Humans construct, accept, and share with others systems of meaning that explain and organize their world. For humans, unlike other animals, what to do and how to live are not instinctive.We learn our beliefs and values at first from our parents, then from other relatives and peers, and eventually from the larger culture. Through stories and ceremonies, our ancestors created and articulated their sense of the world—they made meaning—for the group and its members. Just as factual information about what to do when the earth shakes or the water recedes was remembered through vivid imagery and catchy language, religious and moral precepts and doctrines are everywhere also given cultural force and meaning by the use of arts. In medieval Europe, for example, could anyone enter a great cathedral, with its towering colonnades

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and arches, glowing stained glass, ornate chapels filled with paintings and stone carvings, and even begin to think that this special place, the result of centuries of labor by hundreds of men and unimaginable amounts of riches, might not be the embodiment of the true faith? In our own commemorations of Independence Day, cultural truths are artified by traditional martial music and climactic fireworks to engender pride and patriotism.We come to feel deeply, not just understand intellectually, the meanings of the founding of our country and of the sacrifices that have been made to sustain it. Such cultural and personal meanings, conveyed by arts, are essential to the well-being and survival of both individuals and social groups. It is well-known from the fate of countless aboriginal societies around the globe that when arts and rituals are prohibited or abandoned, the society breaks down. Even in a secular age, most people still require a sense of life’s meaning that transcends secular scientific explanation. For instance, given a medical diagnosis and prognosis of a life-threatening illness, it is natural to ask, Why me? How do I accept my mortality? In the face of death, what meaning does any life have? Such questions and their answers are often more satisfyingly addressed through our culture’s meaning-laden arts, its spiritually aware music, visual art, and literature. Ultimately, our most profound knowledge and experience of the human condition may not be expressible in formulas, equations, or even words and may be more accessible through other sensibilities, including aesthetics. Transcendence Humans need to acknowledge and celebrate with others of their kind extraordinary as opposed to ordinary dimensions of experience. Our ancestors made arts so that they could connect with a higher power. The same can be said today.Through the arts one can access not only the best that has been created by other humans but also the resources of one’s better self.Through the arts, we can acknowledge that we care about the significant occasions in our lives, from the joy and hope of marriage to the loss and despair of death.The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, is not just a big wall on which names of dead veterans are inscribed. It has been artfully designed to lead us to walk silently downward into a protective V-shape space, almost as if going into the earth. As we descend, the heart-wrenching extent of the quantity of names is only gradually revealed, until we reach the inner angle of the V, where we are dwarfed by the height of the structure and overwhelmed by the columns of print that stretch above and outward on both sides. The polished black granite reflects our image, tangled in the names. We can experience this with others who are there or feel that we are alone with the dead and our thoughts. The artistic genius of this memorial allows its deeper meanings to penetrate and then enlarge our own sense of being.The arts put us in touch with the serious and mysterious, with universal feelings and important

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truths.They have been abiding routes to transcendence and an understanding of why we are here. The Arts’ Future The preceding pages should have made clear that the arts are best understood not as life-enhancing (which implies that they are optional, a sort of icing on the cake) but as life-sustaining (that is, they are the leavening agent that ensures that the cake will rise and assume its best texture and fullest flavor). As Homo aestheticus, we are born to use our artful nature.This is evident in all societies, even the least technologically complex, where engaging with the arts is taken for granted as a birthright. While the arts will always persist, even thrive, it remains curious that our public policies do not embrace the arts as essential to social and personal wellbeing nor acknowledge the arts as a cultural sector or industry like communication, manufacturing, education or agriculture. Simply saying that if people need art they’ll find (and fund) it for them doesn’t make sense; we don’t expect individuals to be responsible for their own clean air, clean water, education, or defense. If one of the goals of our nation is to assist us in leading worthwhile, responsible lives, such a goal must include augmenting our inborn inclinations to learn about the arts and to engage in them, and then to support their creation. Acknowle dgme nt This monograph in an extended form was originally commissioned by Americans for the Arts.Their release of the work for publication here is sincerely appreciated.

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Chapte r 5

About Artists

Joni Maya Cherbo

Artists are as Integral to human life as water is to fish, although their accord, stature, training, expressive outlets, techniques, and tools will vary over time and place. The arts have held a special place in human life from the beginning of recorded history. The capacity to dance, sing, paint, dramatize, and write is part of our species’ capacities. In every society a select number of individuals will be chosen or will self-select to elevate these artistic capabilities into livelihoods. They become professional artists—individuals who create meaning, beauty, utility in their respective worlds, and who—on occasion—create some of the most memorable remains of societies and civilizations past and present. A Snapshot The stature of the artist in the contemporary United States is decidedly mixed. On the one hand, artists are among those we esteem, celebrate, and even envy.Yet some artistic pursuits, such as being a backup singer, a sideman in a band, a decorative house painter, or a tattoo artist, are not highly thought of. Pursuing a career in the fine arts is often considered a calling of sorts and can carry a special cachet. Many young people flock to be involved in artistic pursuits. Yet parents often discourage their offspring from training in the fine arts, given their economic disadvantages. Public opinion polls on the arts reflect mixed sentiments regarding financial support for artists and the importance of artists in comparison with other occupations such as doctors, politicians, priests. The nation supports artists both publicly and privately, but less than it supports arts institutions, and support is nominal when compared with many nonartistic occupations such as scientists and medical researchers. Only a handful of artists become recognized superstars, some make a living from their artwork, and most rely on secondary employment and supplemental income to survive. Some will go into related occupations such as costume or 75

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J o n i M aya C h e r b o

set designing or become talent agents, arts educators, or entertainment attorneys. Some will leave the field entirely. Commercial artists tend to have more secure careers, while fine artists tend to have career paths that are highly competitive, requiring talent, a capacity for risk, and survival instincts. Increasingly, artists of many stripes are becoming contract workers, moving from job to job and building portfolios in the process. De fining Artists Like art,“artist” is a catch-all concept that begs for definition.Who do we include/exclude in this category? Are topiary designers, announcers, tattooists, or video game designers artists? Does inclusion have less to do with a particular occupation than the creative faculties one uses in one’s work? In other words, are some topiary designers, announcers, tattooists, video game designers artists, while others are practitioners? Must one work full-time as an artist, make most of one’s income from artwork, to qualify? If one works primarily at another occupation to support one’s artwork, does that qualify as being an artist? Perhaps holding an educational degree in the arts, making money from one’s artwork, or having a membership in an arts-based union or service organization are qualifiers for being an artist? There is no standard answer. Writers and researchers will define artists differently depending on their interests and available data sources. Another difficulty in looking at artists is that they are not a uniform occupational group. Their numbers in the labor force and their employment and career patterns and issues will vary, sometimes significantly, depending upon their specialty. For instance, there is an abundance of designers and few dancers and choreographers in the workforce; actors have exceptionally high unemployment numbers; dancers deal with early retirement issues; writers traditionally struggle to get their works published; fine artist and media artists tend to work as freelancers or contract workers and struggle to obtain health, insurance, and retirement benefits. These occupational distinctions can only be understood by looking at each art discipline individually. Information about Artists Data on artists come from a number of sources. There are numerous biographies and autobiographies of artists, primarily celebrities.There is a body of work done in social psychology regarding the artistic temperament, the nature of creativity and aesthetics. Neurologists are studying the brain function of creative activity. Unions and some service and trade associations maintain data on artists, primarily on employment.There are discrete studies done by independent and university-based researchers. Researchers at four institutions—the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA); the Research Center for Art and Culture (RCAC) at Teachers College of Columbia University; Princeton

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University’s Center for Art and Cultural Policy Studies; and the Urban Institute, in Washington, DC—have made recent contributions to socioeconomic data on artists.1 The NEA tracks artists’ employment and related issues using data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The NEA’s categories are not inclusive, missing many occupations that could rightly be considered artistic, in particular the fast-growing group of media artists such as Web and game designers (Greffe 2004). According to the latest Current Population Survey (CPS), a survey done on about 50,000 households derived from BLS statistics, there were about 2.164 million artists in the U.S. workforce, representing about 1.5 percent of the civilian labor force.2 The number of artists varies by occupation, with designers of all varieties being the most populous and dancers and choreographers the fewest. The notion of the starving artist needs amending. According to data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the CPS, professionals as a group earned a median of $40,607. Artists are considered professionals because of their high educational attainment. Artists in commercial areas tend to earn significantly higher incomes than most fine artists.The median for art directors was $63,840, for architects $60,000, for commercial/industrial designers and fashion designers respectively, $52,310 and $55,840, and landscape Table 5-1 Artistic Occupations, 2005

Occupation

Number

Total artists

2,164,000

Designers

803,000

Art directors, fine artists, animators

245,000

Writers and authors

185,000

Musicians and singers

223,000

Architects

239,000

Photographers

158,000

Producers and directors

129,000

Announcers

63,000

Actors

55,000

Dancers and choreographers

27,000

Other artists and entertainers

29,000

Source: National Endowment for the Arts, Research Note 90, July 2006.

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J o n i M aya C h e r b o Table 5-2 Median Earnings for Artist Occupations, 2004

Occupation

Annual median earnings

Actors

$23,462

Announcers

$22,130

Architects

$60,300

Art directors

$63,840

Choreographers

$33,670

Commercial and industrial designers

$52,310

Dancers

$17,760

Fashion designers

$55,840

Fine artists (painters, sculptors)

$38,060

Floral designers

$20,450

Graphic designers

$38,030

Interior designers

$40,640

Landscape architects

$53,120

Multimedia artists and animators

$50,360

Music directors and composers

$34,570


$37,130

Photographers

$26,080


$52,840

Writers and authors

$44,350


architects $55,120. Producers and directors earned $52,840, and multimedia and animators earned $50,360. Writers and authors, interior designers, musicians, and singers were about comparable to the median for professionals. Actors and some commercial artists such as floral designers, dancers, and announcers were more likely to be found at the low end of the income scale. American society overproduces artists in many artistic occupations. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment for the total civilian workforce was 4.7 percent; for all artists’ occupations combined, it was 4.4 percent. However, the unemployment rate for professionals other than artists was 2.4 percent—significantly lower than for artists and the general population. Unemployment varies between artistic occupations. Actors have a notoriously high unemployment rate, 25.5 percent; for dancers and choreographers the rate was 10.4 percent, while architects were below the professional average at 1.7 percent.

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Table 5-3 The Artist Labor Force, Unemployment, 2005

Occupation

Unemployment rate (percentage of professional classification)

Total civilian workers

4.7

Professional occupations

2.4

All artist occupations

4.4

Actors

25.5

Announcers

3.6

Architects

1.7

Art directors, fine artists, and animators

4.5

Dancers and choreographers Designers

10.4 3.6


4.6

Photographers

4.8


3.7

Writers and authors

4.0

Others artists and entertainers

6.7


Artists are moonlighters, relying on secondary employment to make a living. The BLS reported that in 2007, 7.6 million workers, or 5.4 percent of the total labor force, were multiple jobholders. But the rate for artists was twice as high: about 12.8 percent of all artists held secondary jobs. Secondary occupations were particularly high for musicians and singers (32.1 percent), announcers (25.5 percent), and actors (11.8 percent).Architects and designers had relatively low rates of secondary employment (2.4 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively). Related to moonlighting is another distinctive characteristic of artists’ occupations—self-employment. According to BLS data, 68 percent of writers and authors were self-employed. Art directors, fine artists, multimedia artists and animators, writers and authors, and photographers each reported over 50 percent self-employment rates. Performing artists, including actors, choreographers, and dancers, report low rates of self-employment. What these data suggest is that a growing number of artists are freelancers and contract workers and augment their incomes by taking secondary employment that may or may not be arts related. Care e r Conside rations Artistic workers have a host of career considerations, some distinctive to the arts in general, others to one or another artistic discipline. In most of the

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J o n i M aya C h e r b o Table 5-4 Secondary Artist Jobs, 2005

Occupation

All artist occupations

Percentage holding secondary jobs

12.8

Actors

11.8

Announcers

25.5

Architects Art directors, fine artists, and animators

2.4 11.9

Dancers and choreographers

9.2

Designers

6.5


32.1

Photographers

20.8


10.1

Writers and authors

15.6

Other artists and entertainers

9.0

Source: National Endowment for the Arts, Research Division Note 90, July 2006.

fine arts, the steps from graduation to professional involvement are dimly illuminated, unlike those in medicine and law, which have defined steps toward creating a career. The notion of the artistic genius inevitably being found is an illusion. Talent isn’t enough. Artists rely on a host of others and on organizations in forging careers. An Urban Institute Study, Investing in Creativity, identified five types of support needed by practicing artists—training/professional development; material supports; markets/demand; information and policy; and validation and community networks (Jackson 2003). Professional schools, arts agencies, foundations, residencies, intermediaries, and service and trade associations, along with unions and guilds, fill assorted needs at various junctures of artists’ careers. And each artistic discipline has its own array of these support networks. Training Artists Artists acquire their skills in university and college programs—both as undergraduates and graduates—in academies and conservatories, and in supplemental classes and seminars, often throughout their careers. Graduation from a respected school such as the Actors Studio, Juilliard, or California Institute of the Arts not only provides excellent training but also gives an artist a leg up in establishing himself or herself and provides a lifelong network. Teaching art entails both the acquisition of skills and attention to a career in the arts, and arts schools must continually alter their curriculums to accommodate both shifting aesthetics and occupational realities.

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Table 5-5 Self-Employment by Artist Occupation, 2004

Occupation

Percentage self-employed

Actors

17

Announcers

25

Architects

20

Art directors

56

Choreographers

18


30

Dancers

20

Fashion designers

26

Fine artist (painters, sculptors)

62

Floral designers

31

Graphic designers

26

Interior designers

25


24


61


45


41

Photographers

59


30

Writers and authors

68


Arts schools today contend with rapid technological advances and new forms of creative expression: The rise of the Internet is creating new outlets and opportunities for artists; the overproduction of artists, many of whom will not be able to find employment in their chosen occupation; the increasing need to acquire a degree, which will cost more than $100,000; and the production of arts workers who will work as solo practitioners, freelancers, or contract workers. Despite dismal employment prospects and difficult career issues in many areas of the arts, there continues to be no dearth of applicants for most arts programs.Aspirants keep coming—a testimony to the lure of the muse. Perhaps the most dramatic shift in the training of artists has been the extraordinary growth of college and university art degrees in the last fifteen or so years, and the continuation of that pattern for new media artists, especially in the video entertainment world. According to the International Game Developers Association, fewer than a dozen North American universities offered gamerelated programs five years ago. Now, more than one hundred exist with more

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than a dozen overseas. The rise of these new programs is akin to the film school boom in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when aspiring directors and screenwriters learned in a classroom rather than on a Hollywood lot. Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola were part of the first generation of film school graduates. Today, according to the College Board, there are some 114 colleges that offer a major in film studies (Waxman 2006). In response to the oversupply of film school graduates, the University of California encourages its film students (over 600 graduates and 900 undergraduates) to learn all aspects of the trade—to write scripts, use a camera, edit film, produce a project, light a set, build props, train to teach, learn animation and digital studies. Hollywood needs editors, producers, cinematographers, agents, executives.While USC boasts a roaster of film luminaries, its emphasis now is less in creating renowned auteurs or directors and more on offering direct connections to an industry that is hard to enter (Waxman 2006). Similarly, the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University includes liberal arts courses in its program, facilitating a transition to other arts occupations or those outside of the arts. In addition, the program has incorporated practical training such as how to find an agent, taking a good head shot, and auditioning skills (Weber 2005). Curriculum development can be a conundrum given the wide range of new aesthetics and technology that have emerged. Schools differ as to whether to have in-depth or broader-based degree programs to keep up with new trends. For instance, many visual arts schools, in addition to offering courses in traditional figure modeling and making plaster casts, have added video, installation, site-specific, earth, conceptual, and performance art to their curriculums. Others remain committed to teaching traditional visual arts as a solid basis. Career management has become a focus of arts schools. Professional arts teachers often feel they do not have the time or resources to teach adjunct business courses, and many artists initially do not seek them out. For example, finding the time to teach grant writing and how do to one’s taxes in a field such as modern dance, where new dance techniques and forms have proliferated and dancers must be more physically versatile than ever, becomes controversial. Career management courses, however, are increasingly finding their way into arts schools, as well as being offered by arts service organizations and others. Individuals who are likely to become solo practitioners need to become savvy about a variety of business skills—self-marketing/promotion, networking, acquiring health and other benefits, developing peer relations, updating skills, maintaining a home office, and dealing with legal issues such as contracts, copyright and intellectual property matters. Many programs abound. For example, Maryland College of the Arts offers a graduate program, the Entrepreneurship Program, in conjunction with the University of Baltimore’s Merrick School of Business. These skill sets tend not to be part of a traditional arts

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Table 5-6 Financial Support for Individual Artists, 1999/2000

Source

Total monetary value

Local arts agencies

$147,300,000

Foundations

$56,700,000

State arts agencies

$8,800,000

National Endowment for the Arts

$930,000

Regional arts agencies

$756,000

Total

$214,486,000

Source: Galligan and Cherbo 2003.

school training curriculum, but an artist who is not only good at his or her craft but also has business acumen and knowledge about dealing with intermediaries has a leg up on the career ladder. Andy Warhol was a preeminent promoter. Picasso was gifted in managing his works in the marketplace. Financial Support A study by Galligan and Cherbo (2003) showed that among five main sources of direct monetary assistance for artists, giving is primarily local—the highest amount coming from local arts agencies, followed by foundations.3 Federal assistance to artists has been nominal since 1995, when the NEA ceased direct funding to artists following a series of controversial grants found offensive by the then Republican-dominated Congress. If we consider other sources of monetary assistance for artists, such as indirect support—funds that are granted to cultural, educational, and other institutions which are then regranted to artists—the overall figure would be augmented significantly. The database NYFA Source has begun to identify how these monies are allocated—to traditional or cutting-edge artists, to different artistic disciplines, to early/mid/late careers, men or women, ethnic differences.4 We have yet to discern which types of support are the most beneficial in assisting artists’ careers. Infrastructure and Intermediaries Artists’ association such as service/trade associations, unions, and guilds are also important fixtures in artists’ career. They provide a range of services, including job listings, grant and fellowship information, seminars, monetary assistance, networks, and protection from unfair employment practices. A 2001 study of arts associations revealed that more than four thousand existed nationally; about seven hundred of these are national-membership-based organizations

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(Wyszomirski and Cherbo 2001). Many represent the interests of professional artists. Each artistic field has its own primary service/trade association, union, or guild such as Actors’ Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Musicians, the Writers Guild of America, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the Directors Guild of America. Recently, ten unions and guilds from the arts, entertainment, and media and telecommunications industries established an Industry Coordinating Committee to enhance their efforts in collective bargaining, establishing contract standards for their workers, and influencing public policy5 (Armbrust 2005). Intermediaries such as agents, editors, intellectual property experts, dealers, producers, public relations directors, and music promoters are central to the careers of many artists and are often renowned in their own right.The art dealer Leo Castelli was seminal in creating the Pop Art movement in the United States. Lew Wasserman, a celebrated movie star agent, helped create numerous movie careers. David Merrick was a highly successful maverick theater producer. Clive Davis, the music promoter, created the reputations of numerous pop singers. Artists in an Evolving Society Society is constantly in flux in ways that inevitably effect artists. Globalization, increased trade, the advent of the knowledge economy and the Internet, technological advances, demographic shifts, and marketplace needs are changing artists’ occupations and creating new demands, issues, and opportunities for artists. Occupational Forecasts:Traditional and New Media The BLS reports both actual and projected earnings in the Occupational Outlook Handbook. The projected increase in artistic employment between 2004 and 2014 was generally for average growth. Only landscape architects were projected to have faster than average growth, due to increased construction and real estate development amid greater compliance with environmental regulations. Announcers were expected to experience a decline in growth, due to industry consolidation and an absence of new radio and TV stations. Slowerthan-average growth was predicted for fashion designers, due in the main to expected increased competition in the industry. The increasing demand for graphic designers was seen as a result of the expanding market for Web-based information and expansion of the video entertainment market, including television and movies, while the rising demand for interior designers was attributed to the growth in private homes, offices, restaurants, retail establishments, and elder-care institutions.

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Table 5-7 Projected Employment for Selected Artist Occupations, 2004–2014

Occupation (alphabetically)

Projected change

Actors

16.1% (average*)

Announcers Architects

⫺6.5% (decline) 17.3% (average)

Art directors

11.5% (average)

Choreographers

16.8% (average)


10.8 (average)

Dancers

16.8% (average)

Fashion designers

8.4% (slower than average)

Fine artists (painters, sculptors)

10.2% (average)

Floral designers

10.3% (average)

Graphic designers

15.2% (average)

Interior designers

15.5% (average)


19.4% (faster than average)


14.1% (average)


10.4% (average)


14.0% (average)

Photographers

12.3% (average)


16.6 (average)

Writers and authors

17.7% (average)

*Average growth is defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as 9–17 percent; faster-than-average growth is 18–26 percent. Source: National Endowment for the Arts Research Note 90, July 2006.

The transition from a manufacturing to a knowledge-based economy is having significant effects on the arts.Venturelli notes, “The source of wealth and power, the “gold” of the information economy is found in a different type of capital: intellectual and creative ideas packaged and distributed in different forms over information networks” (2000). One often hears of the increasing need for “content,” which may be reflected in the projected employment change of 17.7 percent among writers and authors. Technology and the Internet are opening up new markets for artists, especially new media artists—animators, Web designers, actors for voice-overs, scriptwriters for animation and online publications, musicians for new media, and designers for video games. We are beginning to see the valorization of new media artists, previously thought of as journeymen. Witness the praise garnered

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by Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki for Howl’s Mountain and by the 2005/2006 exhibition Pixar: 20 Years of Animation, at the Museum of Modern Art, which recognized animation as a work of art. Commenting on the increasing cost and sophistication required to produce the next generation of video games, Fred Skoler, president of Whatif Productions, a video game company, said, “I am requiring a skill set in my artist that goes well beyond the average digital artist. These are the Michelangelos of their time” (Fountain 2005). Video games have become one of the fastest-growing, most lucrative art forms—an eleven-billion-dollar-a year business—almost equal to movie revenues (Fritz and Graser 2004). It is estimated that about half of the U.S. population between the ages of twelve and fifty-five engages in some type of electronic game on average of three hours per week (Taylor 2005). A wide array of artistic and technological skills is needed to create video games—designers, voice-overs, animators, audio professionals, plot writers, special effects creators who work in teams on projects, usually for companies that operate like small film studios. Demand in this art form trumps supply in vivid contrast to many traditional arts occupations (Schiesel 2005). The need for talent has prompted the industry to step up to the plate. Disney has supported arts school programs to train animators. Electronic Arts, the number one game maker based in California, contributed millions of dollars to help underwrite a three-year master of fine arts program in interactive entertainment at the University of Southern California. The Internet, along with new technologies, has given artists new ways of creating, promoting, and distributing their art work. These young artists are often referred to collectively as the “indie revolution.”They set up their own Web sites, display pictures of themselves, create profiles, show their work, sell it over the Internet, promote tours and exhibitions, sell tickets to events, and chat with other artists. Singers can sell their CDs and link to iPods and other MP3s so others can download their songs. Authors can self-publish; visual artists can display and sell their art; filmmakers can market their productions. New software has seriously reduced the cost of making art. Filmmakers can use programs such as Apple’s Final Cut Pro software in creating films; ProTools enables musicians to produce top-quality recordings from a home studio at a fraction of the cost required to rent a studio. Web sites that act as intermediaries, bypassing traditional intermediaries such as music promoters, gallery owners, studios, dealers, and even career management experts, have also emerged. They also cost significantly less. Cdbaby.com, tunetribe.com, and karmadownload.com enable artists to sell CDs directly to fans worldwide. Filmbaby.com sells movies received directly from filmmakers, giving the artist 80 percent of the purchase price. Artspan.com provides visual artists with a Web site for a subscription price of $9.95 a month. Sonicbids.com creates an online press kit for artists. New sites are opening regularly, and older ones are being replaced or upgraded. It’s a new frontier.

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Sorting out quality and talent in the budding indie revolution has already produced Internet gatekeepers. Musicdis.com and the Internet radio show Grooveshead act as talent scouts, sifting among a myriad of artists. Fictionwise.com offers ratings and reviews of e-book sites. And of course there are the many blogs. How extensive and successful are these new career paths? Have they created viable alternatives to traditional career trajectories? Some artists are making a living outside the mainstream, but we have no data yet to assess these alternative career paths (Pepper 2005). Arts Policy Many of the patterns and problems noted in this chapter apply to artists in many of the developing countries—overproduction of artists, problems connected with being primarily solo practitioners, the advent of media-based artists, weighing practical versus academic/skills based education. Despite their increasing similarity, nations differ in how they structure support for the arts and culture and for artists. Most developed countries have strong federal involvement in the arts, cabinet departments or ministries, many of which make artists a central focus. English-speaking countries, in particular, are active in supporting their artistic labor force.The United Kingdom, Canada,Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland maintain statistics and ongoing surveys on the status and needs of their artistic labor force and have instituted a number of initiatives and policies to assist artistic creators. The Canadian Council for the Arts, for example, has a three-pronged mission, one being “the support of creators and creation.” A large part of its funding goes to supporting creativity.The council has recently revamped its program to better assist artists at various stages of their careers. The Arts Council of England hosted two seminars in 2006, “The Future of the Creative Workspaces” and “European Perspectives on Education and Training for the Cultural Sector.” The council also instituted Own Art, intended to add to visual artists’ incomes and develop new collectors by offering interest-free loans for wouldbe collectors. Ireland has had a tax policy in place since 1969 that exempts artists from taxation on income from novels, plays, and songs. Many European countries have instituted the droit de suite—a tax on the resale of visual art works paid by the seller to the artist or his or her heirs.Australia has recently committed to investing $2.8 million in seven initiatives meant to increase the incomes of visual artists, dancers, writers, musicians, and indigenous artists. The initiatives will assist artists in creating digital content, marketing their works, exploiting their intellectual property rights, and managing their careers. Australia also altered its tax policy to allow deductions on expenses for professional artists. The World Observatory on the Social Status of the Artist was developed by UNESCO, the International Labour Organization (ILO), and MERCOSUR

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Cultural. It resulted from UNESCO’s World Congress held in 1997 and “Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist” approved by UNESCO General Conference in 1980. It provides an informational overview of the status of artists worldwide on a variety of issues. ERICarts European Institute for Contemporary Culture, a nonprofit research institute established in 1997 and located and registered in Bonn, Germany, completed a comparative study for the European Parliament in 2006 on challenges facing European artists in relation to labor, tax, and social security legislation. Clearly, the artistic workforce has established itself in Europe and the English-speaking countries as an important cohort in the modern world. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is a small independent agency funded by a modest appropriation through the United States Department of the Interior and related agencies. While it used to fund artists, as noted, it ceased doing so in 1995 and presently recognizes only a few master writers, musicians, and folk and traditional artists annually. The NEA tracks the number of artists in the labor force and employment, unemployment, and selfemployment patterns among different artistic occupations. However, the United States has no comprehensive overview of the wide range of needs and issues that effect artists’ careers and no national policies that address the specific needs of this workforce. Research, initiatives, and policies that pertain to artists are decentralized, attended to by state and local arts agencies, foundations, academic institutions, trade and service organizations, unions, and guilds. These efforts, while often innovative and effective, are piecemeal, applying to a limited number of artists in a specific geographical areas or discipline. For instance, concerned that the cessation of NEA funding for individual artists would stymie support for experimental art, a consortium of foundations helped establish Creative Capital, a nonprofit foundation that supports the careers of experimental artists.The foundation community has supported many studies on issues facing practicing artists in the United States, such as Investing in Creativity (Jackson 2003). By identifying the five dimensions of support needed by artists, the study provided the framework for Leveraging Investment in Creativity (LINC). LINC, an ongoing ten-year national initiative to improve the conditions of artists in all disciplines, was funded principally by the Ford Foundation to actualize many of the recommendations made in Investing in Creativity. In 2005, the Rockefeller, Prudential, and Rasmuson foundations furthered these initiatives by providing lead gifts to launch United States Artists, which provides grants to working artists. Local arts agencies, as noted, are the largest financial contributors to artists. A number of local governments have also instituted cultural districts—urban sites that grant tax relief for artists housing, work space, and the purchase of arts works.A number of regional efforts have also emerged to assist artists.The New England Foundation for the Arts, in concert with the Massachusetts

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Council for the Arts and the state arts agencies of Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, is attempting to increase artists employment with the launch of MatchBook.org, a free directory and online booking service for New England’s artists and performing arts organizations that hire them—theaters, community centers, libraries, schools, galleries, clubs, and coffeehouses. Discipline-based initiatives can focus on specific needs. One example is Career Transitions for Dancers, a nonprofit service organization that aids the early retirement needs of dancers. Artists Pension Trust (APT) has been set up in New York and in other countries. It is a venture capital initiative that is also expected to provide long-term security to visual artists. It is based on the fact that art appreciated half a point more than the Stand and Poor’s index over the last fifty years (12.1 percent) and can be treated as investment vehicle. Up-andcoming painters are invited to contribute twenty works over a twenty-year period to a tax-protected fund. It is expected that some works will appreciate significantly, providing all who contributed with some retirement income. A group of experts selects the artists.Along with management, they promote the art and artists.When a piece is sold, 40 percent goes to the creator, 8 percent to administrative costs, 32 percent into the pool of participating artists, and the remaining 20 percent is divided among the initial investors. Art is inextricably intertwined in society. As society evolves, new artistic vocations, new avenues of expression, new forms of creation, and new issues relating to training and professional development will inevitably emerge.The growth of those working as artists over the last twenty years has brought greater attention to this cohort and spurred some innovative responses to their career needs, but not nearly as much as it has abroad. Richard Florida’s writings on the creative class have also elevated the status of artistic workers.The rise of the knowledge economy and technological advances in communication have buoyed the demand for creative content and led to a new stripe of artist we call media artists as well as more artists working as contractors. The adage “all politics is local” seems to apply to the arts in the United States, where the contributions of artists to many aspects of life seem to be most readily recognized, appreciated, and supported locally and regionally. Given the federal government’s historical arms-length relationship to the arts and the series of controversies over NEA grants, it is doubtful that in the near future the NEA will focus on artists except for honoring established, renowned creators. Note s 1. The NEA has conducted secondary analyses of artists’ occupations based on the Decennial Census of the United States since 1970. It releases a yearly tally of the number of artists in the workforce, salaries, and other information. It has also commissioned other research on artists’ occupations, which is available in NEA publications

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2.

3.

4. 5.

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J o n i M aya C h e r b o and research notes (www.arts.gov/pub).The Research Center for Arts and Culture at Teachers College of Columbia University has done a number of studies of discrete artistic occupations and issues and has compiled a bibliography of research done on artists (www.tc.columbia.edu/center/rcac). Princeton University’s Center for Arts and Cultural Policy has done studies of artists and compiled an inventory of studies on artists done since 1960 (www.cpanda.org). The CPS is based on the Decennial Census done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It has eleven categories for artists: architects; art directors, fine artists, animators; designers; actors; producers and directors; dancers and choreographers; musicians and singers; announcers; writers and authors; photographers; all other artists and entertainers. These studies are based on the primary occupation a person is working in at the time of the survey. It underestimates the number of artists because many will be working in secondary jobs or will be unemployed at the time the survey is taken. “Direct giving” is money given directly to the artists or artistic team.“Indirect giving” is money given to intermediary institutions such as arts organizations or presenting groups, which is then regranted to artists.This study dealt exclusively with direct giving, although artists probably receive more financial assistance from indirect giving, which has yet to be tracked. NYFA Source is a database housed at the New York Foundation for the Arts. It tracks various monetary sources for artists, who receives funding, and the size of financial assistance (nyfasource.com). They are Actors’ Equity Association, the Screen Actors Guild,Association American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, American Federation of Musicians, the, Writers Guild of America East, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the Communications Workers of America, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, and the Newspaper Guild.

Se lecte d Re fe re nce s Armbrust, Roger. 2005. “Labor Announces Arts-Media Panel: AFL-CIO Backs United Effort by 10 Unions.” Backstage East, October 13. Caves, Richard. 2000. Creative Industries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-versity Press. ERICarts European Institute for Comparative Cultural Research. www.ericarts.org Florida, Richard. 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books. ——. 2005. Flight of the Creative Class. New York: HarperCollins. Fountain, Henry. 2005. “Video Games: Why They Cost a Mint.” New York Times, May 29. Fritz, Ben, and Marc Graser 2004. “Is the Game Getting Lame.” Variety, May 10–16, pp. 1 and 69. Galligan, Ann M., ed. 2004. “Research on Artists.” Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 34, no.1 (Spring). Galligan, Ann M., and Joni Maya Cherbo. 2003. Financial Support for Individual Artists: Report to the National Endowment for the Arts, October. Greffe, Xavier. 2004. “Artistic Jobs in the Digital Age.” Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 34, no. 1 (Spring). Gregg, Gail. 2003.“What Are They Teaching Art Students These Days?” Art News Online, April. www.artnewsonline.com. Jackson, Maria Rosario, Florence Kabwasa-Green, Daniel Swenson, Joaquin Herranz Jr., Kadija Ferryman, Caron Atlas, Eric Wallner, and Carole E. Rosenstein. 2003. Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structures for U.S. Artists. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

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Janssen, Ingrid. 2004. “A Portrait of the Artist in 2015: Artistic Careers and Higher Arts Education in Europe.” Boekmanstudies (Amsterdam). Leveraging Investments in Creativity. www.lincnet.net. Markusen, Ann, and Amanda Jones. 2006. Artists’ Centers: Evolution and Impact on Careers, Neighborhoods and Economies. Project on Regional and Industrial Economics, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, February. http://www.hhh.umn.edu/img/assets/6158/artists_centers.pdf. Pepper, Tara. 2005. “Making Their Own Breaks.” Newsweek International, September 26–October 3. Schiesel, Seth. 2005.“Video Games Are Their Major: So Don’t Call Them Slackers.” New York Times, November 22. Taylor, Chris. 2005.“Who is Playing Games—and Why.” Time, May 23, p. 51. Venturelli, Shalina. 2000. From the Information Economy to the Creative Econ-omy: Moving Culture to the Center of International Public Policy. Page 13.Wash-ington, DC: Center for Arts and Culture, Cultural Comment Series. Waxman, Sharon. 2006. “At U.S.C., A Practical Emphasis in Films.” New York Times, January 31. Weber, Bruce. 2005. “So Many Acting B.S.’s, So Few Paying Gigs.” New York Times, December 7. World Observatory on the Social Status of the Artist, UNESCO. www.portal.unesco. org/culture/en. Wyszomirski, Margaret Jane, and Joni Maya Cherbo, eds. and contributors. 2001. “The Associational Infrastructure of the Arts and Culture.” Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 31, no. 2 (Summer). Revised from a report for the Ford Foundation and Aspen Institute.

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Chapte r 6

Art and Cultural Participation at the Heart of Community Life

Maria Rosario Jackson

A COMMUNITY’S ART—its creative and cultural expression in the form of music, dance, theater, visual arts, and crafts—embodies its essence and is crucial to its well-being. Through making art—amateur and professional, formal and informal1—communities preserve, invent, and assert their identities; transmit heritage; and comment on their existence. Art and cultural participation contribute to community conditions in education, economic development, civic engagement, and to stewardship of place (Jackson et al. 2003; Jackson and Herranz 2002). Based on years of research, we know that murals, altars, choirs, music bands, ethnic dance troupes, embroidery and quilting groups, drumming circles, theater troupes, parades, and festivals are all examples of what people describe as cultural assets in communities around the United States.These are artistic and creative outlets that are a crucial aspect of quality of life. They are valued for the intrinsic properties of art and contribute to the community’s well-being. They are found in a variety of places, including formal cultural presentation venues such as museums and theaters, small and midsize organizations where artists gather to make art and produce events, and in community cultural centers. But they also occur with great frequency, formally and informally, in places and through organizations that are not primarily concerned with the arts, such as schools, churches, parks, community centers, social service organizations, social clubs and benevolent societies, and sometimes businesses and commercial retail establishments. Moreover, arts and non-arts entities often have to work together to make cultural participation possible (Jackson and Herranz 2002). Although arts and cultural participation at the community level are at the heart of community life, many policy makers, urban planners, and arts administrators have not acknowledged the arts as an essential part of a community’s 92

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core, to the detriment of communities. The range of opportunities for cultural participation needed for a healthy community eludes many of these players. Instead, large cultural institutions concerned primarily with presenting formal professional arts, often with ties to the nonprofit and public sectors, have dominated with their ideas of what constitutes the arts world and the cultural sector. Activity at all artistic skill levels, often in smaller arts and cultural organizations as well as through other public, private, and commercial arts outlets, exists at the periphery of recognition, even though in reality it is at the center of real life in communities. In the arts administration and cultural policy field, informal arts practices were formally recognized as an important aspect of the cultural sector during an American Assembly meeting in 1997 focused on the arts and their public purpose.2 During that meeting, the importance of ethnographic research that could capture informal, amateur, community-based, and unincorporated arts, in addition to quantitative or statistical research on other aspects of the sector, was emphasized. Since that time, research on this kind of informal or unincorporated activity has continued, although work is still needed to position this aspect of the cultural sector in a way that does justice to the significance of its role in society. This chapter sets out to challenge the dominant model that relegates community arts and culture to the sidelines; it offers an alternative set of values that has implications for how arts administrators, urban planners, and policy makers should pursue their work in planning, urban design, funding, and cultural programming.With better research about communities and charged with defining and engaging with the creative economy3 and the ideology of the creative city,4 they have an opportunity to reassess their assumptions and approaches. The material presented here is based on years of research completed by the Urban Institute on the arts and artists in community life.5 Research has included participant observation of arts-related activities and events in neighborhoods all over the United States as well as hundreds of interviews and scores of focus group discussions with artists, arts administrators, urban planners, community development professionals, policy makers, and community residents. It has also included general population surveys on cultural participation and attitudes toward artists. Problematic Value s Unde rlying Prevale nt Practice s What impedes a more adequate approach toward arts and culture in communities? The following values underlie prevalent practices among many urban planners, policy makers, and arts administrators to the detriment of communities and the cultural sector as a whole. These values are interrelated and are implicit in how arts resources are allocated and how cities, communities,

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and facilities are designed and developed.They are also implicit in how artists’ work is or is not validated. First, audience or consumer participation at professional arts events is considered more important than any other kind of cultural participation (such as amateur participation in art making).This is evident in several areas of practice. For example, in many places where we have conducted research, public resources for the arts are allocated so that the lion’s share (often on a noncompetitive basis) goes to large presenting institutions such as downtown museums and theaters where audience participation is the primary form of participation encouraged.This often happens through yearly line-item designations for particular institutions in city budgets or through the creation of special funding districts. Often, financial support for organizations that promote other kinds of participation such as arts instruction, amateur practice, and opportunities for community-based collective art making is more tenuous and competitive.6 On a related note, cultural participation is often interpreted only as audience participation, to the exclusion of other forms of engagement. This bias was evident in our interviews with arts administrators about the kinds of data they kept about their organizations. Consistently, respondents said they kept data on participation, but it was almost always data about audiences, even when the agency-sponsored programs promoted other kinds of arts engagement. Similarly, when we asked arts funders about the data they gathered about grantees, with few exceptions, audience counts were the only type of participation data tracked. The emphasis on audience participation is also evident in the design of many cultural districts. In these places, replete with galleries, theaters, and other arts outlets, the public is assumed to participate primarily as audience and consumer.Very few cultural districts include opportunities for the public to participate in making art or in witnessing some aspect of the creative process. Second, the art product or good is more important than, and separate from, the creative process or the artist. In our survey research on public attitudes toward artists, this finding was one of the most striking and troublesome. The survey revealed that people value what artists make particularly when these goods can be mass-produced and marketed. But the public has little regard for being an artist as a profession and by extension the creative process (Jackson et al. 2003). In many cultural districts, the focus is on the dissemination or distribution of the artistic good to the exclusion of any focus on the creative process. Focusing on the artistic good as a commodity is very much aligned with cultural districts as a part of economic development strategies. However, emphasis only on the artistic good as an economic generator gets in the way of considering other possible benefits produced by the artist and the importance of the

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creative process itself. For example, the presence of artists involved in the creative process tends to be a magnet for other creative people. The concentration of creative people can have a significant impact on the character of a community, turning it into a destination or enclave known for its artistic buzz, not just for the availability of art products for sale. The importance placed on the artistic product or good in the marketplace also relates to a general misinterpretation of amateur practice as necessarily being qualitatively inferior to professional practice—not suitable for the marketplace and therefore not as important. Our research indicates that amateur practice is essential to a healthy arts ecology. Moreover, the association of amateur practice with inferior quality is problematic, because within amateur practice there is a wide range of skill levels. Third, art for art’s sake is more legitimate and valuable than art that also has other purposes. We found that the notion of “art for art’s sake” versus “utilitarian arts of social purpose” is based on a false dichotomy.This is an ideology that appears to be losing steam, but it is still prevalent enough to warrant mentioning. Students in universities and arts schools are steered toward conventional career paths to the exclusion of other paths that blend the arts and social purpose. Conventional career paths also appear to be better rewarded within the formal arts world, where validation comes from art critics and juried selection for presentation in prestigious national and international venues. While many artists pursue work that blends art and social purpose at the community level, the training and validation systems necessary for this type of work are lacking (Jackson et al. 2003). For example, an artist may be involved in work that has both artistic and community development value. However, it is likely that in the arts world, the community development value of the work will be overlooked. Similarly, in the community development field, the artistic value of the work may not be fully appreciated. There are very few mechanisms that can validate the work across the spectrum. Fourth, the cultural sector tends to operate apart from other policy areas and focuses primarily on the nonprofit and public art as opposed to the commercial arts. Generally, public arts agencies and arts funders operate in isolation from other programmatic and policy areas. As a result, for this and other reasons, they are often politically vulnerable. Some arts administrators and funders seek to integrate their programs into the larger agendas, but this is often difficult, particularly if the arts programming is not obviously relevant to larger policy priorities. For example, many administrators of local arts agencies attempt to persuade people in community development and education policy realms of the value of the arts within these areas. Such arguments are not compelling, however, if the arts administrator cannot communicate the value of the arts to these players in terms that they understand and with research and data to back up the claims.

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We also found little evidence of training for artists to engage with possible stakeholders or markets outside the conventional nonprofit cultural area. In interviews with artists who have pursued careers that require this kind of engagement, such as artists working in public arts or with schools, community development organizations, and other kinds of agencies, artists told us that they learned by trial and error on their own or with help from a mentor who had pursued a similar path, and that learning the skills to work across sectors often involved a baptism by fire. There are very few examples of art schools or university arts programs that provide students with the opportunity to explore career options blending the arts and other fields such as community development, education, or social work. California Institute of the Arts in the Los Angeles area, California State University at San Francisco, and Columbia College in Chicago are examples of academic institutions that have offered such opportunities. Also, in arts administration programs the norm has been to train students to work in traditional institutions within the cultural sector, with little attention to the intersection of arts administration with other professional fields. There are exceptions, however. For example, students enrolled in the New York University Steinhardt School arts administration program have the opportunity to take elective course work at other NYU schools and departments, including public policy and urban planning at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Toward a New Paradigm Arts administrators, policy makers, and planners need to move toward a mode of work that more adequately addresses the range of arts and cultural offerings present in and necessary for healthy communities. In fact, there is evidence that a paradigmatic shift is afoot. This shift embodies a different set of values than those spelled out above. The new paradigm promotes the creative process, amateur practice, democratization of defining what arts matter and why, and the integration of arts with other policy areas and across public, nonprofit, and commercial sectors. First, the public has a role to play in defining what is important with regard to arts and cultural participation. A lesson learned early on in our research was that the word “art” is loaded and can interfere with capturing the creative and artistic expressions that people are actually involved in and care about. In focus group discussions, we learned that many people associate the word “art” with official cultural institutions and outside validation. So, for many respondents, if something was not presented in an arts venue such as a large museum, theater, or concert hall, or if someone with credentials did not decree it to be art, it would not register as art.We found that respondents had to be invited to think about creative and cultural expression—things that had aesthetic value—and then decide for themselves whether they would call the

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item in question art or not. Once liberated, respondents recognized a wide range of arts and cultural assets in their communities. They talked about participating as audiences and consumers, but also as creators, teachers, students, supporters, and critics, and they argued about whether or not something should be considered art. Respondents also discussed why these different types of arts activity were valuable to them. The point of our inquiry was not to arrive at some ultimate consensus of what art is, but rather to register what people thought was important and why. In the urban planning realm, as part of the Arts and Culture Indicators Project (ACIP)—an effort to integrate arts and culture into quality of life measurement systems—we have found that in order for arts and culture to be included as a policy priority, they have to be defined in a way that reflects the public’s values and their reality.7 In Boston, one of the pilot sites in our indicators work, the Boston Community Building Network launched a community vetting process to identify priorities in arts and culture in different Boston neighborhoods. This led to the inclusion of a “cultural life and the arts” section in its quality-of-life measurement system and also to some innovative datacollection practices to capture cultural assets.8 Note that in this initiative, major cultural organizations are considered, but they are part of a larger picture that includes many types of participation and expressions of the city’s ethnic diversity, such as small ethnic-specific arts organizations and ethnic-specific business establishments that are an important part of a community’s cultural life, as well as festivals and community celebrations. The Public Health–Seattle and King County indicators initiative, another pilot in our arts and culture indicators work, also has integrated arts and culture using a more inclusive definition.9 Inclusion of arts and culture in quality-of-life measurement systems makes it more likely that the arts and culture will be included in policy discussions outside the cultural sector. For example, in Seattle and King County, arts and cultural participation is part of the discourse about what makes a healthy community. In the Central Valley region of California, the Great Valley Center (another ACIP pilot) has integrated arts and culture into its indicator system, and the information is helping to shape transportation development plans for a cultural corridor along Interstate Highway 99. Second, a healthy community includes a continuum of opportunities for active and passive10 cultural participation at different skill levels, with the involvement of many stakeholders. People value and need a wide range of opportunities for cultural participation—to make artworks, teach, learn, judge and support the arts; to participate as audience and consumer, amateur, professional, teacher, critic, trustee, volunteer, committee member, and so forth. The wide range of opportunities for cultural engagement takes many forms and requires the involvement of different types of stakeholders, supporters, and resources.

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Informal arts are an important avenue for broad-based public participation. For example, in Chicago, a study of informal arts in the region documented drumming circles, which take place around the city at regular times, often in parks (Wali, Severson, and Longoni 2002). People of all skill levels participate. Lead organizers secure the space and provide extra instruments in case people who do not have an instrument want to join in. There is no fee for participating and the activity is not formally affiliated with any particular organization or institution. In Oakland, California, informal embroidery circles in the Mien community (of Southeast Asia) surfaced as an important cultural asset in one neighborhood. These were gatherings that regularly occurred in a local community center and sometimes in other spaces. The circles provided an opportunity for participants to perfect their craft and teach the tradition to the new generation. But the circles also allowed participants to exchange experiences and information about adapting to the United States. Informal practices such as these rely on the leadership of artists or tradition bearers as well as the availability of space (often public space). Midsize and small arts organizations also play an important role in making possible a range of opportunities for engagement. For example, in Houston, since the 1980s the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, a nonprofit arts organization, has organized a public art event, which features an art car parade.11 The event includes entries from professional artists and others, including individuals, schools, and community and professional organizations. The event is popular because everybody is encouraged to be creative and participate, and observers have noted that the quality of entries increases year after year. The event also is popular because it appears to be unique to Houston—part of the city’s identity. It is sponsored, in part, with local public money for the arts. In Port Gibson, Mississippi, at Mississippi Cultural Crossroads, a nonprofit organization, women gather to quilt.12 They participate to perfect their technique and teach the craft to others. But they also produce quilts as a means of earning income. Mississippi Cultural Crossroads has also been involved in producing community plays to tell the history of the region, utilizing local talent—amateur and professional. Organizations of this kind often collaborate with social service agencies, community development corporations, and others to plan arts events and offer arts-based services, such as dance as part of youth development programs or poetry as part of literacy programs. Community-based organizations and social clubs (sometimes in collaboration with formal arts organizations and informal arts groups) play an important role in creating opportunities for cultural participation. In the Los Angeles area, hometown associations composed of immigrants from the state of Veracruz in Mexico are involved in organizing fandangos to dance and play son jarocho—typical music from the Veracruz area. The events, jam sessions of sorts, take place in various places, including parks and commercial malls.

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People participate for the music and for fellowship, but also to demonstrate pride in the Veracruz region and to keep the traditions alive. These events are sponsored primarily by the hometown associations, the artists involved, and local businesses that cater to populations from Veracruz living in Los Angeles. In New Orleans, the Mardi Gras Indians mask and perform or compete annually during Mardi Gras and St. Joseph’s Day—showing off intricate handmade costumes that take all year to make. The Mardi Gras Indian tribes, as they are known, are often connected to social and benevolent societies. Some tribes also have ties to local bars and restaurants. Their work is an aesthetic assertion and one of community pride and respect for tradition.13 Community-based festivals are a particularly important form of informal arts engagement. Festivals usually include multiple artistic disciplines and most often are easily accessible, inexpensive, or free. To understand the value of these festivals to their participants, one needs to look at the extensive preparation for the event. Preparation typically includes many opportunities for people at different skill levels to make art collectively or individually. Often, professional artists or senior tradition bearers take leadership roles as featured artists, instructors, and event and community organizers. Numerous entities from different parts of the community (not just the arts) are also typically involved in sponsoring the preparation for the event and the event itself. The Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration in East Los Angeles is organized by Self-Help Graphics, a midsize nonprofit arts organization;14 the Tamejavi Festival in Fresno, California, is organized by the Pan Valley Institute of the American Friends Service Committee;15 and the Festival of Philippine Arts and Culture in San Pedro, California, is organized by Fil-Am Arts, the Association for the Advancement of Filipino American Arts.16 All three festivals require collaboration with other community-based organizations and involve months of preparation prior to the event. Preparation for the Día de los Muertos celebration includes free community workshops to make altars, murals, and traditional Mexican artifacts associated with the celebration, such as sugar skulls and paper flowers. Preparation for the Tamejavi Festival includes a series of cultural exchanges and dialogues occurring throughout the year during which members from various ethnic communities in the California Central Valley participate. These communities include recent Hmong, Indigenous Oaxacans (from Mexico), Pakistani, and African immigrants, as well as Native American and African American communities. All these festivals seek to showcase a range of contemporary and traditional art forms. The festivals are also important opportunities to address community issues and concerns. In addition to presenting professional arts and promoting audience participation, large cultural institutions, the so-called majors, also have a role to play in advancing amateur practice and opportunities for collective engagement. The Active Arts initiative at the Los Angeles Music Center is designed to profile and

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validate amateur or nonprofessional arts activities: dancing, music making, singing, and storytelling.17 Through this programming, amateur art activities are featured in the Music Center’s central plaza and other Music Center spaces.This expands the public’s connections to the performing arts via exposure to amateur practice and opportunities to engage in it. Such programming also helps to identify the venue as an active civic cultural space. The programs are created in collaboration with clubs of amateur or nonprofessional artists who advise on program planning, assist in staffing events, and promote the events and the ideas behind them. Another example of a major institution playing an innovative role in advancing a broader concept of cultural participation is Louisiana Art Works, a project of the Arts Council of New Orleans. Based in New Orleans, this project was designed to serve the dual role of educating the public about the creative process and serving as an active artists’ complex. The facility includes affordable individual studios for artists and four state-of-the-art shared studios for work in ceramics, glass, metal, and printmaking.Visitors can participate by observing the creative process in the studios—catwalks and viewing windows for the public are part of the design of the facility—and artists are expected to discuss their work with the public. Visitors can also make art in the facilities and view finished work.They can participate as supporters or patrons through the purchase of artworks. The facility is intended to serve residents of the region and tap into the tourism economy. Since Hurricane Katrina, the final phase of construction has been delayed. In the field of urban planning, the Arts and Culture Indicators Project is promoting the importance of cultural participation in communities through its concept of cultural vitality. Cultural vitality is evidence of a community’s capacity to create disseminate and validate arts and culture as part of everyday life (Jackson, Kabwasa-Green, and Herranz 2006). Implicit in this definition is a broad range of ways in which people engage in cultural activity. The project seeks to make available data that correspond with the measurement of opportunities for cultural engagement, the incidence of cultural participation in various forms, and the support system that makes cultural engagement possible. The adoption of the cultural vitality concept and corresponding measures by people involved with quality-of-life indicator initiatives is a huge step toward a more inclusive approach to arts and culture in communities. Third, art can be valued for its intrinsic aesthetic properties and at the same time for the roles it plays that are relevant to community dynamics and conditions. Moreover, artists have a role as community leaders. Survey research conducted through the Urban Institute’s evaluation of the Community Partnerships for Cultural Participation Initiative indicates that people are motivated to participate in arts and cultural activity for many different reasons— to socialize, to support the organizations sponsoring the event, to experience

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quality art, to learn about another culture or period in history, to celebrate cultural heritage, and for religious worship (Walker and Scott-Melnyk 2002). Also, as previously mentioned, people feel cultural participation affects communities positively—creating social capital18 and increasing civic engagement, community pride, and stewardship of place, as well as enhancing economic development, education, and assisting other community needs. In many of the community-based festivals we examined, participation in making items such as life-size puppets, banners, and murals for the culminating event is one set of outcomes; personal artistic skill building another; creation of social capital yet another; and increased stewardship of place among the participants another still. As well, the items created can also have impacts independent of the creative process and beyond the culminating event for which they were created. For example, in East Los Angeles, artists and community members collaborated to create murals for the Día de los Muertos procession. The murals, which featured images about community concerns such as education, safety, and violence, have had a life beyond the festival itself. They have been used for community meetings as well as protests and marches to educate and bolster community-organizing efforts. To grasp the full impact of the arts on community, one must also examine the role of artists and tradition bearers within a community context. These players often emerge as important community leaders—organizing events, encouraging community members to become involved in the creative process, and guiding them through that process. They also give the community a voice through the work that the artist produces. As noted, this type of arts practice often goes under-recognized and not fully understood within the arts world or within the community itself. Moreover, training that encourages this type of practice is scarce, although some exemplar programs do promote and train artists with leadership roles in mind (Jackson et al. 2003). Despite these testimonies, research on impacts of the arts is scarce, and more qualitative and quantitative research is needed. We need to assess how artistic activity, artistic involvement, artistic products, and the creative process impact communities. As more and more research on the impacts of the arts on community life is produced, planners, policy makers, and arts administrators will be better informed and effective in their work.19 Fourth, the cultural sector includes nonprofit, public, and commercial arts. Moreover, it must reach out to other policy areas. We found that savvy arts administrators must be able to identify resources and allies in each area of the arts and across policy areas to maximize opportunities for cultural engagement. While this is not a prevalent practice among many arts administrators, it is increasingly the practice among some, such as staff at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, which works closely with many city agencies, including the parks district and the school district, and has good relations with the local

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business sector. There is also some evidence of this approach in Providence, Rhode Island, where a newly recently created Department of Art, Culture and Tourism has as part of its charge the interaction and promotion of arts interests to other city departments. In Providence, and in New England as a whole, the idea of a regional creative economy and a study pointing to the contributions of the creative sector has opened some doors for arts to become more integral to policy discussions; savvy arts administrators, artists, and funders are taking advantage of this (Mt. Auburn Associates 2000). For example, artists concerned with developing affordable spaces for living and working have pointed to the study to support their claims that artists are an important part of the economy. The ability to navigate different sectors and policy areas requires a particular skill set. This includes being aware of priorities in other policy areas and the ability to communicate with people outside of the arts about how arts programming is relevant to their work—in housing, economic development, education, and criminal justice, among other areas. Additionally, working across sectors calls for navigating sector-specific requirements and conventions—that is, knowing the bureaucratic processes associated with the public and nonprofit sectors as well as the ways in which people operate within the business sector. Again, it appears that training for artists and arts administrators generally does not emphasize this approach. Moreover, receptiveness to the arts from other fields can be limited, although this may be changing as interest in the creative economy and the notion of the creative city grows. Conclusion If, as a society, we are to realize our creative potential and utilize that creativity to improve our communities, a paradigmatic shift towards a more inclusive concept of arts and culture and a more adequate grasp of the role cultural participation plays in community life is imperative and urgent.While most prevalent practices among arts administrators, funders, and planners ignore a huge part of American cultural life and, in some ways, discourage the very activity that makes a community culturally vital and whole, there is good news: the tide is turning. In many places, creativity is on the map as a priority, artists are getting more attention within the arts funding community, some arts administrators and policy makers are beginning to promote active participation in the creative process, arts and culture are beginning to register in quality-of-life measurement systems as community priorities, and data collection about arts and culture is improving. These efforts need to be strengthened and expanded to create more vibrant communities. Note s 1. Informal arts include regular and periodic artistic practices that are often part of everyday life and occur without the intention of official presentation to the public.

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2. 3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

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An example of this is drumming circles in parks or quilting sessions in community centers or in people’s homes. http://www.americanassembly.org/topics.dir/index.php?this_topic⫽arts_and_ culture. In recent years, scholars and policy makers have turned their attention to the idea of the “creative economy,” which emphasizes a shift in focus to an economy based on creativity and ideas as the principal commodity. See Florida 2002. The parameters of the creative economy are not fixed, and different sectors, such as the arts sector, currently are assessing how they fit within this concept. The creative city ideology is concerned with drawing on the creativity of residents to address urban problems and prospects. See Landry 2000. Material presented here is based primarily on the Urban Institute’s Arts and Culture Indicators Project (1996–present), an effort to better understand and measure arts and culture in communities and integrate related indicators into quality-of-life measurement systems. Other Urban Institute–based research studies contributing to this include the Evaluation of the Community Partnerships for Cultural Participation Initiative (1997–2001), an examination of partnerships among arts and cultural organizations to broaden, deepen, and diversify cultural participation; Participation Project: Artists, Communities and Cultural Citizenship (1998–1999), a study of arts participation in East Los Angeles community festivals; Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structure for U.S. Artists (2000–2003); Assessment of the Marketplace Empowerment Program for Artists (2003–present), an examination of various professional development programs for visual artists; and the Cultural Dimensions of Transnational Communities (2004–present), a study of the arts and cultural practices of communities living simultaneously in the United States and in another country, and the systems that support those practices. It should be noted that some large presenting organizations are increasingly concerned with offering the public expanded and alternative opportunities to engage in the arts through arts education and similar programs. However, this is often with the intention of increasing audience participation. Historically, United States–based quality-of-life indicator initiatives have generally not included arts and culture as a priority for measurement. Arts and culture, defined narrowly, have been typically viewed as not on par with other community priorities such as housing, education and employment. Moreover, the cultural sector has had little data to offer as indicators. In part, through ACIP, this is beginning to change. ACIP’s more inclusive definition of arts and culture resonates with the public and registers as a policy priority.Also,ACIP has been working to provide better data about arts and culture in communities. http://www.tbf.org/indicatorsProject. http://www.communitiescount.org. Passive participation refers to engagement in which the participant does not have to actively engage in a creative process. Audience participation or buying artistic goods are often forms of passive engagement. http://www.orangeshow.org/artcar_history.html. http://www.win.net/⬃kudzu/crossroa.html. For a sample of a grassroots museum treatment of the topic, see http://backstreetculturalmuseum.com/review-gw0801.htm. A more detailed examination of Día de los Muertos as a forum for community arts and community building appears in Jackson 2003. The Web site for Self-Help Graphics is http://www.selfhelpgraphics.com. http://www.tamejavi.org. www.FilAmArts.org. http://www.musiccenter.org/chopsback.html.

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18. The term “social capital” refers to the social networks and relationships that enable people to act collectively. 19. Examples of social science–based research that is advancing our knowledge about arts and culture in communities includes the work of Monnie Peters and Joni Cherbo on unincorporated arts,Alaka Wali on informal arts in Chicago, Mark Stern and Susan Seifert on Philadelphia neighborhoods, and Pia Moriarty in California’s Silicon Valley. Also see William Cleveland (2000) on artists at work in community institutions, as well as publications from the Animating Democracy Initiative, available through Americans for the Arts. For other writing about impacts of community arts see essays collected by the Community Arts Network at http://www. communityarts.net.

Se lecte d Re fe re nce s Cleveland, William. 2000. Other Places: Artists at Work in America’s Community and Social Institutions. Boston: University of Massachusetts Arts Extension Service. Florida, Richard. 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books. Jackson, Maria Rosario. 2003.“Arts and Cultural Participation through a Neighborhood Lens.” In The Arts in a New Millennium: Research and the Arts Sector, ed. David Pankratz and Valerie B. Morris.Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. Jackson, Maria Rosario, and Joaquin Herranz. 2002. Culture Counts in Communities: A Framework for Measurement.Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Jackson, Maria Rosario, and Florence Kabwasa-Green. 2006. Artists Space Development: Making the Case and Assessing Impacts. New York: Leveraging Investments in Creativity. Jackson, Maria Rosario, Florence Kabwasa-Green, and Joaquin Herranz. 2006. Cultural Vitality in Communities: Interpretation and Indicators.Washington DC: Urban Institute. Jackson, Maria Rosario, Florence Kabwasa-Green, Daniel Swenson, Joaquin Herranz, Kadija Ferryman, Caron Atlas, Eric Wallner, and Carole Rosenstein. 2003. Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structure for U.S. Artists. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Landry, Charles. 2000. The Creative City:A Toolkit for Urban Innovators. London: Earthscan Publications, Ltd. Mt. Auburn Associates. 2000. The Creative Economy Initiative: The Role of the Arts and Culture in New England’s Economic Competitiveness. Boston: New England Council. Peters, Monnie, and Joni Maya Cherbo. Summer 1998. “The Missing Sector: the Unicorporated Arts.” Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 28, no. 2. Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone:The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Wali,Alaka, Rebecca Severson, and Mario Longoni. 2002. Informal Arts: Finding Cohesion, Capacity and other Social Benefits in Unexpected Places. Chicago: Center for Arts Policy, Columbia College. Walker, Chris, and Stephanie Scott-Melnyk. 2002. Reggae to Rachmaninoff: How and Why People Participate in Arts and Culture.Washington DC: Urban Institute.

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Chapte r 7

The Arts and Artist in Urban Revitalization

Ruth Ann Stewart

THE ARTS HAVE HELPED to define and shape urban life in significant ways throughout America’s history. This chapter explores the vital role played by the arts and cultural sector in the rise and fall and, in the last two decades, rise again of the great American city. City culture was of little consequence during the colonial period and drew its artistic inspiration almost entirely from European modes. With the establishment of the American Republic, cities quickly became a destination for creative, newly minted Americans seeking opportunity, inspiration, and community with like-minded individuals. Historian Neil Harris observes that the very urbanism that drew artists and others of adventurous mien rendered the city suspect in a young country defined by agrarian and nativistic principles (1990). While America would eventually become a country of many cities, the idea took root early on in the American psyche that cities were undesirable, even dangerous places populated by unruly immigrants of the darker hues—first the Irish, Jews, and Italians, later African Americans, Bangladeshis, Hispanics, and other national groups (Higham 1955). Cities were seen as an unwarranted burden for state taxpayers and sites of both decadent displays of wealth and unhealthy, potentially explosive population density. No less reprehensible was the high concentration of bohemians and immigrant-inspired popular arts and cultures that flourished in all manner of rakish forms rejected as counter to the spirit of independence and the American way of life. Eme rge nce of the Mode rn City The image of the city as dangerous and undesirable or as a place of endless opportunities for work, success, creative advancement, and excitement would shift back and forth over time in direct proportion to private and government investment in the urban lifestyle. Even though a majority of Americans would 105

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continue to favor rural or smaller town living, by the late nineteenth century American cities were major draws for millions of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, immigrant workers from every region of the country and the world, and artists and entertainers whose combined efforts spawned booming commercial centers from New York to St. Louis to coastal California. With the accumulation of great urban-based industrial and mercantile fortunes, a highly profitable war against agrarian slave interests, and the emergence of new technologies, city dwellers began to assume a pride of place. Technology spurred the development of world-changing new industries, skyscrapers of dizzying heights, and modern advances in every sector from transportation to street lighting to the typewriter and department store that created a new class of independent working women. One of the pivotal events that would give form to America’s urban ambitions and a point of pride for the entire nation was the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, which transformed a neglected South Side Chicago lakefront park into a Beaux-Arts vision of the new American city. Named the White City, this safe, clean, graft-free, conveniently serviced, and aesthetically pleasing confection of grand international exhibition halls, gondolier-filled waterways, and stately promenades stood in sharp contrast to the realities of nineteenth-century urban life.1 The elegant assemblage (along with moneymaking sideshows that included the wheel ride George Ferris invented for the fair, belly dancers, and animal acts) would launch an American architectural movement known as the City Beautiful. This movement reflected the classical design principles advocated by Daniel Burnham, the fair’s chief architect, and would influence the look of cultural institutions and civic buildings for much of the twentieth century (Larson 2003). Urban Competition and the Ascendancy of the American Arts Emboldened by their increasing prosperity, wealthy industrialists and merchants began to cast off their feelings of cultural inferiority to Old World culture. Between 1870 and the onset of World War I, wealthy civic leaders plunged into the arts and culture, sponsoring the creation of a blizzard of concert halls, museums, libraries, botanic gardens, and zoos in their cities large and small throughout the nation, laying the foundation for a uniquely American system of philanthropy and private support for the arts. Government and men (and a few exceptional women) of means and position formed public/private partnerships, striking a bargain for delivery of the arts to the general public that was distinctively American in both form and intent. While the federal government was the major financial backer of the Columbian Exposition (awarded by Congress to Chicago only after a fierce contest between competing cities), city government constituted the public half of the municipal cultural bargain.

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The formula took different forms in different localities, but the general pattern was one in which the city provided the land and assumed responsibility for construction, ongoing facility maintenance, and security, while private donors made possible the professional functions and an endowment to ensure financial stability going forward. In exchange for this largesse (admission was minimal or free), local government officials largely deferred to the private side in matters of management and thus mission, privileging these enterprises with an elitist status that still persists.While these institutions were of unquestionable public benefit, they also served as highly visible demonstrations of the wealth, power, and success of their benefactors, who competed with their wealthy counterparts in rival cities for the title of great American city. This cycle of culture-based municipal competition that by 1880s had gained momentum nationwide would repeat itself almost to the decade a century later. Prospering cities also attracted artists drawn by the availability of jobs and training in the new art schools and conservatories; suppliers, galleries, agents, publishers, and impresarios to facilitate the production, presentation, and sale of their work; inexpensive live/work spaces; and a swelling population with leisure time and disposable income to spend on the arts. In a country of immigrants, the modern American city offered a diversity of ethnic and popular expression—from light musical comedies known as vaudevilles to Yiddish theater to exhibitions of plaster casts of Greek statues in the same space with mastodon bones—unrivaled anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, the BeauxArts temples were busily sorting out the high arts (classical) from the low arts (popular) and the nonprofit fine arts from the commercial for-profit arts, a process that would establish a rigid hierarchy that persisted well into the second half of the twentieth century (Levine 1986). Government and the Arts By the turn of the twentieth century, cities struggling with the ills of unbridled population and industrial growth began to recognize the need for beautification and building standards and procedures. New York City, pressed by the Municipal Art Society, which had been formed by a private group in 1893, created one of the nation’s first official art commissions. City government, with frequent private financial and advocacy support, engaged artists, designers, engineers, and architects to enhance public spaces and facilities. In 1916, New York enacted the nation’s first residential zoning ordinance, separating residential and industrial activities and leading the way to the design and construction of the great Art Deco skyscrapers of the 1920s (Municipal Art Society). A commission on fine arts was created by President William Howard Taft to regulate and revitalize the official architecture of the nation’s capital city. Fifteen years later the principle of good design established by the commission was extended to include federal buildings in cities, small towns,

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and rural areas throughout the nation, which would in turn become models for construction undertaken by local government. With the wholesale collapse of the American economy in 1929 and the onset of that period of history known as the Great Depression, a massive federal jobs program created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt played a pivotal role in the lives of urban artists and the cities in which they worked. From 1935 to 1943, the Works Projects Administration (WPA) put writers and visual and performing artists to work as one of various categories of unemployed workers who benefited from the program. Under the WPA, artists of all races enlivened the quality of city life with murals and sculpture in post offices, hospitals, and schools, taught classes for adults and children, compiled local histories, and created pioneering theatrical and musical performances. While the visible effects of WPA were far more lasting in the bridges and dams (many enhanced with outstanding artistic details) built outside urban centers, numerous inner-city auditoriums and exhibition halls were also built under WPA and many remained in use as primary performance and arts education centers well into the 1980s and 1990s (Bustard 1997). More to the point, the WPA artist, theater, music, and writers programs were central to lifting the public’s spirits and sustaining some measure of the city’s traditional artistic vitality through hard times, while at the same time ensuring the ability of individual artists to remain engaged and employed in their profession. It might be noted that WPA also set a precedent for federal support of the arts that influenced the shape and scope of the urban cultural landscape for much of the latter half of the twentieth century. The Arts in the Decline of Cities Some urban scholars believe that the Great Depression was a tipping point that reversed the forward development of cities from which they will never fully recover (Beauregard 2003). This decline appears to have been further exacerbated by federal policies intended by Congress to stimulate the postwar economy that instead promoted (rather, reasserted) the American predisposition to celebrate suburban life at the expense of cities.This anti-city movement resulted in the substitution of the historic centrality of cities in the realization of the American dream for suburbia, or what historian Kenneth Jackson famously termed the crabgrass frontier (1985). At the close of World War II, the federal government promised the returning soldiers educational and housing opportunities unprecedented in American history. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, known as the GI Bill, eventually provided for the enrollment in colleges and training programs of 7.8 million veterans. At its peak in 1947, 49 percent of all college admissions were veterans. The bill was a particular boon to art schools and conservatories, which saw the size of their enrollment grow by unprecedented numbers. The GI Bill

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also guaranteed 2.4 million home mortgage loans thus setting the stage for the massive exodus of cities by white middle class America. The out-migration was further facilitated by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which opened the way for an extensive interstate highway system that greatly accelerated the pace of suburbanization that had already been underway since the advent of public transportation. Business and industry soon followed. Deprived of good jobs, the middle-class tax base, and tax and investment capital from business, inner cities were left to support an increasing concentration of low-income, immigrant, and minority populations barred from the suburban dream—including many who had served in the war and were entitled to full GI Bill benefits—by discriminatory economic and racial policies. Urban Renewal and the Great Urban Giveaway By the early 1960s the state of American inner cities had declined to the point where local decision makers were dependent on federal intervention as their best hope for relief. Urban planning became synonymous with slum clearance, and population dislocation as federally funded urban renewal programs, armed with the more permissive power of eminent domain allowed by Title I of the Housing Act of 1949, rolled over entire neighborhoods in the belief that cities could lure back the middle class and business by making them more like the automobile-centric suburbs.Without exception, neighborhoods designated for the bulldozer were home to African Americans, Latinos, and poor and working-class whites. Highways were cut through the heart of protesting neighborhoods, disrupting historic patterns of community and destroying structures and institutions that today would be preservation treasures. The giveaway continued downtown as city officials driven by competition with other municipalities made tax-incentive deals with real estate developers and corporations to lure their investment or retain their headquarters in the center city in the hope of creating jobs where vacant buildings lined main thoroughfares and streets stood empty both on weekends and after five o’clock. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s many cities became hollowed-out vestiges—doughnuts surrounded by vast suburbs—with the very highways meant to stimulate the return to the city in practice facilitating the daily commuter exit (Caro 1974). Urban decline was a mixed blessing for the arts. Individual artists and small arts presenters and producers flourished in the cheap and expansive spaces abandoned by the manufacturing sector, New York’s SoHo being a famous example. The story was less favorable for the older, established cultural institutions, which found both their audience and their volunteer base significantly diminished.With city government deprived of the tax base essential to the provision of adequate city services and the inner city increasingly perceived as darker, dirtier, and unsafe, suburbanites were unwilling to venture into downtowns,

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where most of the temples of culture had been located with great fanfare by their nineteenth-century benefactors. Both the public and the private side of institutional partnerships wavered as declining tax revenue caused cutbacks in public funding for cultural institutions and donors moved their philanthropic loyalties to more congenial localities. The Lincoln Center Story Brutalist concrete architecture, vest-pocket parks, and sports facilities became the signature symbol of inner-city revitalization strategies, and Robert Moses, the czar of New York’s slum clearance program, the model of the master urban planner. While more focused on highways, parks, and swimming pools, Moses took advantage of the interest of influential New Yorkers in culture and education to engineer the construction, beginning in 1957, of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and a multitude of attendant arts and educational institutions, including the Juilliard School of Music, High School of Performing Arts, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and a downtown campus for Fordham University. The first and, for a long time, only major cultural compound was unquestionably a great gift to the world of the arts. Nevertheless, Lincoln Center was Moses’s cover for eliminating what he deemed a blighted West Side Manhattan neighborhood in order to open up the area to high-end residential and commercial development. So much for the intended purpose of urban renewal, namely to replace tenements with decent affordable housing; in fact, using Title I federal slum clearance money, the building of Lincoln Center displaced seven thousand low-income residents and eight hundred businesses (Caro 1974), erasing forever the neighborhood setting for the film version of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. The Rise of the Urban Arts Lincoln Center aside, the traditional high-arts institutions suffered cutbacks in hours, services, and staff, while smaller, more agile urban arts organizations found fertile ground as a result of the civil rights and antiwar social reordering of the1960s and early 1970s. Experimental visual and performing arts productions and presentations flourished, reflecting the changing demographics and concerns of a new generation of inner-city creative workers and their loyal audiences. A vigorous urban arts movement emerged, fueled in large part by two federal programs reminiscent of WPA in their impact, namely the Expansion Arts program of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)—the remarkable new federal arts support agency established in 1965—and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 (CETA). The Expansion Arts Program was introduced in 1971 as a means of funneling NEA funding to minority and under-served inner-city professionally directed community-based arts activities.

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It signaled a more democratic, multicultural, less elitist approach to the arts by the largely high art discipline–based Endowment that even the cultural temples to some degree embraced through special outreach programming. The CETA program provided strategic federal funding for emerging minority and community-based arts organizations that many agree advanced an entire generation of women and minority artists early in their careers (Riojas 2006). The act provided funding in the form of federal block grants that were given to cities and states for job training for economically disadvantaged, unemployed, and underemployed adults and youths. Because urban artists are chronically unemployed the program was especially critical in enabling them to find work in film, dance, libraries, and theaters that without this federal infusion would not have existed. Similar to the WPA, CETA also gave city officials the opportunity to provide some relief for their citizens from the grimness of city life. The concept of outreach entered the urban cultural vocabulary. An explosion in community-based audiences opened up new opportunities for young talent generally and first time opportunities for black, Latino, and Asian artists whose revolutionary and innovative work built new audiences even among suburban commuters intrigued enough to stay in the city after five or even return on weekends for exhibitions and performances. While city planners focused their revitalization efforts on big-ticket, unionized job-producing construction items such as sports arenas, riverwalks, and festival malls, the nonprofit arts were playing an important “soft” revitalization role that in retrospect could be viewed as a rehearsal for the future. Reinvention of the City The 1980 presidential election marked the onset of a conservative political agenda in the United States that witnessed the elevation of antiurban sentiments to a new high. With the almost immediate neutering of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the handing off (termed devolution) of major social programs to the state level by the new administration, city officials and urban planners quickly got the message that they could no longer look to Washington for help in solving local problems. Dramatic shifts in the closing decades of the twentieth century at all levels of government called for new ways of thinking about urban development policy. Just as journalist and urban critic Jane Jacobs had predicted, the bulldozer renaissance had proven socially and physically destructive to the fabric of urban life and largely unsuccessful in reversing the downward slide of the post industrial city regardless of size or location (J. Jacobs 1961). Amid a growing outcry from disenchanted citizens, historic preservationists, policy analysts, and urban growth planners, a new generation of state and local elected officials sought correctives for the failure of urban renewal. It was

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also clear that an alternative had to be found to development strategies based on budget-busting tax incentives pitched to a rapidly vanishing manufacturing sector. Municipalities began to incorporate a new set of metrics for judging urban progress as it became clear that demographic, technological, and economic changes promised cities new opportunities to reposition themselves economically while at the same time improving the quality of life for their citizens. As early as 1982, cultural economist James Shanahan (1982) advised planners that the success of any new strategy would by measured by a city’s ability to: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Draw people back to the center for work and leisure time uses. Attract vacationers, conventioneers, and business trippers to the city. Generate new residential living in the downtown and adjacent areas. Increase office jobs by attracting the growing service industries, including finance, insurance, health, education, tourism and recreation, culture, and entertainment.

Increasingly convinced by data emerging from the academy and think tanks, and eventually an influential but highly debated book by economist Richard Florida (2002), late twentieth century policy makers took on a new set of revitalization strategies. These strategies looked at the transformations being wrought in the American economy by globalization, trade, and technological innovations that are dependent on service industries that cluster in cities and place a premium on high-end skills and education (Katz 2006; Katz 2007). In his analysis, Florida claims that there is what he terms a creative class that makes up 30 percent of the U.S. labor force. He suggests that workers trained in the creative professions—particularly the arts, media, architecture, and design—are among the most sought after by industry in the digital age (2002). Although not all workforce researchers agree with Florida’s argument, findings in the field suggest that city planners would be wise to gear revitalization strategies to attracting workers having cutting-edge, creative skills with the expectation that businesses eager to tap into this talent pool would soon follow. The Arts as Urban Asset Under the old urban planning approach, public officials focused on selling their distressed municipalities to potential investors, whether large-scale private investment firms or football franchises, by offering a variety of tax and infrastructure incentives better than the next best competitor city. Often such initiatives resulted in dubious public policy that entailed long-term public debt, especially in the case of tax-supported stadium expansions or construction (Herrick 2006a). By the 1980s under the new paradigm public officials shifted from an emphasis on the discounting and selling of their city to the repackaging

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and marketing of their city’s distinctive assets. Cities began to promote their arts—real and invented—as a major quality-of-life asset in the belief that a vital artistic sector would increase their competitive edge in attracting visitors, residents, and the creative worker. Business in turn would be attracted by the opportunity to capitalize on this critical mass of consumers and highly skilled employees. That the arts can play an important role, even a linchpin role, in a municipal redevelopment strategy is an idea that has gained sufficient traction to warrant a measure of confidence in the arts as a key element of revitalization policy. However, it is essential to keep in mind that the nonprofit arts in and of themselves cannot and should not be positioned as engines of urban revitalization. First, with few exceptions, nonprofits employ relatively small numbers of staff at modest salary levels, and their work as a rule is supplemented by as many if not more volunteers than paid staff. Second, in large measure monies paid by nonprofits for talent and the purchase of goods and services leave the city where they were generated. Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, cities with large commercial and nonprofit arts sectors, are the possible exceptions. Third, the nonprofit arts are by their nature subsidized enterprises no matter how much revenue is earned through income-generating activities (tickets, recordings, sales shops, restaurants, space rentals), government grants (NEA, state and local arts councils, and line item appropriations), corporate underwriting, private philanthropy (foundations, individual), or endowment investments. Fourth, their status as determined by the Internal Revenue Service as 501(c)(3) organizations exempts them from city property taxes, which are the primary source of funding for essential municipal services, including police, parks, and education. While the for-profit arts can generate tax dollars and large numbers of jobs, and many of the most successful arts-based revitalization strategies include significant commercial cultural components, for-profit enterprises cannot be depended on or required to operate in the public interest. Fortunately, the collaboration of for-profits with nonprofits and city government in support of a larger public good is by now a well-tested concept. Updated from the late nineteenth/early twentieth–century model when art was about displaying wealth rather than generating it, arts-based public/private partnerships are locking into place in cities and towns throughout the United States, and internationally. Marketing the Creative City Political scientist Elizabeth Strom (2002) identifies the convergence of city government growth policies with the special interests of both the Information Age businesses that cluster in downtown corporate towers and the arts and culture sector as the primary force driving today’s cultural revitalization

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partnerships. This intersection of goals and objectives is the result of stakeholder recognition that: 1. Cities will never again be major manufacturing centers, and, lacking the space, population, and appeal of suburban wholesaling and retailing business, municipalities must, to be able to attract and retain investment and population, revitalize their central business districts in order to raise their city’s profile as an interesting, safe, convenient, and congenial place in which to live, work, and visit. Arts institutions and artists enliven downtown by increasing street traffic, public safety, and the area’s appeal—what economists call the multiplier effect2—to restaurants, for profit businesses, and, given current gentrification trends, residential living. 2. It is to their advantage for arts organizations and institutions to participate in arts-based development strategies, as such efforts give new heft to local cultural policy and better position the arts community to advocate for both private and public resources, expand their audience and volunteer base, and advance the concept of the nonprofit and forprofit arts as creative industries essential to the health of local economies. 3. Businesses, in their competition for a skilled workforce, will locate in cities that offer the amenities (education, culture, entertainment, recreation) and tolerance of diverse lifestyles that attract and retain educated workers—especially members of the so-called creative class—essential in the global economy. 4. The arts provide unique opportunities for branding cities with oneof-a-kind buildings and cultural clusters that can help a city reinvent its image as a vital, livable city and confer distinction and competitive advantage to its marketing strategies. Measuring the Economic Impact of the Arts Economic impact studies were commissioned by hundreds of local arts institutions, arts councils, and service organizations from Kentucky to Oregon in an attempt to demonstrate to public officials the economic importance of the jobs, wages, and taxes generated by artistic activity in their regions. These studies are seen as both the cause and the effect of the proliferation of arts-centered development strategies in the 1980s and 1990s. Among the earliest and most influential of these studies was the one undertaken by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 1983.A second study ten years later gave so much weight to the argument for the arts as a major factor in the regional economy that New York’s newly elected mayor relocated the Department of Cultural Affairs to the city’s Economic Development Department. In the most

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recent update of the economic impact of the arts on New York, the New York City advocacy group Alliance for the Arts cites a figure of $21.2 billion (Alliance for the Arts 2006). In their heyday, impact studies were also commissioned by individual cities and cultural institutions. Such efforts were conceived by the arts sector as a way to quantify its role as a valid and important producer and consumer of taxable products and services that cumulatively would be a significant contribution to the local economy. Often considered less economic analyses—seldom posing the question “arts as compared to what?”—than public relations documents, such studies nonetheless gave the arts sector a new tool. With this tool, advocates now have a calculated alternative to the increasingly less persuasive art-for-art-sake strategy for advocating, as a public good, for its fair share of government subsidy. The Philadelphia Museum of Art claimed that its highly publicized 1996 Cézanne exhibition drew 777,810 visitors, who contributed $86.5 million to the Philadelphia economy. A Lincoln Center economic impact study claimed the combined effect of the center’s operations (including wages, benefits, and purchasing) and visitor spending in 2003 generated $1.52 billion in business activity throughout the city and state, resulting in a total of 38,600 jobs. Direct local spending by visitors (including restaurants, lodging, and retail) was estimated to have contributed an additional $258 million to the city’s economy that same year (Philadelphia Museum of Art 1996; Lincoln Center 2004.) As impressive as such figures sound, cultural economists caution advocates against making this multiplier effect their primary argument.With few exceptions, such measurements have proven imprecise, self-serving, and lacking in rigor when applied to the arts. As noted earlier in this chapter, the nonprofit arts are not economic engines but rather cost centers that by definition operate at a deficit that must be continually offset by public and private contributions.Arts advocates are urged to deemphasize the direct, indirect, and induced economic activity of the arts in favor of the more qualitative values unique to the creative process. Relieved of weighty economic expectations and appropriately embedded in a larger strategic vision, the arts can play a central role in a city’s revitalization plan. Once so positioned the arts can generate social capital and public goods, which can translate into development dividends that will excite citizens and outsiders (the so-called halo effect) about the promise of a new beginning for distressed and abandoned urban centers (Shanahan 1982; Cowan 2006). Models of Arts-Based Revitalization Strategies Cities have undertaken a variety of recovery solutions utilizing the arts and culture in their determination to cast off the postindustrial image of their center city or downtowns as gritty, dangerous, and inhospitable. Each of the

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approaches discussed here would appear to be a function of the particular history, nature of the stakeholders, and perceived or invented assets claimed to individualize the locality. According to urban politics and policy specialist Dennis Judd, “Between 1976 and 1986, in the service of the new downtown, 250 convention centers, sports arenas, community centers, and performing arts facilities were constructed or started, at a cost of more than $10 billion” (Judd and Fainstein 1999). arcades, bazaars, festival malls, and waterfronts. These were among

the first attempts to soften the sharp edges of the declining postindustrial cityscape. Outstanding examples included Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Baltimore’s Harborplace, Chicago’s Navy Pier (with its signature Ferris wheel a dramatic reference to the 1893 Columbian Exposition), and, among the oldest, San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square. New York City’s South Street Seaport proved far less successful, for a variety of bureaucratic reasons, through changing city administrations that enabled the retail component to ultimately trump community interests and overwhelm the Seaport Museum, which had been the impetus for the project in the first place. Festival malls and similar urban amenities were primarily aimed at the tourist and convention trades and heavily subsidized by municipal financing. Such subsidies set a precedent that would become the benchmark for the public financing of privately owned stadiums and arenas (Metzger 2001). public parks and arts in public places. Parks and other outdoor or public areas were among the earliest of cultural amenities to confer distinction on American cities, very much in the British and European mode. Early public art tended toward the monumental, and parks were extended arboretums. More recent instances of the arts in parks have helped support urban development goals. For sixteen days in February 2005, the Mayor’s Office, Department of Parks, and Department of Cultural Affairs allowed installation artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude to hang at their own expense 7,503 saffron-color banners throughout New York City’s Central Park.The city reported that the Gates, a stunning display of orange color against the stark winter landscape, drew 3.25 million visitors, hotel occupancy rates went up 14 percent, and business revenue (if one is to believe the multiplier effect) was an estimated $254 million (Murphy 2005). Chicago’s Millennium Park is another recent example of the arts and parks model. A permanent 24.5-acre installation built over railroad tracks in the downtown lakefront area, the park was the brainchild of a mayor with strongly held views about the centrality of the arts (and flowers) to the successful marketing of his city. The park idea originated with and was led throughout by Mayor Richard Daley in partnership with local business and

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philanthropic leaders. The city contributed $270 million, matched by $205 million in private donation for a total final cost that was triple the original estimate. City tax revenues provide for day-to day-operations, although income from the public parking garage underneath the park was intended to offset these costs. With a signature band shell designed by architect Frank Gehry, sculpture and fountains commissioned from cutting-edge international artists, state-ofthe-art landscaping, a theater designed for small and midsize performing arts groups (the result of a needs assessment study commissioned by a local foundation), and the predictable restaurant and ice-skating rink, Millennium Park has emerged as a major tourist attraction, popular corporate entertainment venue, and source of pride and enjoyment for local citizens thus seeming to justify the large cost overruns requiring additional public funds. Local area real estate valuations have also increased, and more upscale retailing has moved into the area bordering the park. Chicago would also seem to be on the leading edge of an emerging trend in urban parks that like art is a new status symbol for cities (including Seattle, Minneapolis, Houston, and Atlanta) seeking progressive images (Weinback 2007). seasonal celebrations and convention centers. These have been triedand-true public/private partnership strategies for drawing out-of-towners to localities they might not otherwise visit. Successors to the national and international fairs and expositions that were hallmark urban events of the nineteenth century, postindustrial cities from Austin, Texas, to New York City to Seattle to Montreal have invested heavily in fairgrounds and convention centers (and sports facilities in the case of the Olympics) in an escalating municipal competition that has imposed heavily on public coffers, often with debatable results. Conventions, along with tourists in general, are prized as major inducers of the so-called multiplier effect. Conventioneers, paying tax all along the way, consume hotel rooms, restaurant food, taxi rides, florist services, commercial entertainment including Broadway shows and gambling, retail shopping, and, when well marketed, the nonprofit arts. By 1992 trade associations and corporations were spending more than $60 million annually in the United States on conventions. It is no surprise that many of America’s most job- and tax-hungry city governments sought to insure their competitive advantage in attracting this business by constructing (in addition to providing discounts and outright subsidies) what Judd characterizes as tourist bubbles (Judd and Fainstein 1999). Such center-city clustering of arts venues and tourist-oriented amenities (real and contrived), sometimes designated as cultural or business improvement districts (BIDs), are closely policed and sanitized for any signs of poverty, grit, or urban decay (Frost-Krumpf 1998). Outstanding examples of this model include

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San Antonio’s Riverwalk, New York’s Times Square (post–peep shows), and Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts. Because these bubbles tend to be perceived by locals as separate from the fabric of a city’s ordinary life, critics question the soundness of using public resources for such purpose, given its high potential for exacerbating racial, ethnic, and class differences. Seasonal, short-term cultural events have proved beneficial: examples include the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina; Aspen Music Festival in Colorado; New Orleans’s Jazz Fest; summer music and dance at Tanglewood in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts; the Ravenna Festival outside Chicago; and the annual folk festival held in Lowell, Massachusetts.These events provide seasonal employment, tax revenue, physical improvements, and, in ethnically and racially diverse communities like Lowell, a source of social cohesion and local pride. However, they have limited impact as economic revitalization strategies. Much of the employment connected with such events pays low wages, lacks fringe benefits, and is short-lived and dead-end; salaries paid to artists for the most part leave the area at season’s end. adaptive reuse of existing buildings. Structures emptied of workers and residents by postwar deindustrialization, suburbanization, and decline of railway travel spawned the conversion of central downtown train stations, department stores, office buildings, mills, and factories to new cultural, retail, and residential uses. Largely a function of the rise of the historic preservation movement and Main Street initiative advanced by the National Trust for Historic Preservation (formerly a federal agency), adaptive reuse had entered the urban-planning tool kit by the late 1960s. Artists early on recognized the advantages of large abandoned work space originally zoned for manufacturing and retail. Landlords eager for tenants kept rents low in exchange for the artists’ sweat equity, which gradually rehabilitated these barely serviced lofts, as well as the new life creative activity brought to the neighborhood. For example, a group of for-profit entrepreneurs partnered with Artsplace, a Canadian nonprofit arts service organization, to convert a defunct Toronto distillery complex into a mixed-use development for work, presentation, and retail for both visual and performing artists that has also become a major tourist destination. In the economically depressed city of North Adams, Massachusetts, a vacant nineteenth-century factory complex became the home in 1992 of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) through guidance from the Guggenheim Museum and private fund raising efforts spurred by the promise of a major funding match from the state of Massachusetts (Zukin 1995). An increasingly popular artistic venue, it remains to be seen how much of a change agent it will be for the local economy beyond the seasonal and the museum itself. Lowell, Massachusetts, with the help of its congressman, persuaded the federal government to fund the conversion of long-abandoned

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textile buildings into a national historic site operated by the National Parks Service to preserve and document the origins of the American Industrial Revolution.A case of rescue and successful marketing of a unique local cultural asset, Lowell’s National Historical Park is today a major tourist destination and the linchpin of the city’s postindustrial recovery strategy. In 2006, an abandoned 21,000-square-foot warehouse was redesigned as the temporary home of Detroit’s new contemporary art museum, with the announced intension of helping to revitalize the downtown core, a considerable burden for the arts in this especially distressed city (Ouroussoff 2006a). By the 1980s, artists found themselves increasingly challenged by young professionals—characterized by author David Brooks as bobos (bourgeois bohemians)—and empty nesters drawn to cities by a growing appreciation for urbane architecture and loft living and nostalgic for urban alternatives to suburbia (Brooks 2000). City officials seized upon this trend incorporating it into their marketing strategies first as historic preservation and then as the cool or hip new big thing, inspired by television shows such as Seinfeld, Friends, and Sex in the City. Fortunately for urban planning strategies, the convergence of these trends came just as a strong national economy and low interest rates spawned a post–9/11 economic recovery and an unprecedented run-up of the real estate market. Municipalities rushed to rezone districts from manufacturing to residential, giving rise to gentrification and the so-called SoHo syndrome, pricing artists out of the very neighborhoods their presence had made trendy (Gratz and Mintz 1998). Displacement of artists would at first appear counterproductive to a city’s arts-based revitalization policy. However, the return of abandoned or underassessed property to tax rolls, creation of an interesting housing stock that attracts and retains the middle and creative classes, and surging real estate transaction fees are irresistible tax revenue sources that without government regulatory policies or citizen group actions inevitably trump the arts. cultural districts and live/work projects. These artist-centered development models (also termed “artist villages”) are frequently among the most prominent features of arts-based revitalization initiatives. Cultural districts are given in-depth treatment in chapter 8 of this book and only briefly mentioned here because of the impact on individual artists who have in many cases pioneered inner-city living only to be driven out by gentrification. Despite the proliferation of arts-based revitalization efforts, individual artists feel at risk even as they are encouraged by the new status being accorded to the arts in their cities. Cultural districts have proven to be a successful counterbalance to unregulated gentrification.They also provide the space and place for art making done outside of institutions to be operated like small businesses.The concept of artists as small businesses comes out of the new thinking about the

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arts—nonprofit and for profit—as creative industries that, like other types of businesses, have the capacity to export or sell their goods and services outside the local area and bring back new money to enrich the local economy (Keegan and Kleiman 2005). Artists are making the case that if they are to survive and flourish in the city their needs for affordable and appropriate live/work space, beneficial zoning laws, tax incentives, health benefits, access to suppliers, distributors, markets, and audiences must be recognized as core elements of revitalization efforts. The perception is that the cultural institutional agenda, especially for the new raft of celebrity museums and performing arts centers, takes precedence over that of individual artists. Many urban policy analysts believe that recognition of the vital role played by artists and the importance of having their subsistence and production needs embedded in a city’s cultural planning process from the beginning would restore balance to the process (Williams et al. 1993). While limited in its capacity to address these types of basic concerns, good faith cultural districting (such as that in Pawtucket, Rhode Island) has proven a promising place to begin. Equally promising is the movement for development of dedicated artist live/work space through the innovative efforts of a number of nonprofit organizations. Chief among those working at the national level is Artspace Projects. Founded as an advocacy organization in Minneapolis in 1979, Artspace has evolved into the leading American nonprofit real estate developer for the arts and has been instrumental in the development of more than thirty loft and studio buildings in cities as diverse as New York, Duluth, Reno, Fort Lauderdale, Minot (North Dakota), Seattle, and Monterey (California).3 Artscape credits its work with having major revitalizing implications, noting that “other neighborhood development typically follows within three years of the completion of an artists’ live/work project.This development in turn helps generate other cultural activity and creates a general increase in visitors to the area.” Such conversions help a city’s preservation of historic building stock and its return to active use (Artspace). LINC (Leveraging Investments in Creativity) is a national nonprofit organization created in 2002; unlike the Minneapolis grassroots origins of Artspace, it resulted from a foundation-supported research study carried out by the Urban Institute.4 This study, Investing in Creativity, was funded by a ten-year, $20 million grant from the Ford Foundation and other private foundations to address the creative, survival, and advocacy needs of artists in all disciplines (M. R. Jackson et al. 2006). As one of its first major programs, LINC established and supported local collaborative efforts to develop affordable and appropriate space in a variety of locations. Boston’s Artistlink is one such effort; its mission is to provide “individual artists, developers, and municipalities with targeted information and technical assistance” and advocate for artist-centered

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programs at the state level. Artistlink demonstrates the growing organizational sophistication that artists must assume to accomplish larger cultural policy objectives beyond the studio.Artistlink succeeded as an arts-based revitalization strategy by bringing together in common purpose a complex public and private stakeholder group that included the state arts council, several private foundations, the city’s redevelopment agency, a nonprofit economic development organization, and the Mayor’s Office for Arts,Tourism and Special Events (Artistlink). museums and performing arts centers. In the last two decades these institutions have assumed a centrality in the life of cities not unlike the grand cathedrals of Europe in earlier times (Kotkin 2006). Beginning in the 1980s, the proliferation of new facilities and modification of existing ones became the most visible manifestation of the boom in arts and culture as an instrument of economic revitalization. Between 1985 and 2002, seventy-one major facilities were constructed or expanded in American cities, including Albuquerque, New Mexico; Austin,Texas;Wichita, Kansas; Anchorage, Alaska; New York City; and Orlando, Florida (Strom 2002). Five years later, the New York Times reported that forty-six art, science, historical, and religious museums were in the process of expanding, relocating, or constructing new buildings. In the autumn of 2006 alone, five U.S. and Canadian performing arts centers were opened at a total cost of nearly $1 billion (Pogrebin 2007;Wakin 2006). Critics agree that the high-profile cultural construction movement took a dramatic turn as the result of two pivotal fin de siècle events: the opening in 1997 of the Frank Gehry–designed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the international architectural competition held for the reconstruction of New York’s World Trade Center site after the 9/11 attack. Thereafter, highprofile architects found themselves members of an international pantheon of signature architects (also referred to as “starchitects” and “celebrity architects”) whose work was eagerly sought by an increasing number of postindustrial cities in the hope of duplicating what had come to be called the Bilbao effect. Bilbao is a former steelmaking and shipbuilding city located in the heart of the Basque region of northern Spain. A classic example of postindustrial decline, the city of one million had a 25 percent unemployment rate by the time of the opening of a museum designed by American architect Frank Gehry that enjoyed instant renown. The planning by the Basque provincial government for an arts-based makeover of the city’s image and economy began in 1980 with a major shift (devolution) in Spain’s cultural policy from national to provincial control.A decade later, Basque officials signed an agreement for loan collections and technical assistance with New York’s Guggenheim Museum, drafted architect Cesar Pelli to design a master city plan, and hired Frank Gehry. The rest is history. Basque authorities claimed 1.36 million visitors

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in the first year—85 to 90 percent of whom came from outside the Basque region—and an estimated addition to the local economy of $500 million within the first three years (Plaza 2006). The Bilbao Effect: Architecture as Revitalization Strategy Seemingly overnight, municipal officials and civic boosters throughout the Western world (countries in Asia and the Middle East would soon follow)5 developed ambitious plans for iconic cultural spaces, with the optimistic expectation that these facilities would translate into high-profile recognition by the media, tourism, the international arts community, corporate sponsors, wealthy donors, and citizens who would embrace the large investment of their tax dollars in this arts-based strategy as a source of local pride. How these expectations are being met, and at what cost, has varied greatly. For example, Newark, New Jersey, the third oldest city in the United States, is a textbook case of postindustrial urban decline and continues to struggle with the blight and crime that have marred its image since the racial unrest of 1967. Thirty years later, a coalition of state, city, education, foundation, and business leaders variously constituted under three New Jersey governors saw the realization of a vision that promoted culture as the leading edge of a pragmatic new strategy for Newark’s revitalization. Funded at a cost of $187 million (more than half provided by state, county, and city sources), the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) is a model of the arts-based initiative conceived and positioned to advance a larger strategic plan.Architecturally modest by comparison with more fashionable celebrity-designed centers, NJPAC’s glass and red brick building achieves a spatial and social integration with the city that, along with its deliberate multicultural and community-oriented programming policy, has inspired pride and loyalty in area residents. By 2007, a New York Times reporter could observe that “many people peg the city’s nascent resurgence to the inauguration of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in 1997.” A modest but blossoming condominium market, arts suppliers and galleries putting down roots as part of a growing arts community, the opening of more upscale restaurants and bars, and the first annual Newark Arts and Music Festival held in June 2007 were cited as signs of change directly traceable to the halo effect created by NJPAC ten years out. NJPAC is also credited with the increase in the city’s population by 10,000 since 2002. Civic leaders are encouraged that many of these new residents are representative of Florida’s much vaulted demographic—young, hip, white professionals—who are now seeing Newark as a livable, affordable alternative to New York City (A. Jacobs 2007). In Milwaukee,Wisconsin, celebrity architect Santiago Calatrava is described by critics as having “created an urban landmark in the guise of an addition for the Milwaukee Art Museum” (Dejong 2005). The soaring, winglike movable

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sun screen that tops the lakeside Quadracci Pavilion increased the museum’s gallery space by 30 percent. However, the 345 percent cost overrun increased the original $35 million estimate to a final cost of $120 million by the time it was completed in 2001. Although a public bond issue would be necessary to retire the construction debt, a debt that was consuming 20 percent of the museum’s annual budget, museum trustees and city officials considered the money well spent on their architect’s constantly expanding vision. Museum attendance the first year after completion was 500,000, up from 160,000 the previous year. A schematic form of the Calatrava design features prominently in the campaign that markets the Milwaukee renaissance to tourists, conventions, young professionals, and potential business interests. Rather than a failed brewery town, the city now projects itself as a national and international cultural destination and burgeoning center for creative class industries, a 24/7 youth culture, higher education, and a lively musician and artist scene. Milwaukee’s choice of a Bilbao-like model puts dramatic architecture and engineering at the center of the city’s development strategy. Claims for the positive impact of the museum addition are supported by the perceptible increase in local pride, the national and international name recognition of this midwestern city, and the 20 percent rise in downtown residential living since its completion (Dejong 2005). While not refuting the claims, critics say the museum expansion fails as public space (except for the view and the gift shop) and stands aloof from its urban context (Project for Public Spaces 2007). Los Angeles gained a Bilbao look-alike with the 2003 opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Although supported by $120 million in corporate and private contributions (including funds raised by the resident orchestra and a $50 million starter gift from Mrs. Disney), the city provided the land and major infrastructure support. Like NJPAC, Disney Hall can be viewed as the cultural linchpin of a larger strategic Grand Avenue plan to reinvent the city’s historically depressed downtown with new corporate towers, retail shops, bars and restaurants, galleries and cultural destinations, hotels, and residential housing based on a master plan designed by Frank Gehry. Los Angeles presently draws only 2.5 million tourists a year, compared to the ten to fifteen million visitors claimed by New York and London. Forty percent of New York’s visitors frequent cultural venues, while only one in ten visitors seeks out LA’s cultural sites. As recently as 2004, the then mayor proposed abolishing the city’s cultural affairs department as unnecessary. A new mayor has hired an arts professional as the new cultural affairs director and proposed a public/private partnership to raise the level of local awareness about the centrality of cultural philanthropy (historically low) and the arts and artists in LA’s latest revitalization efforts (Wyatt 2007). Despite the mayor’s efforts to embed a cultural policy component in his administration, local critics dismiss the Grand Street plan

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as old-fashioned and derivative. They consider it, at best, inconsistent with LA’s vibrant multicultural and decentralized character and, at worst, artistically elitist and racist in its potential impact on the Hispanic community. It remains to be seen whether the city’s arts-based plan is primarily commercial (as in the case of New York City’s South Street Seaport), or whether downtown residents, artists, and the older, less glitzy cultural institutions have any participation in the revitalization process (Ouroussoff 2007; Pristin 2007). In a final example, a controversial expansion of the Denver Art Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind opened to mixed reviews in 2007 (Ouroussoff 2006b).The dramatic, angulated building was funded by $62.5 in public bonds and $28 million raised from private sources. Considered by critics to be one of the more extreme examples of the current trend in museums as “spectacle,” the museum is expected to be a major tourist attraction and the linchpin of the city’s arts-based downtown revitalization plan. The museum is the newest addition to what city officials have designated the Civic Center Cultural Complex (including the original Beaux-Arts art museum, the central library, and a history museum) that is being pitched as a vibrant urban corridor connecting downtown to the rapidly gentrifying Golden Triangle, a historic neighborhood ploughed under by urban renewal and now reinvented by the city as a cultural district. The district’s artists and small arts businesses are increasingly sharing space with condominiums and lofts constructed by savvy developers alert to the growing attraction of artistic, funky inner-city neighborhoods for young urbanites eager to be within walking distance of their downtown jobs. Even the new museum is flanked by Libeskind-designed condos, yet another manifestation—one part vanity, one part business—of the cultural dynamic driving the celebrity architecture movement (Chen 2007). The emphasis on high-profile construction and feats of engineering for cultural facilities has been criticized by museum professionals for overshadowing the intended purpose for these buildings and diminishing their artistic mission, sometimes at their peril. One visit to Bilbao will be the only visit for most people. The director of the Milwaukee Art Museum attributes the first year’s shortfall in projected attendance, after the initial flurry of interest, to underestimating the importance of having an exhibit in the nearly empty new pavilion.The Bellevue Art Museum in Bellevue,Washington, closed in 1994, three years after moving into an expansive, cutting-edge building designed by an upscale East Coast architect. Local opinion pronounced the new museum baffling and poorly suited to its traditional Northwest collections. The museum reopened two years later with a new name, mission, management, and board of trustees (Lloyd 2004). The aberrant design of the Denver museum is an acute example of space that competes with and challenges the curatorial function. However, in personally selecting a high-profile architect known for his difficult buildings, Denver’s mayor has made it quite clear that such issues are

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of little concern to him. The choice of a Libeskind was about civic purpose, not the museum’s artistic mission (Chen 2007). Similarly pragmatic, the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, pioneered the creation of a lively tax-creditsupported cultural district that he subsequently allowed to gentrify. Because gentrification served his citywide revitalization goals, low-income artists were no longer the point and purpose of the district. Final Thoughts Arts-based revitalization strategies have placed the arts and culture sector and individual artists at the center of civic life in an ever-increasing number of cities. A strategy for urban recovery based on privileging the arts in a society that lacks a national consensus about the importance of the arts would seem to entail considerable risk, unlike a Germany where the national government has made the arts its primary strategy for reinventing its capital city of Berlin (Stewart 2003). It may be premature to pass judgment on U.S. revitalization efforts, as many are still in the early stages of their development and implementation. After all, the area around New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts took twenty years to transform into the vibrant residential and business district it is today. Research and analysis have debunked the earlier idea that stadiums and arenas were major catalysts for urban job growth and inner-city revitalization. Economists like Tyler Cowen view similar claims about the new wave of cultural facilities as lacking in scholarly proof and likely to turn out equally unfounded (2006). There are those who wonder, if every city has a Bilbao, who will have the competitive edge, and, after one visit, will even the locals who are the sustaining force of most museums make regular visits? Others question whether the major cities, with their high-profile investment of public funds, can prevail as what urban critic Joe Kotkin calls aspirational cities, like Akron, Ohio, and San Jose, California, promote equally compelling arts-based alternatives. There is even potential competition from faux cities, with residential loft living and cultural amenities, being built outside of major cities by trend-savvy real estate developers for that growing segment of the population seeking the urban experience without the grit (Herrick 2006b). In the final analysis, nonprofit museums and performing arts centers are subsidized enterprises, not economic engines. Their value as providers of social capital and attractions for the creative class notwithstanding, positioning them as other than the occasion (the halo effect) for revitalization planning is at best unfair and at worst dangerous. Artists and art businesses do have the ability to enhance local economies and transform neighborhoods, but not without regulatory practices to address market forces that have the potential to strip cities both of their creative infrastructure and of the middle-class families who prize urban life and are the backbone of arts audiences.

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Globalism and technology have propelled creative workers into the forefront of the American labor force, but the measure of the great cities in which they cluster is more than high-end lofts and condominiums. Racial, gender, and ethnic diversity, tolerance, and nostalgic appreciation for community rank high on the list of amenities that attract talent in the Knowledge Age. City planners and the elected officials who hire them are cautioned to pay heed to such factors as they commit public dollars to costly ventures, seen as elitist, that frequently shed private supporters once their novelty wears off, leaving future city administrations and boards of trustees freighted with debt. Ultimately, reversing the decline of American cities is about good jobs, personal income gain, elimination of racial barriers, and expanded and diversified sources of tax revenue, not just the proliferation of gentrified downtowns. Investments in the arts are easier than big-ticket, society-changing items like public education and human services for politicians to sell to local taxpayers and wealthy donors. City officials and the arts community with whom they are now partnering have a major public policy challenge: to dispel the perception—and the reality if such is the case—that arts-based revitalization is classbound and only for elites. It is government’s role to play the honest broker and represent the public interest even in matters of beauty and art. Note s 1. “Walt Disney’s father, Elias, helped build the White City; Walt’s Magic Kingdom may well be a descendant. Certainly the fair made a powerful impression on the Disney family. It proved such a financial boon that when the family’s third son was born that year, Elias in gratitude wanted to name him Columbus [instead of Roy]. … Walt came next, on December 5, 1901.” Steven Watts, The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 373. 2. An example of the multiplier effect is when buying local products at local businesses creates a ripple effect as those businesses and employees in turn spend your money locally. Cultural economists James L. Shanahan cautions arts advocates against making the multiplier effect their primary argument. With few exceptions, such measurements have too often proven imprecise, self-serving, and lacking in rigor when applied to the arts (see “Selected References” for Shanahan 1982). 3. “The mission of Artspace Projects is to create, foster and preserve affordable space for artists and arts organizations.We pursue this mission through development projects, asset management activities, consulting services, and community-building activities that serve artists and arts organizations of all disciplines, cultures, and economic circumstances. By creating this space, Artspace supports the continued professional growth of artists and enhances the cultural and economic vitality of the surrounding community” (see www.artspaceusa.org/about). 4. LINC’s agenda is fourfold: (1) increase direct support for artists’ work; (2) improve necessary life supports in areas such as live/work space, insurance, and financial services; (3) enhance artists’ networks and the policy environment that support artists; and (4) explore the impact of artists on communities and community redevelopment (see www.lincnet.net). 5. The Guggenheim Museum’s plan to build another Bilbao in Latin America collapsed after two years of exploratory discussions when a court ruled that the 2001 contract

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signed by the city of Rio de Janeiro with the museum violated Brazilian law. Larry Rohter,“Court Bars a Guggenheim Museum,” New York Times, June 7, 2003.

Se lecte d Re fe re nce s Alliance for the Arts. 2006. Arts as an Industry: Their Economic Impact on New York City and New York State. New York: Alliance for the Arts. Artistlink. Boston. www.artistlink.org. Artspace. Minneapolis. www.artspaceusa.org/about. Beauregard, Robert A. 2003. Voices of Decline:The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Brooks, David. 2000. Bobos in Paradise. New York: Simon and Schuster. Bustard, Bruce I. 1997. A New Deal for the Arts.Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. Caro, Robert A. 1974. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Random House. Caves, Richard E. 2000. Creative Industries: Contracts between Arts and Commerce. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chen, Aric. 2007.“The Civic Act.” Metropolis, March. Cherbo, Joni Maya, and Margaret Jane Wyszomirski, eds. 2000. The Public Life of the Arts in America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Cowan, Tyler. 2006. Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dejong,Terah. 2005.“Destination America: Shore Bird.” Smithsonian, April. Florida, Richard. 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books. Fogelson, Robert M. 2001. Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880–1950. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Frost-Krumpf, Hilary Anne. 1998. Cultural Districts:The Arts as a Strategy for Revitalizing Our Cities.Washington, DC: Americans for the Arts. Gratz, Roberta B, and Norman Mintz. 1998. Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown. New York: John Wiley. Hannigan, John. 1998. The Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis. New York: Routledge. Harris, Neil. 1990. Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Herrick,Thaddeus. 2006a.“Arenas of Dreams.” Wall Street Journal, June 2.. ———. 2006b. “Fake Downtowns Rise, Offering City Life without Grit.” Chicago Tribune,June 18. Higham, John. 1955. Strangers in the Land. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Jackson, Kenneth T. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier:The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Jackson, Maria Rosario, et al. 2006. Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structures for U.S. Artists. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Posted to Web May 2, 2006. ⬍http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID⫽411311⬎ . Jacobs, Andrew. 2007. “Not Hot Just Yet, But Newark Is Starting to Percolate.” New York Times, May 6. Jacobs, Jane. 1961, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York:Vintage Books. Judd, Dennis, and Susan Fainstein, eds. 1999. The Tourist City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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Katz, Bruce. 2006. The Economic Potential of American Cities.Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. October. ———. 2007. “A Nation in Transition: What the Urban Age Means for the United States.” Paper presented at Urban Age Conference, New York City, May 3. Keegan, Robin, and Neil Kleiman. 2005. Creative New York. New York: Center for an Urban Future. Kotkin, Joel. 2006. The City: A Global History. New York: Modern Library. Larson, Erik. 2003. The Devil in the White City. New York: Crown. Levine, Lawrence W. 1986. High Brow/Low Brow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lloyd, Ann W. 2004. “If the Museum Itself Is an Artwork, What About the Art Inside?” New York Times, January 25. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. 2004. The Economic Role and Impact of Lincoln Center. Boston: Economic Development Research Group. Metzger, John T. 2001. “The Failed Promise of a Festival Marketplace: South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan.” Planning Perspective 16. Municipal Art Society of New York. www.mas.org. Murphy, Theodore. 2005.“Cash Windfall.” Arts & Antiques, April. Ouroussoff, Nicolai.2006a.“Putting Whole Teeming Cities on the Drawing Board.” New York Times, September 10. ———. 2006b. “A Razor-Sharp Profile Cuts Into a Mile-High Cityscape.” New York Times, October 12. ———. 2007. “Corner of Art and Commerce in Los Angeles.” NewYork Times, January 28. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 1996. Press release, September 18. www.philamuseum.org/ press/releases/1996/19.html, accessed June 16, 2007. Plaza, Beatrice. 2006.“The Return on Investment of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, June. Pogrebin, Robin. 2007.“Grand Plans and Huge Spending.” New York Times, March 28. Pristin, Terry. 2007. “In Los Angeles, A Gehry-Designed Awakening.” New York Times, April 18. Project for Public Spaces. “Why It Does Not Work.” www.pps.org, accessed June 23, 2007. Riojas, Mirasol. 2006. The Accidental Arts Supporter. Los Angeles: CSRC Research Report, no. 8, May. Shanahan, James L. 1982. Cultural and Economic Development: How They Come Together. Issues in Supporting the Arts. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Stewart, Ruth Ann. 2003.“The Arts and the Reinvention of Berlin.” ArtTable,Winter. Strom, Elizabeth. 2002. “Converting Pork into Porcelain: Cultural Institutions and Downtown Development.” Urban Affairs Review 38, no. 12 (September). Wakin, Daniel J. 2006. “This Season’s Must Have Accessory.” New York Times, September 3. Weinback, Jon. 2007. “The Focus-Grouped Park.” Wall Street Journal, June 29. Williams, Jennifer, Hilde Bollen, Michael Gidney, and Paul Owens. 1993. The Artist in the Changing City. London: British American Arts Association. Wyatt, Edward. 2007. “The Art’s Here.Where’s the Crowd?” New York Times, March 25. Zukin, Sharon. 1995. The Culture of Cities. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

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Chapte r 8

The Evolution of Arts and Cultural Districts

Ann M. Galligan

ARTS AND CULTURAL DISTRICTS1 have gained recognition as important policy tools for municipalities with respect to community planning and redevelopment. As a strategy for revitalizing urban landscapes, as well as reinvigorating local economies, cultural districts serve as important catalysts in developing vibrant and regenerated areas that transform often blighted or underused urban spaces (and a growing number of suburban ones) by attracting tourists and visitors, generating revenues, and acting as magnets for both for profit and non profit organizations, including theaters, galleries, convention centers, hotels, restaurants, and retail shops. In the last three decades many cities and towns have expanded the scope of cultural districts from an arts organization–based model to include live/work spaces for artists and small arts businesses as integral components of their revitalization strategies. This second wave of cultural-district development includes artists as well as collective arts’ enterprises. Creativity is at the core of the second-wave cultural districts. As such, cultural districts act as magnets in attracting artists and other creative individuals, filling spaces such as lofts and underutilized buildings and light industrial spaces in vacant mills and factories. Cultural Districts as Municipal Policy Tools The focus of this chapter is to provide an overview of the evolving definition and impact of cultural districts as tools for cities and towns in achieving specific policy goals. A policy tool is an instrument or plan of action undertaken by a municipality in achieving social, economic, political, or aesthetic goals with clearly delineated outcomes in mind. Policy tools for the arts can include rent control, tax breaks, and tax-stabilization options for artists, 129

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arts-based corporations, and nonprofit arts entities. Some municipalities utilize additional governmental economic development instruments such as Community Development Block Grants (CDGBs), enterprise zones, and local Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), as well as federal and state historic and preservation tax credits to aid the arts.2 By obtaining a National Register of Historic Places designation from the federal government, many cultural districts are now eligible for state historic tax credits in addition to 20 percent federal historic tax credit. In sum, there are significant tax policy tools for restoring a rundown urban city area through the establishment of a cultural district. Some of the desired results in designating an area as a cultural district include supporting the arts, preserving architectural treasures and historic properties, filling empty real estate, and boosting a failing section of a no-longer-vibrant downtown or commercial area. In order to compete with major cities, many smaller cities are developing cultural districts geared toward attracting young professionals and recent college graduates for their workforce potential. Cultural districts have been created to provide vibrant arts and entertainment options for workers who otherwise might leave the city for the suburbs in the evening or not come into the city on weekends. Another goal is to create a sense of place for a city or a downtown, as cultural districts can unite disparate parts of a city into a cohesive whole. One such example is Near North in Columbus, Ohio. Another approach is to give an area a new brand identity through the creation of an Avenue of the Arts, as have Boston, Philadelphia, and Rochester, Minnesota. Cultural districts come in many sizes, shapes, and forms. As will be discussed later in this chapter, some districts have received formal designation and others simply have come into existence more organically as a result of individual entrepreneurship or collective grassroots efforts. Some are heavily funded and some exist on little or no money at all. Some have formal plans and others do not. Some have dedicated staff to manage them and others are more voluntary and informal in nature. Not all cultural districts are meant to be permanent; some achieve short-term goals and become extinct, while others have existed for decades. Some exist only as long as artists or small arts organizations, galleries, and merchants can to afford to stay in the area. Will cultural districts become a permanent part of the landscape? Will these districts prove to have the ongoing economic, social, and political impact that cities desire? How cost-effective are they in the long run? This chapter explores some of these questions and looks at new models of cultural districts as they continue to evolve. Definition of Cultural Districts What is meant by a cultural district (known as “cultural quarters” in the United Kingdom)? The first generally agreed upon definition of what is

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commonly understood as a cultural district was advanced by Hilary Anne Frost-Krumpf in an Americans for the Arts report, Cultural Districts: The Arts as a Strategy for Revitalizing Our Cities (1998). Frost-Krumpf defines a cultural district as a “well-recognized, labeled, mix-use area of a city in which a high concentration of cultural facilities serves as the anchor of attraction.” In addition, Frost-Krumpf divides the many different types of cultural districts into five different categories: cultural compounds; major arts institution–focused districts; arts and entertainment–focused districts; downtown-focused districts; and cultural production–focused districts. A cultural compound is an island or group of cultural institutions that together create a whole. Some of the most instantly recognizable cultural compounds are the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and Lincoln Center in New York City.These clusters of arts organizations became successful anchors for the development of cultural districts as urban planners grew to understand the need to create comprehensive strategies that included signage, safe and affordable parking, and viable forms of public transportation, with restaurants and cafés within or relatively nearby. These large urban spaces, or cultural fortresses as they have also been called, did not stay in vogue as a policy option in many large urban cities for very long after the 1970s, and they were soon replaced by cultural districts that were better integrated into their communities and urban settings. Still, newer cultural compounds have continued to grow as popular policy options in smaller urban and many suburban and rural parts of the United States, as well as in parts of Asia.With the advent of national and regional touring initiatives beginning in the 1980s, patrons no longer needed to travel to major cities to see high-quality arts and cultural events; they now could find such offerings closer to home. Just as many older cultural institutions, such as the New York City Ballet and New York City Opera in the State Theater at Lincoln Center, individual entities within cultural compounds, needed to rotate tenants to remain financial soluble, so newer performing arts venues often relied heavily on touring productions to keep costs down. Many Native American cultural compounds have survived by diversification—adding golf courses, museums, major concert halls, shops, and spas to their gaming centers.With the creation of gaming and arts and entertainment venues such as Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun Casinos in Connecticut and other compounds on tribal lands and along riverways throughout the nation, Native Americans were leaders in developing for-profit cultural compounds outside major cities. Often modeled after Las Vegas, there has been a tremendous growth in such facilities after the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988.While some tribes have failed in this endeavor, many succeeded. Tribal casinos and cultural compounds generated more than $25 billion dollars in revenues in 2006.

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In many places in Asia, including Singapore, large-scale cultural compounds have been built with mixed results, as many facilities are underused because audience demand and flexible programming were never fully factored into their development plans. Given ample space in mid- and smaller-size cities and rural areas, a cultural compound can expand in ways that most large urban complexes never could. However, growth can be a double-edged sword if audiences demand does not keep pace with expansion and effective marketing strategies and realistic audience projections are not factored into the institution’s long-term profile. Frost-Krumpf ’s second model, the major arts institution–focused district, was based on large cultural entities built in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago established major art museums, performance halls, parks, and monuments as signs of civic pride and economic prosperity. These older institutions acted as focal points for cultural districts often described as a Museum Mile or Avenue of the Arts. Throughout the twentieth century, cities across the United States constructed major arts institutions that served as anchors for such districts. Cleveland, Ohio, and Fort Worth and Dallas,Texas, are prime examples of such initiatives. Twenty-first-century major arts institution districts also can be found in Los Angeles, with the new Disney Concert Pavilion, and in Philadelphia, with the open-air Kimmel Center. Other midsize cities such as Milwaukee, Wisconsin, have built their own major visual arts museums, which now are anchors for successful cultural districts. Yet, as Jason Schupbach (2003) describes, many of these older major arts institutions were perceived as elitist in nature and originally designed to serve rather limited audiences. As a result of the civil rights movement and the urban unrest of the 1960s and early 1970s, many cities reexamined their urban development and arts patronage strategies and began to fund institutions and events that appealed to wider, more diverse audiences. Starting in the 1980s, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and many major private foundations also began to reevaluate their arts patronage in light of changing demographics and patterns of arts participation (Galligan 1993). A by-product of these changes was the growing popularity of arts and entertainment–focused districts, whose goal was to reach out to a more diverse audience and to draw patrons back into the cities from the suburbs by providing safe, popular cultural experiences in downtown settings. Many municipalities saw arts and entertainment districts as a way to create a less formal, more bohemian atmosphere. The Embarcadero in San Francisco and the French Quarter in New Orleans are two major examples. Art and entertainment districts have proven to be very popular in many cities, capitalizing on the presence of public art, galleries, shops, dinner theaters, nightclubs, bars, and

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restaurants, and offering patrons a wide range of popular entertainment options. Patrons can park, stroll, dine, and see a play or concert in one easily accessible part of a downtown that stayed lively on nights and weekends. Many cities use such cultural districts to attract visitors from nearby hotels and convention centers as well as to entice local residents to the downtown area after hours. This is one of the most popular kinds of cultural district, as it is easily created using existing venues and low-cost strategies for attracting new ones. Arts and entertainment districts also can be integrated into other types of districts, such as downtown improvement districts. As major midsize cities like Pittsburgh, Providence (Rhode Island), Seattle, Washington, DC, and Austin, Texas, all discovered, the arts found in small galleries, theaters, shops, and surrounding cafés and restaurants in downtown settings could be a lure in bringing workers, students, and tourists downtown. Combined with other arts events such as festivals, concerts, and gallery nights, they create a popular buzz for their downtowns. Other cities, such as Chattanooga, Houston, and Orlando, found their waterfronts were attractive focal points as part of their cultural districts. Historic preservation of older homes and properties, such as in Charleston, South Carolina, became parallel revitalization strategies for many such districts. The key concept with each development was to create a sense of place that enticed people into designated areas that offered readily available entertainment options, fine and casual dining, shopping, and convenience in an attractive, safe setting. Other cities and towns used downtown cultural districts to address a very different issue—the growing pattern of vacant center cities and empty main streets that were no longer central to shopping and traffic since the advent of malls and mega-entertainment complexes. These downtown-focused districts were created to revive and bring shoppers and patrons back to increasingly deserted parts of once-vibrant downtowns and main streets. These districts were also used to boost the economy by centralizing entertainment and business in a way that would become a focal point for the area. Smaller cities have hired major urban strategists to help craft urban renewal strategies to use their downtown districts more effectively. Urban politics and policy specialist Charles Landry (2000) worked in Worchester, Massachusetts, in 2005, and new urbanism specialist Andres Duany worked in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2004. Other smaller cities and towns such as Ames, Iowa, have taken advantage of the federal Main Street Program3 to transform their downtown areas into destination districts and revive the local economy. A number of cities have focused their districts on the arts and crafts being produced and sold in what Frost-Krumpf terms cultural production–focused district, such as the Torpedo Factory outside Washington, DC, and in areas where artists tended to cluster their studios such as Fort Point Channel in Boston. In New York City’s borough of Queens, an area of artist production around an

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abandoned school was turned into the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, now affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art. Such districts allow patrons to shop as well as view the creation process as part of the overall arts experience. As a result, artists in many of these locations have begun hosting open studios in an effort to promote their work. Some such districts revolve around a oncemonthly gallery night such as Art, Heritage, Architecture (AHA!) in New Bedford, Massachusetts; others create permanent entities, as in the case of the Torpedo Factory, and are managed by staff and volunteers. Second-Wave Cultural Districts Unlike large cultural compounds and major arts institution–focused districts, many newer artist-centric districts are not necessarily contiguous and often feature both live and work spaces for artists. While first-wave cultural districts almost always involve institutional anchors, second-wave districts generally do not. Although many do have arts institutions within their boundaries, the primary focus of these districts is on individual artists and small arts businesses. The trend is to view a cultural district less as an institutional phenomenon than as an individual one, a collection of artists usually working independently or as part of a loosely affiliated network. As evidence to this change, the Americans for the Arts (AFTA) Web site4 defines cultural districts as “geographic areas of a city where there is a high concentration of cultural facilities, art organizations, individual artists and arts-based businesses.” The evolution from an institutional anchor model to a more inclusive model is clear. Cultural districts are now far more diverse in nature and broader in scope. AFTA adds that cultural districts are often mixed-used developments, such as mills and shops, which incorporate other facilities, such as office complexes, restaurants, and retail spaces. One of the reasons for this shift is that, beginning in the 1990s, many postindustrial cities, particularly in the northeastern section of the United States and also in the United Kingdom, found themselves in the position of having a plethora of light-industrial space and no foreseeable industrial tenants to fill them. As a result, many areas became rundown and blighted. Two options were to find short-term, low-rent tenants to fill the spaces until the real estate market changed and to craft a graduated tax strategy that lured prospective long-term tenants.The latter plan included short-term rent stabilization and a sliding scale for property taxes, as well as other income and sales tax credits to help renters develop the space. In the first example, artists moved into blighted areas because it was cheap to do so and the physical aspects of large, well-lit industrial space were conducive to making contemporary art.Too often the very artists who moved in and facilitated the renewal of the area were forced out by escalating real estate prices and property taxes once the area became desirable. The most famous

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case of this is SoHo in lower Manhattan. In the 1970s artists created a grassroots de facto cultural district by moving illegally into empty light-manufacturing space at real estate prices they could afford. Through their efforts, SoHo became established as a trendy artist’s district and an interesting place to live. As a result, of the very popularity they themselves created, artists were forced out by the escalating prices.Although SoHo is still regarded by many as an arts district, in actuality very few artists remain in what is today largely a retail area. While this situation is still all too common, a growing number of artists themselves are buying properties or joining forces with rent stabilization groups such as Artspace Inc. (www.artspaceusa.org), national, artist-focused nonprofit, affordable-housing developer and advocacy organization started in 1970 in Minneapolis. Artspace now boasts successful artist housing partnerships throughout the United States and Canada. An alternative to such grassroots efforts is for a city to engineer a cultural district by giving it a formal designation and deeming it arts-friendly, sometimes even before the artists themselves arrive. This has become an increasingly popular top-down municipal strategy. A classic example of this is happening in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, an old industrial and mill town and, in 1793, birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. Through the nineteenth and much of twentieth centuries, mills and factories were its mainstay, but no longer. A new holistic economic development strategy was required if the buildings were to be saved and the city to stay solvent.The Pawtucket Department of Planning and Redevelopment crafted a way to bring the vacant mills up to code through the use of historic federal tax credits and by offering tax breaks to developers working within the boundaries of the newly created cultural district. The district included much of the downtown as well as adjacent mill buildings. The city also adopted an innovative state tax incentive program, originally pioneered by nearby Providence, giving income and sales tax breaks to artists who lived and worked in its designated district.5 Pawtucket offered artists a graduated property tax option as another incentive to move into its district. These tax breaks do not exist outside the district boundaries, so it became financially beneficial for developers and artists to take advantage of them. Pawtucket’s goal was to keep artists there for the long haul by developing policies, real estate, and zoning codes to ensure this would happen.As a result, the city has benefited by filling its vacant mills, and artists have benefited by acquiring both affordable spaces, tax breaks, and an opportunity to build their careers and businesses. By contrast, the city of Providence designated a cultural district with attractive sales and income tax incentives for artists and small arts businesses. However, the city never built in the property tax reductions and affordable housing measures that Pawtucket did. Providence’s original cultural district was a highly effective top-down, city-backed arts and entertainment district, but artists could not afford to work, much less live there. Only after artists living in

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the mills outside the designated district mobilized and petition the city and the state legislature to redraw the district’s boundaries to include areas where artists actually lived did artists in Providence start reaping any benefits. Municipalities Changing Relationship with the Artists and the Arts One of the driving forces behind the popularity of the new kind of cultural district geared toward individuals rather than institutions is the groundbreaking work of economist Richard Florida, who awakened city planners and policy makers to the benefits of artists and other creative workers in revitalizing decaying pockets in older cities. Florida’s 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, codified the new way in which artists were being viewed starting in the late 1990s; it was known as the creative economy movement, primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom.6 In large measure, this new mode of thinking transformed the way in which artists were perceived by many policy makers, investors, and even artists themselves, placing the emphasis as much on their economic role as arts businesses as on recognizing them for the their traditional aesthetic and societal roles in a given community. Just as cultural districts have evolved since the late 1990s, the relationship of municipalities to the artists and the arts has shifted. From 1960 to 2000, cities (and the various players within them such as mayors, town managers, city councils, city planners, funders, and even state and arts councils) have undergone major changes in how they relate to artists and the arts. The initial phase involved a traditional patronage model—a mix of private and public philanthropy—whereby the city or state, captain of industry, private benefactor or organization, supported the arts in order to help boost civic pride as well as supporting art for art’s sake. The artists and nonprofit arts organizations that received such support were commissioned to create buildings, paintings, performances, and public works of art—statues, monuments, memorials, and signage. Such municipal patronage was responsible for underwriting new works and performances and providing general operating support for large and small nonprofit arts and cultural organizations. The second phase of municipal arts support was less about the aesthetic, educational, or societal value of investing in the arts, and more about measuring the economic benefit derived from the arts. Economic impact studies were undertaken to justify public investment in supporting the arts and often revolved around the discussion of a multiplier effect, with public support linked to the number of dollars generated by ticket sales, artwork and ancillary arts-related purchases, restaurants patronized, and hotel rooms rented. Other studies linked investment in the arts to lower crime rates, better schools, and attracting corporations to one specific location over another. There are important parallels here between cultural districts and economic impact studies; the focus for both has moved from a nonprofit organizational

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support model to more of an economic development one. While many economic impact studies have been criticized for overinflating the financial return on public and private investments for the arts, such studies did help reframe the way many policy makers looked at the arts (Brooks 2004). Today, the relationship between the arts and cities has entered a third stage, in which cities are vying for individual artists and small arts businesses to move to their cultural districts to spur economic growth and urban renewal and vitality. It is interesting to note that the evolution from the patronage model to the economic development model to the small business development model has not been a serial process but rather one that uses all three models in tandem. Municipal governments have not stopped financially supporting the arts; cities have not stopped commissioning economic impact studies.7 Rather, cities have developed a multidimensional concept of artists and the arts that includes the arts as small businesses while still recognizing the important role played by traditional not-for-profit arts organizations. Issues of Sustainability and Long-Term Management First-wave cultural districts as described by Frost-Krumpf, containing large cultural complexes, major arts organizations, and downtown arts and entertainment establishments, require very different forms of financial support and ongoing management than do second-wave individual artist–focused districts. It is far easier to talk about sustainability when discussing cultural compounds, as they have more specifically designed infrastructures and standalone finances. It is also easier to measure audiences and economic impact. As 501(c)(3)s, nonprofit organizations are bound by law to report very specific information in order to maintain their tax-exempt status.This is not the case with other types of cultural districts, which include for-profit arts businesses and individual artists. In addition, cultural districts are managed and operated by a variety of different departments, including city planning, cultural affairs, and economic development. They can also be run by coalitions of businesses or arts groups, or sometimes not managed at all. Arthur Brooks and Roland Kushner (2001) conclude that these districts do make a difference in their study of the economic impact of cultural districts for nonprofit arts organizations. In comparing and contrasting per capita revenues of arts organizations in nine cities, they found that organizations located within cultural districts averaged more than twice the revenue of that produced by organizations not located in a district. Brooks and Kushner also identified four categories of factors that, based on the nature and level of control the districts maintained over their activities, helped determine their success or failure: (1) how the cultural district is administered; (2) the degree of public involvement; (3) the degree of physical change in the district; and (4) the types of arts and cultural programming within the district. Factors that

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helped districts sustain themselves over time included effective leadership, whether from the public sector, business, or the philanthropic communities; a broad range of financial stakeholders from these leadership groups; a clearly defined and prioritized set of goals; and, a good understanding by city planners and district managers about their target audiences and the market for the products they offer. The researchers concluded that while there can be multiple strategies and approaches related to the success of cultural districts, effective leadership was the most crucial factor. Simon Roodhouse, in Cultural Quarters: Principles and Practices (2006), a study of second-wave cultural districts in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, takes a slightly different approach to the issue of sustainability. Roodhouse describes how the definition of a cultural quarter (cultural district) has shifted away from cultural institutions and toward individual creativity. He says that the old paradigm of justifying public and private support for the arts as a public good is the wrong place to begin the discussion concerning cultural sustainability. He states that it is important to start from a position that individual people, not the bureaucratic infrastructures around them, create and sustain cultures, and that risk taking rather than maintaining the status quo should be of the highest priority in order to create vibrant communities. In Roodhouse’s view the success of a cultural district as an urban space can be measured by examining its activity (economic, cultural, and social), form (the relationship between buildings and spaces), and meaning (the sense of place, both historical and cultural). By turning the analysis of cultural districts away from simply describing the place where culture is produced to an examination of the role of the creator and receivers of cultural production and its implication for the community, Roodhouse has given new meaning to the very nature of cultural districts by emphasizing their human dimensions. Thus, in his analysis, a cultural district is viable as long as it nurtures and sustains those within and around it and should be organized with this goal in mind. The Importance of Networks One of the reasons that artists have been redefined as small businesses by policy makers is the growth of technology, digitization, and the global economy (Galligan 2001). Artists operating in second-wave cultural districts often are part of local, national, and global networks. Artists and arts businesses in such districts often operate in virtual networks of creators and receivers of digital information, and the networks that facilitate this process need not be in the same physical location as they are in first-wave districts. Xavier Greffe (2002), professor of economics at the University of Paris Pantheon-Sorbonne, presents an overview of how artistic jobs are being transformed by digital technology internationally. Similar to Roodhouse, he describes a growing trend to regard the essence of artistic activity as rooted in individual creativity. Greffe states that there are very

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significant changes taking place in the ways artists work and communicate. He argues that digital technology undermines the traditional notion of an artist, blurs the lines between creator, producer, and audience, has a significant impact on the work of art itself, and forces artists to become entrepreneurs who need to manage their own talent and market their products. Greffe views challenge the notion that technology allows artists to work equally well anywhere and in isolation from others. His research points to the contrary, that in fact artistic activity tends to be concentrated in cities, especially in large metropolitan areas. Artists need to revise their work constantly, and they must be in a position to move quickly from one project to another (even to other arts-related outside jobs).This is only possible in areas of high population densities of artists and a wide variety of employment options. In the same vein, producers look for concentrated pools of skilled talent in order to cut down on transaction costs. In this sense, digitization changes the nature of both art and artist, but physical networks of individual artists and artistic teams are still crucial for production of artistic products, even if transmitted and disseminated globally. Thus, cultural districts play a vital networking role for artists in a global economy by providing them with clusters of potential collaborators and the ability to market themselves to potential clients, often without the use of middlemen such as galleries and agents.This is an important point in justifying the value of second-wave cultural districts to policymakers. A different kind of network is the virtual global network that distributes artistic content and intellectual property over high-speed Internet and other digital sources.While Greffe maintains that artists still need to gather in physical proximity to each other during the creative process, the channels for the distribution and dissemination of their products do not. Given the new highspeed technology, it is likely that we will see the emergence of virtual thirdwave cultural districts that are not dictated by physical space.Whether located at online libraries, universities, or for-profit digital warehouses, these creators and suppliers of digital cultural content could be viewed as being part of a networked cultural district. If cultural districts become less about physical space and urban renewal and more about economic development and intellectual renewal, cultural districts have the potential to become enterprise zones for artists in communities across the globe. As such, the arts and artists will have a more secure place in a global economy. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan once said that new technologies never entirely replace former ones, but that older forms become embedded in newer ones. This observation would seem to be the case with cultural districts. Cultural compounds still exist, as do arts and entertainment and downtown districts, their successors.These districts may have shifted their focus from institutional anchors to individual creativity as organizing principles as they move from first- to second-wave cultural district models, but all still play a role in the

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development strategies of many cities and towns.As the nature of both work and what we understand as the arts evolves in the twenty-first century, we also can expect to see cultural districts evolve into third- and fourth-wave iterations. Conclusion While it is tempting to think of cultural compounds and districts as fixed entities, the reality is that they are far more fluid than they might seem and are constantly evolving. As we have seen, there are various types of cultural districts, each organized differently, serving different purposes, and often having different constituencies. How one measures success—a main theme running throughout this chapter—is colored by the definition of what is meant by a cultural district. Important questions in this regard include whether economic measures can accurately describe a district’s success. In Brooks and Kushner’s analysis, the economic vitality of cultural institutions that anchor their districts was one way to measure success. Second-wave cultural districts do not operate on the anchor model: they put individual artists at the center of their paradigm.All the studies on the success of cultural districts, however, do agree that there are similar contributing factors, in particular effective leadership and clearly delineated goals. When do cultural districts become obsolete? And what happens when art forms, public taste, and patterns of participation change? Can a cultural district survive? Do live/work districts become less useful for a city after property values go up and the area is no longer blighted or vacant? As Brooks and Kushner argue, it all depends on the goals behind the creation and operation of a district. Some districts, such as the one in Providence, Rhode Island, started as arts and entertainment districts. The city’s administrations and policies changed, the district was physically realigned, and new artist live/work goals were set. While some might argue that the goals of urban renewal have been met once an area has come back to life and that artists are no longer needed, others would claim that gentrification is not without cost, as it results in a loss of the very quality of life that artists bring to an area (Florida 2004). Studies are currently under way to examine the social, political, and economic impact of second-wave districts for both artists and cities. City planners and policy makers will need to come together to evaluate the effectiveness of these newer cultural districts as policy tools.Will there be a third wave of new cultural districts? If yes, what will be the role of real versus virtual networks as the global economy advances? Who will lead the way? How will we measure the success of third-wave cultural districts? And where might this practice lead? Note s I would like to thank Jason Schupbach for all his insights and assistance in helping to frame this study, presented, in part, at the 29th Annual Conference on Social Theory, Politics and the Arts, held at the Ohio State University in October 2003.

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1. Arts and cultural districts are one of many designated areas within cities that serve to distinguish an area by the specific concentration of activity within it. Other types of districts include business improvement districts, waterfront districts, industrial enterprise zones, and economic development–focused districts. 2. Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs) are part of a program sponsored by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that gives grants to cities and urban areas to develop viable communities by providing decent housing, a sustainable environment, and the means to expand economic development opportunities.A Business Improvement District (BID) is a coalition of property owners and businesses committed to enhancing the quality of life in a downtown area. Los Angeles has one of the largest BIDs, encompassing more than 4,000 businesses in a 65-block area, including 600 retailers, 200 restaurants, and 7 hotels. Other major BIDs include those in Washington, DC (the Golden Triangle, which includes the White House),Atlanta, and San Diego. Preservation tax credits are also important redevelopment tools, because they allow developers to write off some of their costs in restoring historic properties, either by using these credits to offset state and federal taxes or by selling these credits to third parties such as corporations. 3. The Main Street Program is sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Its approach to revitalizing commercial districts, whether formally designated as part of the program by the Trust or not, works to incorporate its principles into existing economic development, historic preservation, city management, or urban and community planning programs. See www.mainstreet.org for details. 4. For an excellent overview of how artists can transform spaces, see Elizabeth Strom, “Converting Pork to Porcelain,” and Maria Rosario Jackson and Florence Kabwassa-Greene, Artist Space Development: Making the Case and Assessing Impacts. 5. Rhode Island law allows for artists living and working in a designated cultural district to avoid paying state sales and income tax on original, one-of-a-kind works of art created in that district. 6. The creative economy movement began when researchers and policy makers began to define and examine the creative sector. As a result, artistic production and other forms of creative endeavor were analyzed for their economic value and contribution to the community, much in the way any other business venture such as the health or transportation sectors would be described and measured. The New England Council’s Creative Economy Initiative (1999) was one of the first of such studies in the United States, broadening the scope of what to include in an arts/ creative sector. A similar framework was also advanced in the United Kingdom as a result of a 1998 Creative Industries Task Force. 7. In 2007, Americans for the Arts released a major economic impact study, Economic Prosperity III, which attributed $166.2 billion dollars in economic activity to the nonprofit arts sector in the United States. See info.artsusa.org for more information about how this impact translates for the 156 cities examined by this report.

Se lecte d Re fe re nce s Brooks, A. ed. 2004. “The Value of Art.” Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society 34, no. 3 (Fall): 163–187. Brooks, A., and Kushner, R. 2001. “Cultural Districts and Urban Development.” International Journal of Arts Management 3 (2): 4–15. Dreezen, C. 1998. Community Cultural Planning: A Guidebook for Community Leaders. Washington, DC: Americans for the Arts. Florida, R. 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books. ———. 2004. Cities and the Creative Class. London: Routledge. Frost-Krumpf, H. A. 1998. Cultural Districts: The Arts as a Strategy for Revitalizing Our Cities. Washington, DC: Americans for the Arts.

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Galligan, A. 1993. “The Politization of Peer Panels at the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities,” in. Paying the Piper: Causes and Consequences of Arts Patronage, edited by J. Balfe. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ———. 2001. Creativity, Culture, Education and the Workforce.Washington, DC: Center for Arts and Culture. Greffe, X. 2002. “Artistic Jobs in the Digital Age.” Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 34, no. 1 (Spring): 79–94. Jackson, Maria Rosario, and F. Kabwassa-Greene. 2006. Artist Space Development: Making the Case and Assessing Impacts. Boston: Leveraging Investment in Creativity. Landry, C. 2000. The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators. London: Earthscan Publications, Ltd. Roodhouse, S. 2006. Cultural Quarters: Principles and Practices. Bristol, UK: Intellect. Schupbach, J. 2003.“Artists Downtown: Capitalizing on Arts Districts in New England.” Master’s thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zukin, S. 1995. The Culture of Cities. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

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Chapte r 9

Capital, Commerce, and the Creative Industries

Harold L. Vogel

Introduction ARTISTS CREATE OBJECTS, emotional reactions, expressions, and thoughts through books, paintings, recordings, music, films, performances, and programs.To do any of this at a professional level requires not only inborn talent but also skills and techniques honed and acquired by dedicated years of learning and practice. However, money and capital and commerce—subjects that are typically seen, especially by young artists, as being from a foreign and alien world—will affect decisions at all stages of an artist’s life through the economic tradeoffs that will inevitably, though often reluctantly, have to be made. This chapter will describe both the economic forces that help bring an artistic product into being and the symbiosis between business and the arts in contemporary life. Toward these ends, it will illustrate the notions, concepts, and thought processes that are commonly used by all investment professionals. The discussion is placed within the wider framework of economics and will touch on contractual and corporate structures, organizational needs, and a host of other aspects that shape both commercial and non-profit enterprises in the public life of the arts and culture.1 Arts Patronage—Past and Pre se nt The varied motivations that underlie patronage of the arts have not fundamentally changed since the days of Caravaggio and Beethoven. Caravaggio was a famous Italian Baroque painter of the 1600s whose works heralded technical accomplishments, drama, and originality yet were considered by many at the time to be too controversial to hang in churches. Nonetheless, aristocratic collectors and even cardinals avidly sought his paintings. Similarly, Beethoven, who came of age in the late 1700s, was a freelance composer who 143

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supported himself with public performances, sales of his works, and stipends from an aristocracy that promoted his artistic genius. Over the course of European history, arts patronage was provided by the monarchy, the church, and the aristocracy and gentrified dilettantes (such as amateurs who cultivated the arts). In Asia, during China’s eleventh-century Sung Dynasty, there was a passion for art and “a craze for collection and study of antiquities” (Gascoigne 2003). And the Industrial Revolution saw the rise of a successful commercial bourgeoisie (new dilettantes), who, in turn, also supported the arts, sometimes through collegial associations such as those in the Netherlands, and eventually through academies as exemplified by those in France. The twentieth century brought social reformers who thought that participation in the arts would enhance the quality of life for American society as a whole and who began advocating for government support of the arts. By the late twentieth century, arts patronage had become multifaceted and to a great extent institutionalized and channeled through the structures of government, corporations, and foundations. Still, individual patrons, many being among society’s wealthiest citizens, continue to play a supporting role through donations to private foundations, trust funds, grants programs, and bequests. Arts centers, museums, symphonies, and theaters depend heavily upon these angels. As Balfe (1993, 7) writes,“Traditional art patronage is face-to-face . . . the patron benefits from direct exposure with the artist and from exercising some control over the final product. . . .At the same time, the artist can respond directly to the patron.” Simply put, relations between artists and patrons always involve give-and-take on both sides. The potential for conflict is ever-present. And the aspirations, motivations, propensities, tastes, and attitudes of both the artist and the patron can and probably always will be divergent to some degree. Availability of new technologies and packaging through modern financial and organizational structures does not change any of these elements. That is because art has always had a need to market itself. What instead changes over time is who gets to sell the art, what price it sells for, and the artist’s relative degree of freedom to operate within the boundaries that are set by budgets and by political and cultural considerations of social acceptability. That the artist is a free person who can and should be entirely unrestrained both creatively and financially is a romanticized leftover notion dating from the idealistic period of enlightenment that began in the late nineteenth century. Restraints of any kind will understandably lead to conflicts and resentments, but they are nonetheless facts of life. Aspects of Creative Industrie s We all figuratively start with a blank canvas. Anyone can gather up a guitar or easels and paintbrushes or reels of unexposed film stock.What is created

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on or with or by these objects and tools may just be for the pleasure of the creator.That is a noble and worthy goal in and of itself. However, most of what is created normally has another objective, too, which is to earn some kind of return, whether monetary or psychological or both. The monetary return, as will be described later, can be considered as a return on invested capital. The psychological return is also a return on invested capital, but it is of a different kind, since it does not lead immediately to a reward measured in dollars and cents but instead to approval, respect, applause, goodwill, and other such happy considerations. Yet returns of both kinds must be earned in the marketplace in competition with the works of others. The returns are then subjected to cycles of popularity, fads, and other circumstances that often have little or nothing to do with the inherent quality of the creation. Even Rembrandts and Picassos have their ups and downs in the market. The several bedrock properties commonly seen in the types of contracts and business structures that have evolved in the production, distribution, and marketing of entertainment and culture-related goods and services have been studied by Caves (2000) and are as follows: ■

■

■

■

■

■

■

Demand is highly uncertain in the sense that no one knows in advance how consumers will value new products and services (nobody knows). Creative workers, unlike those in jobs that are primarily functional and standardized, care greatly about what they produce (art for art’s sake). Many creative ventures (such as Broadway musicals or films) require diverse skills and specialized workers with unpredictable vertically differentiated skills (motley crew). Creative products (and also artists) are usually differentiated both vertically—product A is better than product B—and horizontally— product A and product B—are similar in character and quality but not identical (A list/B list). Most creative products, such as paintings, can differ in many ways through small differences (infinite variety). With time being of the essence in the creation of many properties, such as movies and concerts, close temporal coordination by all contributing elements is required (time flies). Royalties and rent payments are often collected in small lump-sum payments stretched over long periods of time (ars longa).

These common aspects help to explain, for example, why the few large movie studios have a need for the services of so many small, independent creative companies and why cultural and performing arts institutions use the types of contracts and ownership structures that they do. Indeed, option contract forms (that give the right but not the obligation to buy or sell at a fixed

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price for a certain limited time) prevail in creative industries because many of the costs often incurred are fixed but also sunk (irrecoverable) at various welldefined stages of production.2 Capital Conce rns This background sets the stage for a more robust discussion of capital, the centerpiece of this chapter. In any endeavor, labor is always a visible input. Nothing can be done without it. Capital, though, is a much less visible input that is often misunderstood by creators of cultural products. Herein we find a major source of inevitable tension between artists and patrons or investors. Most of the creators, the artistes and auteurs if you will, believe that without their skills and talents, nothing would ever be created; they are the one and only indispensable element.Yet those who contribute to the actual funding to support the creators usually know otherwise; nothing in the real world, whether in the commercial or nonprofit sector gets done without money. The truth is that both sides need each other. To further understand the role of capital, it is helpful to think of three different types of capital: monetary, human, and cultural. The last is easiest to describe first. Cultural Capital As Throsby (2001) has noted, cultural capital exists in both tangible (buildings, paintings, sculptures) and intangible (ideas, beliefs, practices, values) forms that give rise to a flow of cultural services.What is collectively embodied in these forms are enormous long-term accumulations of things that still, even after many centuries, are able to generate pleasurably shared emotional responses. Many of the tangible items in this category are priceless.They can never be replaced or reproduced because, even with our advanced technologies, we no longer have the patience, knowledge, or skills to do so.These are, like cathedral building or book manuscript illustration, lost arts. Perhaps the most important aspect of cultural capital is that it encompasses the economist’s concept of public goods. These are goods that can be enjoyed by more than one person without reducing the amount available to any other person. Moreover, once the good exists, it is generally impossible to exclude anyone from enjoying the benefits, even if a person refuses to pay for the privilege. Spending on programs to reduce air pollution provides an example. And especially in entertainment and the arts, it is not unusual to find presentations with such near-public good characteristics.The marginal cost of adding one viewer to a television network program is not measurable. Human Capital In the broadest sense, human capital is what we develop in individuals through training, education, and acquisition of skill sets. Even if you have been

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born with abilities to be a world-class violinist or math prodigy, you will still require extensive training to extend that potential. And someone somewhere at some earlier stage had to invest considerable time and money to originate the lessons and create the books and other tools with which the new prodigy learns the trade.3 In the arts, as elsewhere, even the most gifted must spend— that is, invest—many hours in the formulation of human capital (be it represented through acting, singing, dancing, writing, painting, or whatever.) More formally, then, what we mean by human capital is that each person has a stock of skills and knowledge that can be increased through investment. It is this set of skills that contributes to a person’s productivity, which is measured as output per unit time.4 General training increases productivity no matter what the setting, but specific training increases what is known as the marginal revenue product (MRP).Thus, a child who has learned how to read and write well has built up a stock of human capital through investment of time and money and effort that can be applied generally, no matter what the setting. A classical pianist who spends years learning and practicing has also built up a stock of human capital, yet the skill is more specific in that it can arguably be only applied wherever there is a piano. One could say the same thing for tennis players with powerful serves but no ability to play at the net, or for left-footed return kickers on professional football teams. In all, human capital, whether of the intellectual variety as with mathematicians, or as pertaining to arts and crafts, is something that is built up and then transferred to the next generations. Monetary Capital This is what most people mean when they think of capital. It is the amount that is spent in dollars (or euros, pounds, yen) by parents on singing lessons for what may be the next great soprano or on skating lessons for the future Olympics hopeful. But it may also describe what is spent on performing arts centers, museum structures, theaters, paintings and sculptures, music scores, film scripts, and other such things. The concept of monetary capital may be used to illustrate what economists mean when they speak of opportunity costs. By accepting an invitation to lecture for a fee in London, you forgo the opportunity to earn a fee lecturing the same day in Los Angeles. And if you spend every possible hour of free time learning how to play professional poker or in writing what might turn out to be the next great American novel, you are forgoing the potential satisfactions and rewards of, say, learning to paint or to pitch a baseball.You thereby trade one activity off for another and incur an opportunity cost.5 Returns Investors always require a return on capital, and this notion applies whether the capital is of the human or monetary types.The payoff, or return,

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can be and usually is a combination of tangible payments and intangible satisfactions. On the personal scale, it is up to the individual to decide if taking creative writing lessons for ten years is worth the time, money, effort, and other opportunities foregone. For the society as a whole, the question, though wrapped in political considerations, is basically the same. Is it, for instance, more important to build for $100 million a performing arts center or museum that may support and encourage poor, up-and-coming artists but is patronized mostly by the wealthy, or is it more important to build health care centers and homeless shelters for people with no or low incomes? There are usually no easy answers, and choices have to be made. Choices, or more formally, tradeoffs, are what economics is all about. Return on invested capital (ROIC), as based on analysis of projected costs and expected benefits, is then the criteria used to help make this kind of decisions. For the creative industries especially, though, it is often an imperfect measure. In monetary terms, ROIC is the payoff (that is, return) divided by the amount invested. If, for example, you invested $100 in a stock on December 31 of last year and the stock a year later was still $100 but meanwhile paid a $5 cash dividend, the ROIC would be 5 percent, and the rate of return, 5 percent per year. Had this stock also risen in the interim to $115, the total return, which is the total payoff divided by the price of the investment, would have then amounted to $20 ($5 dividend plus $15 capital gain), and the rate of return would then have been 20 percent. In the arts, the payoff may be simply the emotional satisfaction of watching an entertaining movie or the pleasure of seeing a great painting on your living room wall. But what is the return on capital invested in Junior’s guitar and drums and the lessons required to teach him how to play those instruments? The return on capital here is much more difficult to specify. In part that is because much of the ultimate return is intangible and because the payout is spread over many years, perhaps beginning far into the future. Junior’s drum lessons may ultimately lead to becoming the chief percussionist at a major symphony orchestra, or a renowned jazz artist. But that outcome cannot be known at the time the investment is being made, and the time until that is known may extend over many years if not decades. The fundamental elements of financial economics deal with issues of uncertainty, risk, and the time value of capital. Everyone, even those who have never been within one hundred miles of an economics course, will recognize that a dollar in hand today is surely worth more than a dollar promised (yet somewhat uncertain) to be returned a year from now. A discount rate, bringing the future payoff back to a smaller present value, helps to account for the inherent uncertainty and for the length of time over which the investment is spread. A risky venture—say formation of a dance company—would require a large discount rate as compared to the risk-free

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rate that can be earned simply by investing in U.S. government Treasury bills, which are as certain to be paid back as anything can possibly be. The discount factor adjusts for the possibility that returns on an investment can be negative and that the whole amount invested can be forever lost. What then is the return on capital (human and monetary) invested in commercial and nonprofit arts and cultural enterprises as compared to the potential returns expected from investment in other asset classes? This is always the key question that, in the public life of the arts especially, has only a fuzzy answer. More Capital Concepts If arts workers—everyone from the individual artists to the senior museum curators—are to understand how investors and economists think about returns of whatever kinds, a few additional aspects now need to be introduced. One such concept is that of utility, which is what individuals try to maximize by making decisions that provide them with the most satisfaction. Because decisions are normally made under conditions of uncertainty, with incomplete information and therefore the risk of an undesired outcome, people implicitly tend to include a probabilistic component in their decision-making process. They thus end up maximizing expected utility rather than utility itself.This helps to explain how allocations for the limited time and funds of consumers and/or arts patrons generally are made. In calculating the desired return, investors naturally weigh the prospect, or probability, of ever seeing their capital investment again. After all, investors hope to get not only a return of their capital, but also on their capital. If, for instance, you invest a dollar with your generous and friendly millionaire uncle, the probability of ultimately being repaid is apt to be a lot higher than if the dollar were invested with that deadbeat cousin of yours who is already maxed out on her credit cards. Thus, before making an investment, people will generally take the probabilities of achieving their desired return into account.6 Hence, probability of payoff—whether the payoff be of the monetary, emotional, or psychological kind—is inherent to the investment process and its measures of risk and uncertainty (where the odds of payoff are not known). Anyone who has ever had the slightest exposure to the creative process, however, knows full well that the outcome of any artistic endeavor is far from assured. Artistic processes—whether involving a song, a novel, a comedy routine, a stage play, an opera, or a film—are, by their very nature, uncertain in outcome. An excerpt from Bart and Guber (2002) illustrates how this applies to filmmaking, but it could just as well be applied to many of the other creative arts processes: Shooting a movie is as much a study in desperation as it is in inspiration. But more desperation because the pressure is too intense, the time frame

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too short, the financial risk too great and the egos too fragile. Indisputably, the director is the captain of his ship, but, irrespective of everyone’s best intentions, the ship habitually heads into uncharted waters. . . . A group of mostly strangers has been assembled, often in an inhospitable location, and asked to work in harmony under demanding circumstances. The shooting days are limited, the budget closely monitored, the cast quarrelsome. Each individual is guarding his turf (p. 83) . . . A film, once it has been placed in the crucible of production becomes something of a runaway train. (201) Bang for the Buck Many other aspects of financial economics play a role in the public life of the arts, in both the for-profit and the nonprofit segments. One of the most important of these is the concept of what is known as elasticity—more plainly stated as how much bang you get for a buck. Say you run a nonprofit theater group and, as usual, the budget for the production is rather tight again this year. Is raising the ticket price going to make your situation better or worse? The answer depends on the price elasticity of demand for tickets, which arithmetically compares the percentage change in the number of tickets sold to the percentage change of the price. If, for instance, the price goes up by 10 percent, but the number of tickets demanded (that is, number sold to theater goers) declines by 15 percent as a result, the elasticity is minus 1.5 (minus 15 percent divided by 10 percent). In this case it would definitely not be a good idea to try to cover the budget gap by raising prices that high. Elasticities of all types can be measured. Beyond the price elasticity of demand that has just been illustrated, it is often of special interest to determine the income elasticity of demand and also the cross-elasticity of demand with other products and services. In addition to providing employment for economists, these sensitivity estimates have great consequence for the arts as a whole. Heilbrun and Gray, for example, found “the demand for attendance at the live performing arts to be price inelastic” (1993). This means that consumers of such services are not particularly sensitive to changes in price: a price increase does not cause a proportionate decline in demand in, say, the number of tickets sold per unit time. For the economy as a whole, other estimates of income elasticity have found that, generally, a 1 percent rise in income results in a 1 percent rise in demand for cultural services. In this case, the income elasticity is positive 1.0. But the implication, from the other side of this coin, is that if there were to be an economic recession, which causes incomes (and the production of goods and services and employment) to decline, spending on the creative arts would decline proportionately too.

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When looking at income elasticities, goods are generally classified by economists as follows: Luxuries—demand grows faster as income rises and the income elasticity is greater than 1.0. Necessities—demand increases as income rises, but more slowly than income. Elasticity ranges from 0 to 1.0. Inferiors—income elasticity is negative, with demand falling as income rises. Arts patronage has historically tended to be in the luxury category. Cross-elasticities of demand are also often significant. For complementary goods and services—that is, things that go together like buckets of popcorn and movie admissions—the cross-elasticities are positive as the demand for both moves in tandem in the same direction of change. There can, however, also be negative cross-elasticities such as when the price of gasoline goes high, demand for nights out at the distant theater go low. It is clearly important for arts investors, administrators, and independent practitioners to at least have a general sense of such elasticities—that is, how much bang is being gotten for each buck.Without this sense, time and money are likely to be wasted either directly in production and administration or in marketing, promotion, and advertising. Price Discrimination Another economic aspect that has great affect on the public life of the arts is price discrimination. This notion relates to the fact that orchestra seats at the opera or ringside seats at a boxing match cost far more than those located way back in the rafters and balconies. It is also why first-class section airline tickets command a much higher price than tickets for the tightly packed economy seats. Such market segmentation allows an organization, either profit or nonprofit, to raise more revenue by capturing what is known in economics as consumers’ surplus—the price difference between what consumers actually pay and what they would be willing to pay. Price discrimination strategies extract, without adding much to costs, additional income that would not otherwise be available. And, applied intelligently and judiciously, they can mark the difference between success and failure for any organization, including those participating in the arts. Three major conditions must be present if price discrimination strategies are to be effectively deployed: Existence of monopoly power to regulate prices Ability to segregate consumers with different elasticities of demand Inability of original buyers to resell the goods or services

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The first condition, that of monopoly power, is arguably the most important and the easiest to meet if the talents and skills of the creative elements are unique and far above the average.The monopoly power of proven talents, past and present, in different fields—say (alphabetically), Louis Armstrong, Placido Domingo, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald,Alec Guinness, Ernest Hemingway, Bob Hope, Michael Jordan, B. B. King, Yo Yo Ma, Mickey Mantle, Arthur Miller, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, J. K. Rowling, Frank Sinatra, Steven Spielberg, Mark Twain, and Tiger Woods, just for examples—speaks for itself. Audiences have a great interest in seeing them perform, value highly what they have already produced, and will often accept no substitutes. That’s what monopoly power is all about.These people were, or still are, and will always be legends, and at the pinnacles of their creative performance excellences, their names alone have defined their respective fields. Productivity and Technology In economics, productivity is a measure of how much of a good or service can be produced by a person, a company, or a nation, over a given unit of time. On an assembly line for widgets, the assembler who produces one hundred widgets per hour has a higher productivity than someone who produces only eighty per hour. Productivity is a key ingredient for growth and profitability; whoever can produce more at a faster rate has an advantage that will attract capital investment and spur growth. A more productive society also has more free time and money to enjoy and patronize the arts. When it comes to productivity in the arts, though, things are not quite as simple.The complication stems from the fact that the output of the artist must often be simultaneous with its consumption. Moreover, it is impossible to substantially raise the productivity of live performances: it takes as long to play a Brahms concerto today as it did 100 years ago, and a scene by Shakespeare requires the same acting time as it did 350 years ago. This economic dilemma, as Baumol and Bowen (1968) first noted in their seminal work, cannot be resolved or addressed by technological improvements. The advance of technology has, instead, enabled and empowered many more people to appreciate and to be touched by the arts than has ever before been possible. A little more than a century ago, there were numerous concerts and operas, but there were no movies, DVDs, cable systems, computers, and television sets.The role of technology has thus been to improve the methods and lower the costs of production, distribution, and propagation of the arts. Conclusion Returns and risk, along with opportunity costs and the time value of money, are the concepts most important to investors, and also to the bean counters and the suits, whose presence is not usually appreciated, well tolerated, or

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suffered gladly by creators. Most of these capital aspects are typically secondary in the thinking of many artists, who tend to feel that they have a higher calling and, moreover, do not want to be accused of selling out—that is, giving in to supposedly less pure, more sinister monetary considerations. In other words, artists usually are reluctant to compromise their visions. Their attitude is woe unto those who would sully themselves with the crass commercialism and grimy realities of finance.That, however, is mostly a young person’s perspective. Even solo creative artists such as composers, writers, and painters have no choice but to interact with a commercial world populated by agents, galleries, publishing houses, talent promoters, managers, publicists, and others who are primarily driven by their own economic interests. Art for art’s sake is a noble ideal, but alone it doesn’t necessarily or usually pay the rent or put food on the table. Any artist who eventually achieves a modicum of success (and maturity) ultimately finds these realities inescapable. True independence from experienced, efficient, and well-financed organizations, from budgetary and capital constraints, from the costs of opportunities foregone, from the cost of risk capital, and from the inherent contractual options structure, does not, in reality, exist. Art eventually and inevitably bumps—and indeed often crashes—into commerce. Note s 1. See also Hamermesh (2003), who provides a comprehensive and easily digested overview of the economic concepts mentioned herein. 2. Adapted from Vogel 2007, 484. 3. Great knowledge and skill went into building the first pianos, or into writing the equations that prove basic theorems.The know-how to build cars and highways and digital cameras and semiconductor chips as well as cellos and space shuttles is all part of human capital. 4. Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker (1993) wrote the definitive work on this subject, and extensions of it have been widely applied. At the core of this analysis is the idea that human capital tends to depreciate with age or disuse rather than with use, and that training can be either of the general or specific kind. 5. Related to this trade-off is the notion of a second-best alternative; if you were to ever be presented with the choice of taking a low-paying job or of having no job and also no income, the job, bad as it might be, trumps the second-best alternative. 6. Say, for example, that the probability of a return of 5 percent on every dollar invested with Billionaire Bob is maybe 90 percent , whereas the probability of achieving the same return by investing with Deadbeat Debbie is only 40 percent. Then for every $100 invested, the expected value, the probability times the expected return is $4.50 ($5 times 0.9) for Bob and only $2.00 for Debbie.

Se lecte d Re fe re nce s Balfe, J. H. 1993. Paying the Piper: Causes and Consequences of Art Patronage. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Baumol, W. J., and Bowen, W. G. 1968. Performing Arts—The Economic Dilemma. New York:Twentieth Century Fund; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Bart, P., and Guber, P. 2002. Shoot Out: Surviving Fame and (Mis)Fortune in Hollywood. New York: Penguin Group (Berkley). Becker, G. 1993. Human Capital. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Caves, R. E. 2000. Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gascoigne, B. 2003. The Dynasties of China: A History. New York: Carroll and Graf. Hamermesh, D. S. (2003). Economics Is Everywhere. www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/ Hamermesh/EIEAnswers2003.pdf. Heilbrun, J., and Gray, C. M. 1993. The Economics of Art and Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press. Throsby, D. 2001. Economics and Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press. Vogel, H. L. 2007. Entertainment Industry Economics. 7th ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Chapte r 10

Internet as Medium Art, Law, and the Dig ital Environme nt Phu Nguyen

The Exploration of Alternative Media for creative expression has been one of the major artistic endeavors of the last century. From Kurt Schwitters’s cavernous apartment Merzbaus to Donald Judd’s manufactured industrial constructions to Nam June Paik’s vision of art through a television screen, artists have been expanding the definition of art and the context within which it can reside. The twenty-first century offers a new way to universalize art and to develop alternative forms of creative expression.Along with altering the state of international commerce and information exchange, the Internet offers not only another space for the presentation and distribution of art and literature but also a dynamic medium through which art can be conceived. Digital formats facilitate the creation of art that defies traditional assumptions about authorship, objecthood,1 and duration in time, changing our expectations of what art can be. Digital media divorce creative content from the physical world, expanding access to creative works.The elastic space of the Internet allows artists to control the worldwide presentation and distribution of their work through low-cost Web publishing and hand-tailored licensing regimes. Meanwhile, cultural artifacts such as literary works, graphic art, and vintage film can now be preserved for future generations in the vast storehouses of digital archives. The intellectual property (IP) laws that govern ownership and control of literary and artistic works, however, exist within traditional national boundaries. Despite significant progress toward the international harmonization of IP laws, this legal balkanization complicates efforts to compile electronic libraries, create virtual museums, and engage in the development of new projects.This chapter explores the way in which art, law, and the Internet interact to shape the future of cultural expression. 155

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Inte llectual Prope rty Law and Art The branch of intellectual property law governing literary and artistic works—copyright law—covers a broad range of artistic production including literary and pictorial works, motion pictures, and sound recordings. Copyright owners hold a series of exclusive rights: the rights to reproduction, adaptation, public distribution, public performance, public display, and digital transmission in the context of sound recordings.A violation of any of these rights amounts to copyright infringement. Within the United States, these rights are part of a law of intellectual property that seeks to promote creative output and innovation by using economic incentives.The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the authority “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”2 Under this constitutional edict, Congress may carve out limited monopolies for artists and inventors, thereby granting financial rewards for creative output and, in theory, promoting progress in the arts. The current term of protection for newly created works is the life of the author plus seventy years or, for works of corporate authorship, ninety-five years. Once copyright terms expire, works can enter the public domain. This means that the rights to their reproduction and distribution are no longer privately owned, but open to the public for free and unlimited use. For example, film adaptations of Jane Austen and Henry James novels can be made and remade without concern over copyrights; the original works have long since entered the public domain, leaving their interpretation both financially and creatively free to anyone with the interest to do so. On an international level, several major treaties attempt to harmonize national intellectual property laws. The most significant of these treaties is the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property, generally referred to as the TRIPS Agreement. All World Trade Organization (WTO) member nations must conform their national laws to the minimum standards set by TRIPS. In the context of copyright,TRIPS requires a minimum term of fifty years plus the life of the author, or if the author is unknown, fifty years from first publication or creation of the work. Member nations are free to establish longer terms of ownership, as the United States has done.The existence of minimum standards of protection, without countervailing maxima or concrete provisions for the enhancement of the public domain, remains controversial. Dig ital Archive s: Pre se rving Culture on the Inte rnet In many ways, the Internet makes art and literature freely available to anyone with a computer and Internet access. By making works available on the Internet, digital archives serve as a form of cultural memory, preserving creative works that would otherwise be destroyed by the passage of time or lost to

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oblivion.Accessible archives not only broaden the scope of cultural and historical knowledge but also expand the potential audiences for such information— from elite academics to the larger and ever-growing online public. However, from the perspective of the author, and more often the publisher, the availability of digital works on the Internet often conflicts with the legal rights of authors to control access to their work. Many library and museum items have long since entered the public domain, but the issue of rights arises for more recent works that are still protected by intellectual property law. The controversial Google Book Search Project illustrates the problem that copyright law can pose for a digital archive.To enable people to search books on the Web, Google is digitizing the entire collections of several major libraries, including books currently protected by copyright as well as works in the public domain. Google asserts that its digital archive project constitutes fair use and is therefore legal. Although the digital archive will contain entire copyrighted books, a search result will show only a few sentences with the sought-for word or phrase in context, unless the copyright owner has chosen to display a whole page. Google has also agreed to exclude works from the archive should the copyright owner object. However, several authors and publishers have argued that fair use does not extend to scanning whole works and presenting excerpts on the Web, and lawsuits have been filed to enjoin Google from archiving copyrighted works. The outcome of this controversy may take into account a similar case from the world of photography. In Kelly v. Arriba Soft,3 Leslie Kelly, a professional photographer best known for his images of the American West and Amish society, sued a company for creating a search engine database that utilized thumbnails of images found on the Web. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that “the creation and use of thumbnails in the search engine is fair use.” A key factor in the court’s decision was that the search engine’s use of the images was “transformative”—whereas Kelly’s photographs are “artistic works intended to inform and engage the viewer in an aesthetic experience,” the thumbnails in the database serve “as a tool to help index and improve access to images on the Internet.”Whether courts will reach a similar conclusion as to the Google Book Search Project remains an open question. Issues regarding the legality of archiving copyrighted material grow even more complex in self-organizing repositories of digital material. For example, while the popular photo archiving site Flickr tries to discourage users from uploading pictures that infringe on others’ copyrights, the site nonetheless abounds with copyrighted images lifted from Web sites or scanned from books and magazines.YouTube, a site for archiving videos, has also become notorious as a repository for copyright violations. Until recently users were able to upload entire movies and TV shows, a practice YouTube has tried to discourage by

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limiting the maximum length of a video upload to a total of ten minutes. However, this does little to address the use of YouTube to archive unauthorized adaptations of copyrighted material, from video karaoke to humorous remixes of film clips. Sites like Flickr and YouTube facilitate the transformation of literary and artistic expression to free information, which Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School has described as the primary value of the Internet. Lessig conceives of the decentralized architecture of the Internet as a space for the democratization of culture, a place in which the owners of the network cannot control the creative forces at work at its edges.As part of this end-to-end landscape, digital archives promote an overall environment of creative production by benefiting both authors and users. The creative virtual environment envisioned by Lessig is one in which the roles of author and audience are destabilized. Rather than a unidirectional flow of information, the Internet offers the opportunity for the constant exchange of ideas, information, and creative inspiration. Users gain free or low-cost access to vast amounts of expression that would otherwise be unavailable or difficult to obtain, often becoming authors themselves through exposure to creative output. Meanwhile, authors are given the opportunity to make their works available to the public at little or no expense and to improve their own work through exposure to the work of others. This often-overlooked dependence of the creator on the public has been discussed by artist Marcel Duchamp, who conceived of artistic creation not simply as the product of an artist, but the result of collaborations between artist and spectator. In his essay “The Creative Act,” Duchamp wrote,“In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally, posterity includes him in the primers of Art History” (Duchamp 1957, 818). Digital archives, as well as the vast space of the Internet, offer artists a considerable rooftop from which they may shout, giving them the best shot at posterity they have ever known. Duchamp’s posterity, however, may look and feel different in the digital world, where content can flourish like wildfire and mutate in unexpected ways, divorcing them from their original makers.Web sites like YouTube have catapulted wannabe animators and filmmakers into Internet celebrities, but it is the kind of fame that verges on notoriety, and more often than not, is short-lived.YouTube demonstrates how the elasticity of the Internet has transformed the parameters of how content can be made and disseminated—often in violation of copyrights, sometimes in the advancement of the creator’s celebrity, and almost certainly in a manner that reaches vast audiences. Certainly, from a traditional copyright perspective the digitization of creative works cannot so easily be categorized as an absolute benefit to authors.

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Copyright regimes theoretically provide an incentive structure for the promotion of artistic output, allowing authors to reap financial reward from their labor.Taking the principal right to reproduce and distribute creative works in the hands of the authors diminishes the economic benefits of creative production and thus may negate incentives for the works’ initial production. Regulating the Inte rnet Acro ss Borde r s: From Copyright to Comme rce Perhaps the most complex aspect of regulating the Internet is the tension between globally accessible Web sites and the myriad and often conflicting domestic laws that affect them. Maintaining a digital archive, for example, can raise copyright issues even when the archive consists exclusively of works in the public domain. One instance of the legal concerns attendant to such an enterprise involves Project Gutenberg, an ambitious volunteer project to make the contents of libraries available in digital format to as many people as possible.As of June 2006, approximately eighteen thousand books were accessible through Project Gutenberg. Its plain text coding makes literary works easily downloaded, copied, and searched by extracting them from their traditional hard copy forms such as physical books or even bulky electronic files of digitally scanned pages. The format of Project Gutenberg’s e-texts solves the problem of what Professor Yochai Benkler of Yale Law School has described as the overcapacity of books. Benkler offers books as an example of products whose use value—the communication of literary content—is not used to its full potential by the individual book purchaser. In the form of a physical hardbound volume, a book can only convey its content to a limited number of users within a certain amount of time, even if the book is shared by multiple users in the context of a library (Benkler 2004).As an e-text in Project Gutenberg’s database, the literary content is divorced from its hard copy form. It can be reproduced infinitely at negligible cost and can be transmitted to anyone who desires to read it. Freed from its hard-copy format, access to the literary content is virtually limitless. Project Gutenberg generally attempts to sidestep copyright issues by limiting its e-texting to works in the public domain, unlike the recent and broader initiative announced by the Google search engine. If Project Gutenberg determines that a particular work has entered the public domain, it is cleared for reproduction and inclusion in the database. Project Gutenberg’s approach would be simple in a world of clear-cut copyright protections, but the unique, nongeographical space of the Internet presents the difficulty of negotiating various national intellectual property regimes.This problem has especially come to the fore in recent years as Project Gutenberg has taken on an international dimension, launching databases in Australia, Germany, Finland, the Philippines, Serbia and Montenegro, and the European Union.

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The clash of national copyright terms is exemplified by the case of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.An e-text of Mitchell’s novel was posted on Project Gutenberg Australia (PG Australia), where the book had entered the public domain in 1999, fifty years after the author’s death. However, under recent copyright-term extensions, the work is currently under copyright in the U.S. until 2031.This conflict illustrates the irrationality of regional intellectual property regimes in the context of the borderless Internet, where users in the United States can easily access Australian Web sites and vice versa. Any U.S. user who downloads Mitchell’s novel from PG Australia likely violates domestic copyright laws. PG Australia addresses this problem with a disclaimer preceding the novel’s e-text:“Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file.”4 The conflict between PG Australia and U.S. copyright law over Mitchell’s e-text novel presents a single instance of a monumental problem—enforcing regional laws in a venue that defies geographical boundaries. Within the United States, courts have taken a number of approaches to determining jurisdiction. In Zippo Manufacturing Co. v Zippo DOT Com, Inc.,5 the federal district court applied a sliding scale of sufficient commercial Internet contacts with members of the state in which jurisdiction was being sought. Web sites that engaged in commercial contracts with members of the forum state constituted the most active level of contact. However, since the commerciality of online activities is difficult to define or measure, this test is likely to suffer from inconsistent application (Berman 2003, 58). Other approaches involve determining the offending Web site’s intentional effect on or harmful targeting of members of the forum state. Setting a standard for determining such criteria may prove to be difficult. Moreover, these intentional effect approaches neglect the reality that online spaces are by their nature universally accessible, regardless of the Web site operator’s intent. Other courts have taken a more extreme approach. In Inset Systems, Inc. v. Instruction Set, Inc., a federal district court in Connecticut declared that it had jurisdiction over any Web site accessible within the state.6 On an international level, a French court asserted jurisdiction over Yahoo! Inc. simply because its Web sites were accessible to French residents and despite the fact that they were transmitted from American servers.Yahoo! Inc. offered for sale on its Web sites Nazi memorabilia in violation of French law and did not comply with court orders to block French residents from purchasing the items. While Yahoo! Inc. took down Nazi memorabilia from its French subsidiary,Yahoo.fr, it kept such items on its more popular main Web site,Yahoo.com. In response, the French government began levying fines of eleven thousand dollars a day against the company for failing to take down the items as of February 2001.A divided per curiam opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

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sidestepped the dispute,7 leaving unclear whether Yahoo!’s First Amendment arguments may do it any good in an international context.The Ninth Circuit’s opinion leaves uncertain whether the Yahoo! Web site’s universal accessibility, one of cyberspace’s most significant values, may bring with it a broad spectrum of liabilities across jurisdictions. Indeed, the French court’s ruling sets an ominous precedent, setting the standard whereby the most restrictive jurisdictions may determine the extent of permissible activity of parties outside of its jurisdiction—from the context of obscenity laws and issues of free speech to that of intellectual property and the availability of free creative works. The legal community has suggested some alternative frameworks for addressing this problem of Internet jurisdiction. One view conceptualizes the Internet as “a radically decentralized environment demanding grassroots, nongovernmental lawmaking.”8 Instead of developing international legal entities that are merely collaborations of geographic governmental entities, this approach acknowledges the Internet’s existence as a separate and unique space that exists beyond borders—one that should be subject to an alternative conceptual paradigm. The potential for a nonregional, nongovernmental entity to map onto the Internet in a manner more reflective of its unique space is appealing, but problems concerning authority and enforceability are immediately apparent. Moreover, such an isolated entity would neglect the overlap between the Internet and the physical world. Internet commerce in Nazi memorabilia ultimately results in the physical exchange of such goods. The downloading of MP3s has had serious impact on compact disc sales, and Web publishing of literary works has affected the commerce in books in myriad ways.While the Internet exists as a space independent of geographic parameters, the activities that occur within that space nevertheless have real-world effects no different from those dealt with by traditional authorities constitutive of state governments. Dig ital Art: De fying Author ship and Objecthood The Internet is not only a conduit for the exchange of literary and artistic works but also an artistic medium in its own right. In the spring of 2001, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) launched an exhibition entitled 010101: Art in Technological Times, which focused on art inspired by digital technology. A Web component of the show contained five Internet projects commissioned by the museum. The curatorial challenge was this: how to exhibit the Web projects in conjunction with the show while presenting the unique nonphysical and nongeographical nature of the Internetbased works. Conceiving of the works as more than just digital gallery installations, the curators chose to make the Web projects accessible online from remote locations instead of at computer kiosks within the galleries. Viewers

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experienced the works not in the space of the museum, but within the virtual space of the Internet, independent of physical locations.To highlight the Web projects’ existence in an alternative environment, the Web portal was designed as a highly sophisticated architectural space, demanding the viewer’s meticulous navigation through labyrinthine menus and virtual passageways. What the SFMOMA curators were trying to convey was the sense that digital art is not merely art that happens to be on the Internet, but rather an expression in the medium of cyberspace itself. Digital works present a form of conceptual art that transfers the art object from the physical world to that of cyberspace. The implications of this conceptual displacement are ripe for exploration. In an ordinary museum context, administrators are forced to cope with copyright concerns on a daily basis.When purchasing an art object, the museum must decide whether to acquire exclusive rights to the work or to obtain nonexclusive licenses.When borrowing the object, the museum must consider issues such as the manner in which it may display the object and the extent to which it may reproduce and distribute images in its catalogues and promotional materials. Many of these same concerns apply to virtual display spaces, but they are often complicated by questions of ownership and maintenance in online environments.These management problems often arise from the same qualities of the Internet that positively impact creative expression and expand artistic possibilities. One opportunity offered by the online environment is the collaboration of artists across national boundaries and creative fields.Timothy Murray, a cocurator of an online journal and exhibition space titled C Theory Multimedia, has discussed the way in which online exhibition spaces are thematically designed around exhibited works. Design elements of these exhibition spaces are often inspired by the works they are created to display (Murray 2005, 451).The overall effect is that of a total environment, an organic virtual space of collaborative creative expression. In traditional IP frameworks, this reproduction and incorporation of copyrighted design elements might be considered an unauthorized creation of a derivate work; in the online environment of digital art, it is common practice. Such creative collaboration stretches the traditional understanding of joint authorship under copyright law.These new works often involve programmers, technicians, and even curators, to the extent that individual works take a backseat to the larger framework of joint projects and thematic spaces. For example, C Theory Multimedia has exhibited a project called Triad Hyperdance, which was produced by choreographers, musicians, and media artists working together from the United States, Finland, and Japan. Collaborations in such virtual environments blur the lines among artists, curators, and conservators. The resultant complexities involving authorship and ownership may create

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problems down the line, when decisions regarding financial profitability, maintenance, and the work’s creative determination eventually come into play. The space of the Internet affects other ways art can take shape. Digital works housed on the Internet can exist as constantly adapting and growing organic entities. For instance, the SFMOMA’s e.Space began hosting a work by Lynn Hershman entitled Agent Ruby in 2000. For four years, Agent Ruby interacted with users and “learned” from her exchanges with them, becoming a more complex digital entity with every cyberspace conversation. Ongoing interactive projects such as Agent Ruby transform the role of the author as the work’s sole creator to that of principal collaborator—one who sets events in motion and allows the vicissitudes of time and cyberspace to determine the work’s ever-changing form.When is this work complete? When the SFMOMA decides to no longer host it, will it be automatically destroyed or can its ownership change hands? Digital works offer a number of challenges to traditional art institutions. Such works are difficult to install and maintain, since they live beyond the space of the gallery. Several museums have interactive online exhibition spaces, such as the New Museum’s ArtBase and the Whitney’s Artport. The SFMOMA’s 010101 Web portal is currently in operation. Beyond these exhibition spaces are countless Web projects independent of brick-and-mortar art institutions that exist solely on the Internet. In addition to the issue of display and installation, the ways in which this kind of art can be reproduced, purchased, and sold are questions to be answered on a case-by-case basis in the coming years.

Shaping Acce ss to Creative Expre ssion One of the most unusual qualities of the digital medium and the virtual environment is the ability to separate content from its physical embodiment. This quality has allowed digital rights–management systems to change the way in which intellectual property law interacts with creative works.These systems control user access to digital media through software that provides on-the-spot licensing or databases that calculate the rights relationships between users and rights holders.With the advent of such systems, users pay for the experience of and access to a creative work rather than the work itself. One example of a digital–rights management system is Apple’s highly successful iTunes Music Store, which sells songs for about a dollar each. Apple’s Fairplay encryption system incorporates usage restrictions such as limitations on the number of machines on which the purchaser can use the music and the number of times one can burn CDs of the same playlist. The Apple iPod is the only digital music player that is compatible with the iTunes Music Store, and it does not support competing digital music formats.The Fairplay system allows the seller to control the purchasers’ use of the creative content, while the operational

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specifications of Apple’s machines and software encourage their mutual use and purchase to the exclusion of competitor formats. In 1996 the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) concluded two significant treaties that supported the development of digital rights– management systems.The WIPO Copyright Treaty extends protection to computer programs and databases, while the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty addresses performances and sound recordings. Both treaties conceive of the scope of protection as encompassing a right of distribution, rental, and communication to the public. Notably, they prohibit circumvention of technological measures for the protection of works and unauthorized modification of rights management information contained in the works. U.S. implementation of the WIPO treaties arrived in the form of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed in 1998. The DMCA incorporates the WIPO treaties’ anticircumvention measures, supporting the development of digital rights–management systems. Along with First Amendment concerns about the freedom of programmers to create circumvention technology, critics of the DMCA are anxious about the threat to user privacy, since many digital rights–management systems use encryption technology to limit access to the digital work based on information obtained from users. However, others view such systems as the only practical means of enforcing copyright protection in the digital arena. Whether one views them as good or evil, digital rights–management systems offer an architectural solution to copyright protection, embodying instantaneous enforcement mechanisms of the terms and conditions of use with each instance of user-work contact. Embedded in the digital works themselves, these systems fundamentally alter the way in which the law interacts with users and rights holders, closing the distance between legal enforcement and actual use. Laura Gasaway has argued that by supporting these rights-management systems, the DMCA’s anticircumvention provisions have created a new right of access under copyright protection. In digital works, authors have the ability to narrow the scope of how users can access their work, determining specific elements such as the number of computers on which works can be accessed and the duration of each use.This is a departure from the traditional rights model, wherein, under the first sale doctrine, an individual or library could purchase a book and allow an unlimited number of patrons to read the book however and for as long as they like.The expanded regime of digital access rights under the DMCA could lead to stringently regulated pay-per-use systems, limiting the ability of libraries to provide free public access to digital works (Gasaway 2003, 269, 270). Of course, the implications of digital rights–management systems reach far beyond library access.They alter the nature of works themselves, allowing rights holders not only control of the work, but users’ experience of the work.

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What users are paying for is not a book, CD, or painting with which they may do what they will, but the ability to experience the work within narrow parameters.This pay-per-use system is achieved through the unique quality of the digital medium, wherein content is divorced from the physical world. In the digital world of rights-management systems, the work can be understood not in terms of the object within which it exists, but rather, of the user’s experience of the work. Opting Out of Traditional IP Reg ime s: Creative Lice nsing Another innovation born from the uniquely flexible space of the Internet is the development of free software and “copyleft” licensing schemes outside the default rules of traditional intellectual property law. Under the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License (GPL), for example, free content must be alterable and contain few usage restrictions. Any work that incorporates the original must be made available under the same license or one that is less restrictive. Inspired by the GNU GPL, a group of academics led by Lawrence Lessig developed Creative Commons (CC) in 2001. Creative Commons provides eleven different user-friendly copyright licenses for free public use based on existent legal frameworks.9 Designed for creative works such as Web sites, music, film, photography, and literature, CC licenses allow artists and authors to release their work into the public domain or to tailor licensing schemes that retain certain rights while allowing others to use the works under certain conditions and limitations.Artists can choose from a variety of license provisions, such as requiring attribution, limiting users to noncommercial uses, and permitting the distribution of derivative works only under the same kind of license. In addition to its legal licensing provisions, CC has developed machine-readable metadata that can be used to associate works with their licensing status.This feature enables users to search for works based on their attendant rights and conditions and increases the efficiency of communication between artists and users regarding legal rights. The CC licensing scheme is based on the belief that public access to creative expression benefits both the artist and the public. It facilitates the fundamental desire of artists to gain exposure to their work and provides the general benefit of public access to creative expression. CC licenses offer a way for artists to determine an optimal balance of access and limitation on a case-by-case basis. Personally tailored incentive structures allow artists to take into account the opportunity of exposing their work to the public, something that artists often struggle to accomplish.This value is often ignored by traditional copyright regimes, which assume the possibility of financial benefit through reproduction and distribution of the work to be the artist’s sole incentive. These traditional regimes ignore the reality that many artists fail to reach publication.

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The labor of these artists not only goes unrewarded but is completely unappreciated by the public. CC licenses promote the exposure of creative works to the public, while continuing to offer financial and/or personal incentives as desired. Creative Commons is not the only provider of alternative licensing on the Internet. Such legal regimes are often referred to as copyleft licenses. Unlike copyrights which set out the boundaries for private ownership of reproduction and distribution rights, copyleft licenses outline the rights of the public to use the licensed work. One example is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) developed by the Free Software Foundation.10 This license is one of the first legal regimes to codify the terms of free software. Such software can be loosely described as that which is freely available to users to be copied, altered, and redistributed.The GNU GPL requires that any improved version of licensed software must also be distributed as free software, ensuring that improvers do not capitalize on the work of others. Accompanying the GNU GPL is the Free Documentation License. Although originally created for reference materials accompanying free software under the GNU General Public License, it can also be applied to any text-based work.The Free Art License is another copyleft license under French law that outlines the terms under which an artist may release intellectual property rights and allow other artists to use or incorporate his or her work. Developed at a 2000 Copyleft Attitude conference in Paris, the Free Art License was created by members of the art community and freeware activists with the goal of promoting an artistic environment of respect and cooperation. Dig ital Image s and the Online Art Market Commercial market forces, too, are affected by the relationship between digital media and the law.The business of providing digital images to entities such as publishers and advertisers is a multimillion-dollar industry. Getty Images, which reported approximately $622.4 million in 2004 revenues, leads the industry, while Corbis comes in second at $170.4 million that same year. Interest in investing in digital images began to grow in the late 1980s and early 1990s, not coincidentally when Bill Gates created Corbis as a pet project. Companies were anticipating the incipient thirst for content on the Web, while museums and art institutions realized that the potential for profitability coincided with an invaluable opportunity to preserve images of the objects in their collections. During the 1990s, Corbis focused its attention on amassing the digital rights to renowned collections such as that of Saint Petersburg’s State Hermitage, the National Gallery of London, Japan’s Sakamoto Archive, and the Bettmann Archive, which houses one of the world’s largest collections of photographs. In 1999, Getty Images partnered with the United Kingdom–based Bridgeman

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Art Library, which owned digital rights to works from institutions such as the Barnes Foundation and the Dresden State Museums. In 2000, Japan’s Toppan Printing Company purchased the digital rights to works in Beijing’s National Palace Museum; it already owned electronic rights to the collection of Florence’s Galleria degli Uffizi. In competition with Toppan, Dai Nippon Printing Company had been digitizing thousands of works from the French Réunion des Musées Nationaux. These companies were not only purchasing potentially lucrative assets but also gaining the digital ownership of national heritages.They realized the value of the Internet as a vast cultural storehouse. Before the development of comprehensive digital image archives, authors and publishers used photo libraries as image sources for their publications, paying small permissions fees for reproduction. There was little policing of eventual additional uses, such as later print editions or affiliated presentations. But with the advent of online digital archives and their consolidation in large companies such as Corbis and Getty Images, image procurement for publication has become both easier and more difficult. Massive storehouses of easily searchable materials are readily available online for those who need them. However, as the digitization of images has become big business, providers have become more vigilant about keeping track of the complicated labyrinth of use rights involved. Several parties must be considered when it comes to digital image rights—the artist, the owner of the original work (photograph, painting, art object), the owner of the digital rights, the rights seeker, and any subsequent potential users of the digital image. The growing interest in defining these separate parties and rights is coupled with the significantly increased ability to police uses of the image over time, thanks to the development of sophisticated watermarking and tracking software. All of these factors lead to complicated licensing agreements, often resulting in prohibitive legal mazes to parties such as self-publishers or small companies seeking to reproduce such images. One important issue is whether owners of photographic rights to an image for prior print publications have subsequent ownership to the photographs’ digital rights. In Greenberg v. National Geographic, the Eleventh Circuit held that the conversion of photographs to digital form is not permissible under the fair use doctrine.11 National Geographic used digitized photo images in a commemorative CD-ROM; one such image was Jerry Greenberg’s diver photo, which had appeared in National Geographic’s prior print issues. The court determined that the digitized image in the CD-ROM did not fall under the fair use exception, but amounted instead to an infringement on the photographer’s exclusive right to create derivative works. It focused on the transformative quality of the electronic work, noting the digital image’s inclusion in the CD-ROM’s complex audiovisual presentation.The court also took into consideration the commercial sale of the CD-ROM and its preclusion of the

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photographer’s potential licensing of digital rights to other potential electronic publishers. Outside the commercial market of digital rights is a limited degree to which educators and researchers may use copyright-protected digital images under fair use.The determination of fair use generally involves four considerations: the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the entire copyrighted work as a whole, and the effect of the use upon the potential market for the copyrighted work. The specific parameters of fair use in the educational context were informally discussed at the 1994 Conference on Fair Use (CONFU) hosted by the Patent and Trademark Office under the Clinton administration. CONFU participants were unable to come to a consensus regarding guidelines for educational fair use. However, several institutions developed their own guidelines, including the Visual Resource Association’s Image Collection Guidelines:The Acquisition and Use of Images in Non-Profit Educational Visual Resources Collections and Rules of Thumb for interpreting the fair use of copyrighted materials devised by Georgia Harper of the Office of General Counsel for the University of Texas system. These guidelines generally limit educators and researchers to the use of digital images and texts in educational, noncommercial contexts. In keeping with this general principle, many digital image libraries license their services only to nonprofit institutions and limit access to the images in their archives to noncommercial educational purposes such as use in theses, academic conferences, and classroom instruction. One such archive is the Artstor Digital Library founded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which houses more than three hundred thousand images. Arranging agreements with participating arts institutions, Artstor seeks ongoing nonexclusive licensing agreements in order to achieve the greatest degree of resource availability on the Internet. Conclusion In his introduction to Law, Ethics, and the Visual Arts, the late Professor Albert Elsen provided an answer to why we care about art:“Art is basic to cultural history. Every work of art is a cultural artifact whose study enriches our understanding of who we are and where we come from” (Elsen and Merryman 1998, xix). If Elsen is correct, art must also have very much to do with where we are going.The Internet offers an alternative avenue for the future of creative expression, altering the form of art and the location of culture. The law governing cyberspace can either facilitate or constrict. It can take advantage of the elasticity of the digital medium to make art more available to the online public through licensing schemes such as Creative Commons, or it can exploit the

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virtual architecture of the Internet in order to enforce stringent control over copyrights through encryption software such as those found in digital rights management systems. The options for cyberspace regulation are as expansive and dynamic as the opportunities for creative expression, but one thing is certain—the terrain of the artist is irrevocably changed. Note s 1. In his seminal 1967 article entitled “Art and Objecthood,” Michael Fried argued that the Minimalist artists of the period had betrayed the American Modernist movement by engaging in “theatricality.” His analysis focused on the ways in which the art objects interacted with their environment and raised the question of where a work’s meaning operated or took effect. The article was reprinted in Michael Fried, Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 2. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8. 3. Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp., 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003). 4. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200161.txt. 5. Zippo Mfg. Co. v. Zippo DOT Com, 952 F. Supp. 1119, 1124 (D. Pa. 1997). 6. Inset Sys. v. Instruction Set, 937 F. Supp. 161 (D. Conn. 1996). 7. Yahoo, Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et L’Antisemitisme, 433 F.3d 1199 (9th Cir. 2006). 8. Inset Sys. v. Instruction Set; Berman 2003, 61–62. 9. http://creativecommons.org. 10. http://www.gnu.org. 11. Greenberg v. Nat’l Geographic Soc’y, 244 F.3d 1267, 1275 (11th Cir. 2001).

Se lecte d Re fe re nce s Benkler, Yochai. 2004. “Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Good and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production.” Yale Law Journal 114:273, 305. ———. 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press. Berman, Paul Schiff. 2003. “The Internet, Community Definition, and the Social Meaning of Legal Jurisdiction.” In Virtual Publics: Policy and Community in the Electronic Age, ed. Beth E. Kolko. New York: Columbia University Press. Duchamp, Marcel. 1957. “The Creative Act.” In Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings, ed. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz. University of California Press, 1996. Elsen, Albert, and John H. Merryman. 1998. Law, Ethics, and the Visual Arts. Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands, and London: Kluwer Law International. Gasaway, Laura N. 2003.“The New Access Right and its Impact on Libraries and Library Users.” Journal of Intellectual Property Law 10. Ginsburg, Jane C. 1999. “The Cyberian Captivity of Copyright: Territoriality and Authors’ Rights in a Networked World.” Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal 15:347. Goldstein, Paul. 1994.Copyright’s Highway: From Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994. Lessig, Lawrence. 2001. The Future of Ideas:The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. New York: Random House.

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Murray, Timothy. 2005. “Symposium: Metamorphosis of Artists’ Rights in the Digital Age:What’s Next? Panel on New Issues.” Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 28. Scafidi, Susan. 2005. Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Woodmansee, Martha, and Peter Jaszi, eds. 1994. The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Chapte r 11


Antoinette J. Lee

PRIOR TO PASSAGE of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, American preservationists traveled to the United Kingdom and European countries to learn about protecting historic buildings and sites. Unlike the United States, these countries appeared to be well equipped with legislation, funding, and professional training that supported preservation. Americans marveled at the ability of foreign countries to protect their countryside, preserve their historic town centers, and invest in major restoration efforts.1 They too wanted an effective national historic preservation program that would counter the effects of sprawl, urban renewal, and construction of highways and other public works projects that altered the post–World War II landscape.2 Today, the exchange continues, evolving to a two-way dialogue.American preservationists continue to travel to the United Kingdom, to Europe, and to other continents. However, now preservationists travel from other countries to the United States to learn more about its unique system of preservation—one that reflects the nation’s most closely held values. The American preservation system devolves much decision making to the local level and provides financial incentives to encourage private property owners to maintain their historic properties. The American system also emphasizes historical significance, as well as architectural and design importance, as a criterion for evaluating properties as worthy of preservation. Finally, the nation’s multiethnic demographics are now being reflected in the preservation of historic places associated with growing numbers of diverse cultural groups. Dece ntraliz e d Decision Making The national media devote much attention to the activities of the United States Congress and the executive branch of the federal government, even as 171

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most preservation decisions are made at the local level and by private owners of historic properties. The local level of government administers planning, zoning, building permits, and other instruments of land use. As part of zoning powers, local governments administer local ordinances that provide for local historic preservation programs, including the designation of historic landmarks and historic districts according to clearly stated criteria. Local governments appoint commissioners to review changes to designated properties, new construction in designated historic districts, and applications for the demolition of designated properties.3 The role of the federal government is to encourage preservation through the operation of official recognition programs, grants and tax incentives, and technical assistance. This system is administered in cooperation with State Historic Preservation Officers and Tribal Historic Preservation Officers. The “customers” for the programs are private property owners, local governments, and nonprofit private organizations. Thus, through this “federal” system of government, the national historic preservation program fulfills one of the important mandates of the National Historic Preservation Act: although the major burdens of historic preservation have been borne and major efforts initiated by private agencies and individuals, and both should continue to play a vital role, it is nevertheless necessary and appropriate for the Federal Government to accelerate its historic preservation programs and activities, to give maximum encouragement to agencies and individuals undertaking preservation by private means, and to assist State and local governments . . . to expand and accelerate their historic preservation programs and activities. Thus, the limited, but key, role of the federal government defines the national program.The major burdens of preservation continue to be borne by local governments, private entities, and property owners who elect to participate in historic preservation. The Powe r of Tax Ince ntive s For many years, the federal, state, and local tax codes provided incentives for the demolition of older buildings. Amending the tax code at the federal level was a major priority of those who developed the National Historic Preservation Act. However, it was not until 1976 that the federal tax code was amended, followed in 1981 by the provision of a tax credit for the approved rehabilitation of a qualified historic building used for income-producing purposes. Although the value of the tax credit and some of the provisions have changed over the years, the federal tax credit remains one of the primary tools in the historic preservation toolkit. In fact, the federal tax credit serves as a model for a growing number of state-level and local government tax incentives that reward property

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owners for rehabilitating their historic properties, including those that are owner-occupied.4 The use of tax incentives places the onus of historic preservation on the individual decisions of property owners and real estate developers. Although local planning ordinances may influence the scope of options available to properties, owners ultimately make choices about the future of historic properties. These choices are based on financial return, as well as on pride in heritage. The federal government, state and local governments, and private organizations provide a limited number of grants to support the preservation and rehabilitation of historic properties. Many of these grants require cash or in-kind services as a cost-sharing match for the money, usually on a 50/50 basis. Thus, one must have access to financial and human resources as a prerequisite for applying for and using government and foundation grants. The playing field for historic rehabilitation is leveled somewhat by the local governments that provide low-interest loans that assist low- and moderateincome property owners with the rehabilitation. In addition, many developers and property owners who use the federal historic preservation tax credits combine them with federal low-income housing tax credits to produce affordable housing in historic structures. The Role of History in Historic Pre se rvation No other country has provided such a strong foundation for historical significance as a criterion for evaluating the significance of properties. This characteristic may be a result of the earliest preservation efforts in the United States, which focused on places associated with the Revolutionary War. In the first half of the nineteenth century, preservationists worked to save Independence Hall; the Hasbrouck House, George Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War; and Mount Vernon, Washington’s home. These roots may account for the easy acceptance of historical significance as a key criterion for preservation.5 It was not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century that architectural values became an important reason for preserving a building. Given the impetus of the nation’s Centennial celebration in 1876, many architects, local historians, and property owners became interested in the colonial style of architecture and sought to record surviving examples in East Coast and southern states.The Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia brought many visitors to the former colonial capital city. Some of these Centennial visitors continued their travels to Washington, DC, where the monumental core and its classical architecture became a tourist destination. During much of the first half of the twentieth century, architects often led preservation activities by studying older buildings, publishing folios of architectural drawings of buildings and their details, and carrying out early restoration

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projects. Some of these restoration projects included Colonial Williamsburg, the colonial capital of Virginia, and Deerfield Village in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Not only did colonial-era buildings become restored, and in some cases, reconstructed, but the historic areas developed as tourist attractions that appealed to Americans who were increasingly mobile in automobiles. The criteria for the National Register of Historic Places, developed shortly after the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, addressed historical events, themes, and significant individuals, as well as architectural design and historic districts. Criterion A provides for recognition of properties that “are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history,” while Criterion B addresses those properties that “are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past.” The National Register of Historic Places lists places of historical significance at the national, state, and local levels. Historical significance also is reflected in designation criteria for many state registers of historic places as well as the designation criteria of many local government preservation programs.The results of this emphasis are seen in the many places identified, recognized, and preserved throughout the nation that are associated with major historical themes, such as agriculture, transportation, community development, and exploration and settlement history. As examples, early railroad stations or historic properties associated with supporting nearby agricultural activities are nominated to the National Register and listed for their association with transportation and community development respectively. Such themes shaped the landscapes of innumerable communities and provided the economic bases of their development. Understanding these historical forces helps residents and visitors appreciate the histories of communities beyond architectural forms and styles.

Cultural Dive r sity The role of immigrant and minority cultures is an important historical theme that shaped the United States, which is often referred to as a “nation of nations.” Places associated with the earliest Americans—the Indian tribes that settled the Americas—are part of this theme. The many waves of immigrant groups brought new institutions, house forms, and ways of life physically imprinting on the American landscape—in cities, towns, and rural areas. The federal, state, and local criteria that focus on historical themes encourage preservationists to identify and categorize these places, nominate them for official recognition, and interpret them to the public. These places include Norwegian churches in North Dakota, clubs in Brooklyn, New York, established by eastern Europeans, and the rural communities in California, such as Locke, that housed agricultural workers from China.6

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The preservation of ethnic imprints on the nation also extends to difficult chapters in the nation’s history, such as legal enslavement of millions of involuntarily imported Africans, racial segregation, and Japanese relocation camps. The efforts to understand these injustices also are addressed in the preservation field through the recognition and interpretation of places associated with the Underground Railroad, Supreme Court decisions that dismantled barriers to racial equality, and the modern civil rights movement.The development of Chinatowns, Japantowns, and Koreatowns, where Asian immigrants found safety and familiarity in an often-hostile society, are also of increasing interest to preservationists. Hispanic ranches of the late nineteenth century in the American West are recognized because they illustrate the struggle between Hispanic and European American ranches over control of land and resources. The inclusion of ethnic and diverse cultural heritage in the preservation field not only expands the stories told through historic places, it also promises to diversify the professional ranks of preservation in a field that traditionally has been dominated by white professionals. This trend is important as the political figures who make decisions about governmental support for preservation activities becomes more diverse.The changes to the nation’s immigration laws starting in the 1970s brought about great changes to the demographics of the nation by increasing the numbers of newcomers from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. No doubt, the focus on diversity in historic preservation will incorporate their interests as well. Conclusion The historic preservation field in the United States has evolved into a truly unique system.While it incorporates a strong appreciation for the work of great architects and designers, architectural styles, and innovative construction methods, it reflects a nation with a history that extends back to the earliest settlers in the Americas and forward to the most recent arrivals in the nation of immigrants.The preservation field recognizes historical trends and events that shaped the nation, its regions, and localities. The United States relies to a great extent on tax incentives to encourage historic preservation, in contrast with many European countries, which preserve historic places through strong regulation of land use.The immense size of the nation is best served through the devolved system of preservation, where the federal government provides tools and incentives, and the states and localities apply these as best suits their needs. One of the most recognizable results of this system is the development of heritage tourism associated with historic places. These places range from the World Heritage–designated places of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and the University of Virginia to historic districts in small towns and urban neighborhoods. Americans are a highly mobile people whose leisure time is invested in automobile trips to locales near and far. Heritage tourism serves as an

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economic engine upon which many states and localities depend for tax revenue and job creation. Many preservationists from foreign countries that study the United States preservation system may not consider any or all of its components to be transferable to their own situations. However, they cannot help but admire the effectiveness of the system in addressing the many cultural expressions that can be found throughout the nation. Note s An earlier version of this essay was published in Context (United Kingdom: Institute of Historic Building Conservation) 92 (November 2005): 29–31. 1. For background on United States examinations of the European system of preservation in the 1960s, see James A. Glass, The Beginnings of a New National Historic Preservation Program, 1957 to 1969 (Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History, 1990), and United States Conference of Mayors, Special Committee on Historic Preservation, With Heritage So Rich, A Report (New York: Random House, 1966). 2. There are many sources on the topic of post–World War II development.The most relevant to this discussion include Glass, The Beginnings of a New National Historic Preservation Program, and the United States Conference of Mayors, With Heritage So Rich. 3. For a discussion of the local government role in historic preservation, see J. Myrick Howard, “Where the Action is: Preservation and Local Governments,” in The American Mosaic: Preserving A Nation’s Heritage, ed. Robert E. Stipe and Antoinette J. Lee (Washington, DC: United States Committee, International Council on Monuments and Sites, 1987), 114–144, and Lina Confresi and Rosetta Radtke, “Local Governments Programs: Preservation Where It Counts,” in A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Robert E. Stipe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 117–156. 4. For a discussion of the federal tax incentives, see John M. Fowler, “The Federal Preservation Program,” in Stipe, A Richer Heritage, 59–63. 5. For examples of preservation that represent the emphasis on historical significance, see Charles B. Hosmer Jr., Presence of the Past: A History of the Preservation Movement in the United States Before Williamsburg (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965), and Charles B. Hosmer Jr., Preservation Comes of Age: From Williamsburg to the National Trust, 1926–1949, 2 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981). 6. Several essays by Antoinette J. Lee address the topic of diversity in historic preservation. These include “Discovering Old Cultures in the New World: The Role of Ethnicity,” in Stipe and Lee, The American Mosaic, 180–205; “Multicultural Building Blocks,” in Past Meets Future: Saving America’s Historic Environments, ed. Antoinette J. Lee (Washington, DC: Preservation Press, 1992), 93–97; “The Social and Ethnic Dimensions of Historic Preservation,” in Stipe, A Richer Heritage, 385–404; and “From Historic Architecture to Cultural Heritage: A Journey through Diversity, Identity, and Community,” Future Anterior 1, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 15–23.

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Chapte r 12

Between Cooperation and Conflict Inte rnational Trade in Cultural Goods and Se rvice s J. P. Singh

The Famous French Historian Ferdinand Braudel perhaps optimistically overestimated the effects of intercultural exchange by noting the following: “No civilization can survive without mobility: all are enriched by trade and the stimulating impact of strangers” (Braudel 1963/1993, 10). In terms of trade, as this chapter will show, such exchanges feature both stimulation and conflicts.These exchanges are especially the case with the continually rising trade in cultural goods and services, collectively referred to as cultural products here. Cultural goods usually refer to tangible commodities such as films, audio-recordings, books, periodicals, and art objects. Cultural services include such intangibles as tourism, live performances, downloading of digitized content over the Internet, and royalties and license fees obtained from intellectual property. While estimates vary, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported in 2005 that cultural and creative industries accounted for 7 percent of the gross domestic product worldwide at $1.3 trillion in 2002 and expected it to rise to $1.7 trillion by 2007. Cultural goods (not services) accounted for less than 1 percent of total international trade, but their volume rose from $39.3 billion in 1994 to $59.2 billion in 2002 (UNESCO 2005).1 International tourism yielded $623 billion, with 763 million visitors in 2004 compared to $440 billion and 441 million in 1990 respectively (World Tourism Organization 2005).The World Trade Organization calculates that travel services in general account for nearly 30 percent of the total world trade in commercial services (World Trade Organization 2004, 160). This chapter traces the context, controversies, and coordination mechanisms that underlie trade in cultural goods and services. It also traces the growth of cultural trade in the rise of the cultural industries, expansion of information 177

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networks, and the formation and liberalization of international rules governing trade in cultural sectors, and notes the role of the World Trade Organization (1995–present) and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (1947–1994), along with that of UNESCO, in facilitating cultural trade. The defining case for understanding such cultural trade remains the audio-visual dispute (1991–1993) at the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and subsequent framing of the Universal Convention on Protection and Promotion of Cultural Expressions at UNESCO from 2001–2005. Links betwe e n Culture and Comme rce Economics presents trade purely in terms of an exchange of goods and services and through that exchange its effects on the standards of living for people. However, religious, political, moral, and other sociocultural considerations have always been important in elevating or diminishing trade. One way of understanding these cultural considerations is to make explicit how trade is linked to everyday life and the cultural identity of people. Trade is a natural component of human interactions. A few Greek and Roman writers “believed that God created the sea to promote interaction and to facilitate commerce between the various peoples of the earth” (Irwin 1996, 11). The modern liberal belief that interaction and exchange underlie prosperity and peace can be traced back to such ideas. Adam Smith’s notion of division of labor laid the basis of prosperity through trade inasmuch he opined that gains from economic exchange accrue to those who specialize in producing things for which they are most suited. These late-eighteenth-century ideas formed the basis of doctrines of comparative advantage in trade in the nineteenth century. Similarly, political theorists had begun to argue that as nations exchanged goods, they would be less likely to go to war with each other. This pacific hope is best captured in French writer Frederick Bestiat’s words that “if trade does not cross frontiers, armies will.” But the case against trade is also made in economic and cultural terms. The economic rationale against trade rests on the thesis that economic specialization can make some nations too dependent on others or can result in an unequal exchange where one benefits at the cost of another. Cultural arguments against trade are many; the earliest ones were moral and philosophical. To the Greeks we owe the term “xenophobia,” or fear and dislike of foreigners. Christianity in general decried the profit motive that underlies commerce and trade. It was not until the modern era that such cultural notions regarding trade were questioned, but these arguments continue to be made. Trade wars are often portrayed in negative terms—Hollywood’s cultural imperialism is a frequent incantation—or can take on overly xenophobic tones such as the arguments made against trade deficits run by the United States against East Asian countries. As detailed later in this chapter, protections against Hollywood by

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foreign countries have been common ever since Hollywood began to export its products successfully in the 1920s. On the other hand, many in the United States have fretted and fumed over Japanese trade surpluses from the mid1970s to mid-1990s, Chinese trade surpluses since the mid-1990s, and more recently over the controversies regarding outsourcing of jobs to India. Comparably, British, German, and Canadian trade surpluses with the United States or the large number of U.S. jobs outsourced to Ireland has never generated such huge controversies.2 Regarding cultural products, the case for and against trade becomes even more complicated. In generating products, a society also identifies with them from a sense of pride, ownership, and value. The French view production of wine not just as an economic occupation but also as a way of life.3 An influx of American wine may then be seen as a threat to that way of life and not just as shifting international economics of oenology. In this sense any product can be linked to culture—from the produce of the yeoman farmer to Silicon Valley software.4 But cultural products are most readily identified with a way of life. Thus, trade in cultural products such as films, books, music, and those associated with movement of peoples have been especially contentious.5 Cultural Products and Trade The growing importance of cultural products for national economies and international trade must be traced to the growth of cultural industries and related support networks in the twentieth century. Despite controversies, trade in cultural products continues to grow for both the developed and developing worlds. Defining what constitutes cultural products varies considerably. Throsby (2001, 112–113) notes that the core group of cultural products includes creative, fine, and performing arts, but other commercial and support networks that surround such creative activities can also be included. Core cultural activities can then include film, publishing, and broadcasting industries. These activities can be further expanded to include other industries with cultural content, such as advertising, tourism, sports and recreation, music equipment, and architectural services.The UNESCO statistics cited earlier in this chapter are conservative in referencing only a core group of cultural products. Clearly, if the definition were expanded, the scope of cultural activities could be quite expansive.6 Trade in cultural products is as old as international trade itself, but it has witnessed two great spurts. One spurt was due to the rise of cultural industries at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the other resulted from the rise of information networks in the latter part of the twentieth century; both were driven by globalization and technology. Held and colleagues (1999) notes the role of multinational corporations in the rise of Western cultural industries,

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in particular, in what they term cultural globalization.7 Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the rise of technologies of cultural production (film, recording equipment, broadcasting) and several business management practices, such as locating elements of production in various parts of the world and distributing products globally, have boosted the flow of cultural commodities as well as the diffusion of these technologies across nation-states.8 In the latter part of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, the spread of computers and telecommunication, growing digitization, and the growth of the Internet gave another burst to cultural flows, in ways that have yet to be totally understood or measured.A film or music recording shipped in a container overseas in the early part of the twentieth century was easier to track than one downloaded over the Internet today. Presently, there is no consensus about what should be counted as trade in cultural services over the Internet and data on these types of trade are hard to find.9 In general, most of the current controversies and issues regarding cultural trade accompanied the rise of the culture industries. For example, protectionist sentiments against Hollywood films developed just as Hollywood began to establish itself. In the 1920s, as Hollywood studios set up their marketing networks in Europe, most of these countries protected their burgeoning government-subsidized film industries by instituting quotas for Hollywood films, starting with Britain’s Cinematograph Films Act of 1927. In the present era, 148 nation-states voted—with the United States and Israel opposed—for a Universal Convention on Protection and Promotion of Cultural Expressions at UNESCO in October 2005; it was widely viewed as a move to thwart Hollywood and came into effect in March 2007 when the necessary 30 countries ratified it. The Convention enshrines the right of countries to protect their cultural industries by restricting imports if necessary. Similarly, the developing world challenged the developed countries with a move to establish a New International Economic Order (NIEO) at the 1974 United Nations General Assembly. NIEO advocates argued that global economic flows disadvantaged the developing world. The developing world argued it could not compete in a world economy where it produced low-priced agricultural goods in exchange for high-priced mechanized goods from the developed world. Advocacy for the NIEO was supplemented with calls for more equitable communication flows—including broadcasting, films, and periodicals that would be classified as cultural products—with demands, starting in 1976, for a New World Information Communication Order (NWICO). UNESCO provided the intellectual and administrative home for NWICO advocates, and the United States feared that the Soviet Union was dictating the agenda at UNESCO. Implicit in the NWICO agenda was the argument, backed at times by considerable data, that most cultural content flows, as in films and broadcasting, were from the developed to the developing worlds rather than vice

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versa.The degree of anti-American sentiment expressed in calls for NWICO led President Ronald Reagan to withdraw the U.S. from membership in UNESCO in 1986. It was not until 2004 under President George W. Bush that the United States rejoined UNESCO. There was speculation that it did so only to stall the move toward UNESCO’s proposed enactment of Convention on Protection and Promotion of Cultural Expressions, which would allow countries to restrict cultural products coming from the United States. One of the foremost concerns among cultural product–importing countries is that the few countries with large cultural multinational industries will unduly benefit.Table 12.1 lists the top twenty countries in export of cultural goods.Apart from China and Mexico, the list only contains developed countries.

Table 12-1 Top Twenty Exporters of Core Cultural Goods

Country

Total exports of core cultural goods (in millions of dollars)

1

United Kingdom

8,549

2.

United States

7,648

3.

Germany

5,789

4.

China

5,275

5.

France

2,521

6.

Ireland

2,277

7.

Singapore

2,001

8.

Japan

1,805

9.

Canada

1,577

10.

Austria

1,561

11.

Netherlands

1,546

12.

Spain

1,532

13.

Switzerland

1.384

14.

Italy

1,381

15.

Mexico

1,244

16.

Belgium

1,130

17.

Sweden

875

18.

Hungary

720

19.

Hong Kong

578

20.

Denmark

499

Source: UNESCO 2005, 57–59.

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J . P. S i n g h Table 12-2 Percentage Share of Total Exports of Core Cultural Products by Region, 1994–2002

Total exports European Union Other European countries

1994

2002

$36.2 billion

$54.7 billion

54.3%

51.8%

6.1%

6.2%

North America

25.0%

16.9%

Asia

11.8%

21.2%

7.6%

15.6%

East Asia Latin America and Caribbean

1.9%

3.0%

Africa

0.2%

0.4%

Oceania

0.6%

0.6%

Source: UNESCO 2005, 63–64.

Nevertheless, as noted earlier, trade in cultural goods showed an increase of 50 percent in the ten years after 1993. Hidden within and around these statistics are a few trends that are worth pointing out. First, as Table 12.2 shows, while the share of trade for the United States and European Union (EU) declined, it doubled for East Asia and increased for other parts of the developing world. However, the total share for Latin America and Africa was still low.These statistics do not count related cultural activities such as information technology, advertising, and architectural services. Many of these activities are now outsourced to developing countries.10 Furthermore, the UNESCO data are based on customs figures and do not take into account royalty and license fees for television and films. Emerging centers of film and television production in the developing world—Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Senegal, South Africa, India, and China—are thus underestimated here. As Tables 12.3 and 12.4 show, international trade in tourism services in 2004 is enormous, at $623 billion, with 763 million international tourists. Tables 12.4 and 12.5 indicate the top ten tourist destinations and receipts. Only China, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Turkey make it to any of these lists from the developing world. It is important to point out that while developed countries dominate international tourism, tourism is one of the biggest foreign exchange earners for a host of big and small developing countries. In addition to big tourist destinations such as Argentina, Brazil, China, and India, these include smaller venues like Belize, Fiji, Morocco, and Mauritius.

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Table 12-3 International Tourism Receipts (in billions of dollars)

Region

2003

2004

World

524

623

Europe

282.9

326.7

94.9

125.0

114.1

131.7

84.3

98.1

Asia and Pacific Americas North America Africa

15.5

18.3

Middle East

16.8

21.0

Source:World Tourism Organization 2005, 3.

Table 12-4 Top Ten International Tourist Arrival Destinations (millions of people arriving)

1

France

75.1

2

Spain

53.6

3.

United States of America

46.1

4

China

41.8

5

Italy

37.1

6

United Kingdom

27.8

7

Hong Kong

21.8

8

Mexico

20.6

9

Germany

20.1

Austria

19.4

10 Total top 10

363.4

Total world

763


Inte rnational Trade Ag re eme nts As international trade grew in the world, so did the need to govern these cultural flows.This section addresses three aspects of these governance arrangements: the rise of free trade in the nineteenth century, which benefited cultural products; protections against cultural industry exports throughout the twentieth century, as cultural trade continued to grow; and the shaping of international trade policy governance instruments since the end of the last century.

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J . P. S i n g h Table 12-5 Top Ten International Tourism Receipts (in billions of U.S. dollars)

1

United States of America

74.5

2

Spain

45.2

3

France

40.8

4

Italy

35.7

5

Germany

27.7

6

United Kingdom

27.3

7

China

25.7

8

Turkey

15.9

9

Austria

15.4

10

Australia

13.0

Total top 10

321

Total world

623


The so-called long nineteenth century, from the 1789 French Revolution to the start of World War I in 1914, broke down empires, entrenched industrialization, and experienced European colonization.The growing prosperity in western Europe and the New World and the annexation of colonies generated economic surpluses. Countries found it in their interest to trade with each other. In 1846 Britain repealed its Corn Laws, which had protected its agriculture but also stalled its industrial exports. In return, continental Europe tore down its protectionist barriers. The trade in cultural products benefited from this free trade wave.Yet cultural trade preceded the nineteenth century. Goods such as Italian glassware, French silks, Belgian laces—which may be considered cultural products—were exchanged readily although this trade was probably quite nominal, and standardized data for cultural trade during this era are almost nonexistent. We do know that cultural exchanges were fairly widespread in western Europe, especially in the fine and performing arts. While local schools flourished, the arts in various territories were heavily influenced by each other: for example, the Flemish master painters traveled to Italy, Handel moved from Germany to England, and Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, settled in the New World, where he died in New York in 1838 while teaching Italian at Columbia University (Columbia named an endowed chair for him). Da Ponte is credited with spreading Italian culture in his adopted land (Carter 1997). Meanwhile, opera impresarios traveled throughout the colonies with their companies and European powers displayed colonial, especially Oriental, spectacles in their museums and opera houses.

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In addition, book printing was widespread in Europe by the nineteenth century. Printing originated in the mid-fifteenth century with the invention of movable type and the printing of the Gutenberg Bible. The rise of book publishing in Europe led to widespread copying of books, especially in the United States, where the paperback became popular, and authors such as Charles Dickens began to argue for copyright protections. Intellectual property—legal protections given to creations of artistic individuals—had not been a problem when the Church controlled most literary production. With the spread of printing technologies, literacy, and democratic ideas about learning, along with the strengthening of nation-states, new protections were needed. By 1816, the Holy Roman Empire had lost its control of printing, but royalty in various European nation-states encouraged it. Rewarding individual inventions, which had begun as royal privilege, became a legal institution of intellectual property rights in the nineteenth century.The Statute of Anne in 1709 was the first modern copyright law; it tried to stem book piracy and allowed writers to earn an independent living. However, piracy across the seas in what later became the United States continued. The current international rules for patent and copyright protections can be traced back to protocols and procedures established at the Paris Convention for Patents in 1883 and the Berne Convention for Copyrights in 1886. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), founded in 1970, now administers both conventions (Sell 2003; Marlin-Bennet 2004; May 2007). The twentieth century marked the birth of technologically enhanced and globally poised cultural industries. Most of the resulting international governance rules in this era reflect the dominance of the jewel in the crown of cultural industries—Hollywood. As noted, the British were the first to institute quotas on Hollywood films in 1927, and other countries soon followed.World War II wiped out the film capacities of Italian and French producers. Meanwhile, the postwar world turned to designing an international institution for trade, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT, which came into being in 1947.As part of this agreement, which pertained to trade in general, the European countries used what economists call an infant-industry argument for protected industries in order to keep films out of GATT provisions. They claimed their film industries were too “infant” to compete with Hollywood and must be protected. Quotas directed at restricting imports were the order of the day and remain the preferred instruments of international cultural policies. France instituted import quotas, restricting the number of films. Italy tried screen-time quotas restricting the number of times foreign films could be shown. Audiovisuals were the only cultural product mentioned in the original 1947 GATT framework (Article IV: Special Provisions Related to Cinematograph Films), which allowed for such quotas and screen times. GATT was entrusted with carrying out successive rounds of trade

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negotiations among various countries, but films were always exempted from negotiation. The precedence set by the Washington Agreement signed on May 26, 1946, between Secretary of State James F. Byrnes and former head of the French Popular Front Government Leon Blum was of particular importance to the GATT agreement.11 Two pages of this agreement pertained to the film industry and have come to be known as the Blum-Byrnes Agreement. The agreement established quotas for foreign films coming into France. Initially in 1946, four weeks per quarter of the year were restricted for French films; that rose to five weeks by the terms of the Paris Agreement of 1948. Over the years GATT had several rounds of multilateral trade renegotiations, but cultural goods or services were deemed nonnegotiable until GATT’s Uruguay Round of trade talks, so named for the eight years of negotiations that began in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in September 1986. Two contentious issues during this round that pertained to cultural products resulted in far-reaching trade agreements signed when the round closed in 1994: the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS).The negotiation of these agreements was difficult but in the end reflected the growing importance of trade in cultural goods and services.At the end of the Uruguay Round the GATT charter was also revised and replaced with that of the World Trade Organization, which came into being in 1995.The newly negotiated GATS and TRIPS also took effect at this time.12 GATS and TRIPS The movement to include cultural services and intellectual property as part of international trade talks began in the United States in the 1970s. Until then, the concept of trade was limited to physical or tangible products, but the United States began to argue that its comparative advantage lay in intangible products or services, such as monies derived from licensing of films or television programs or royalties earned by its music artists around the world.These efforts, spearheaded by businesses in the United States, were barely understood in Europe initially and, in the 1980s, were heavily opposed by the developing world. U.S. service firms argued that the country’s comparative advantage lay in services and wanted other countries to reduce their trade barriers. Intellectual property is not traded by itself but is embodied in both goods and services. The United States began to argue that it was a trade issue because piracy was costing U.S. companies millions of dollars that they would have earned had they traded these products themselves Intellectual Property Brand name clothiers and accessories, pharmaceuticals, and software firms initially pushed for intellectual property protection as part of U.S. trade interests

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in the 1970s. By the mid-1980s, cultural industries, led by the film, television, and music sectors, began to join in the effort. By 1994, collective efforts resulted in TRIPS, the far-reaching agreement achieved at the Uruguay Round. This controversial agreement is still widely unaccepted by the developing world, and there are significant points of departure between the United States and the European Union on cultural trade. In the United States, cultural industry lobbies such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) support the TRIPS framework. Developing countries generally note that their intellectual property is commonly held or in public domain (thus outside the purview of this Westernstyle individualistic property rights schema) and that TRIPS denies them access to crucially needed technologies. They argue that technological innovation comes from technological imitation, which could not happen if technology were protected with stringent intellectual property provisions. Finally, they contend that Western firms regularly appropriate their cultural products—be they music, ancient medicines, seeds, or plant varieties.These firms then repackage these products and sell them back to the developing world after minimal modifications, with intellectual property provisions attached.13 There are also significant departures between the United States and other developed countries, particularly on cultural heritage issues. Europeans want geographical indicators attached to products that would prevent other regions from marking their products with geographic brand names. While so far the thinking is limited to specific products such as Champagne (wine), Kalamata (olives), or Parma (cheese), it is easy to see how this provision would apply to cultural heritage questions, especially folklore and music. Overall, the issue is complicated and unresolved. The second big issue is governing moral rights of authors, or droit de suite, as it is referred to in current European legislation; that is, the content, form, or original intent of a creator’s work cannot be changed or altered without permission. Most continental European laws allow only the creating artists or authors to modify or profit from their original artworks, while U.S. law favors successive owners. Thus, a production firm owns a film in the United States, whereas in Europe the creators retain ownership rights to profits from the use and sale of their work over time. European Union countries are now enforcing legislation to protect the moral rights of authors. Many in the EU are concerned that most transnational auction houses, such as like Sotheby or Christie’s, will sell an owner’s art only in the United States to avoid paying profits to the original creators or their heirs. Services As early as the 1970s, American banking, software, and telecommunications firms lobbied to include services in trade talks. Seventy percent of the

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U.S. workforce was employed in the service sector, which accounted for about 10 percent of global trade, or $350 billion in the early 1980s (statistics cited in Singh 2006).The United States advocated for the inclusion of services in trade negotiations and received support from the European Community and Japan.14 However, the developing world remained opposed, resulting in a decision at the beginning of the Uruguay Round of trade talks in September 1986 that allowed services to be negotiated on parallel but separate tracks from goods negotiations, eventually resulting in the General Agreement on Trade in Services, which also covers cultural industries. Two things are important in understanding the position of cultural services: the GATS framework as a whole and the way it pertains to particular culture industries, specifically audiovisual industries.The broad rudiments of the GATS framework rest on two elements.The first is that countries can liberalize or open their markets in selected sectors (known as positive lists) and then put in restrictions within these sectors (known as negative lists).Thus, a country can choose to open up its film sector but then use negative lists to keep certain public policy provisions in place.15 It would be perfectly legal for a country under this framework to fix a quota for the number of foreign films to be imported per year.The second pillar of GATS is the so-called mode of supply, or the way that the service product is consumed. Unlike a shirt, which must be shipped across frontiers, a tourist can only consume another country’s tourism by going there or by buying airline tickets (perhaps on the Internet) from that country’s airline. GATS’s four modes of supply, herein explained in terms of cultural products, follow: 1. Cross-border supply: a consumer can watch a film from another country by importing the film. 2. Consumption abroad: as in the case of the tourist who must go abroad to consume this service. 3. Commercial presence: the only way to export some services is to set up a subsidiary abroad, such as a transnational arts enterprises and cultural industries such as music and film firms. 4. Movement of skilled personnel: sometimes the only way to export a service is by allowing people to move across frontiers.This applies to the movement of cultural exchange programs and performers. The GATS framework allowed countries to make specific commitments for each of the four modes of supply for the sectors in which they chose to do so, although there were pressures from the United States to commit in as many sectors as possible. Thus, unlike popular misconceptions about WTO’s GATS framework, it was not a blanket liberalization foisted upon a hapless developing world; nations in the latter category were full participants, and by the end of the Uruguay Round many, like India, Brazil, and Mexico, realized that they

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had much to gain from GATS. Eight sectors were chosen for the initial exercises in liberalization, including audiovisual (film, television) during the Uruguay Round. The audiovisual negotiations, discussed in detail in the following paragraphs, almost brought the Uruguay Round to a halt and pitted the United States in a fierce battle with what was then known as the European Community, specifically Hollywood against the French film industry. The Issues of Cultural Exception and Diversity The case analyzed here initially involves the United States and the European Community, in particular France during the Uruguay Round, and, in recent years, the entire world in the framing of the Universal Convention on Protection and Promotion of Cultural Expressions at UNESCO in 2005. From the late 1940s onward,Western Europe successfully argued that cultural industries, especially films, needed special protections, such as quotas. During the Uruguay Round of trade talks from 1986 to 1994, the language of “cultural exception” supplemented that of quotas.As a result, the European Union took the now-famous Most Favored Nation or MFN exemption, which allowed it to preserve its cultural industry policies.16 The main issue of concern was the European Commission’s Television Without Frontiers Directive, which came into force in 1992 just as the Uruguay Round headed into its final hours of the negotiations.The directive sought to reserve 51 percent of the total program broadcast on any European channel to home-grown programs.The EU wanted the 51 percent restriction institutionalized through the evolving General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). A related issue was the EU position that content restrictions apply to all of the three hundred-plus channels that were coming about as a result of satellite and cable technologies. The United States wanted content restriction applied to only 50 to 70 percent of the channels. Presumably, through this measure, U.S. networks such as CNN or Discovery could operate in Europe without using local content. Furthermore, the MPAA also argued that inasmuch as U.S. films and television programs dominate in Europe, its members were subsidizing European television and thus objected to the agreement sought by the Europeans at the Uruguay Round.17 With the EU and United States squaring off on opposite sides, these negotiations came to be called guerres des images, or “war of the images” in France.Transnational cultural industry coalitions among the Europeans led the way toward the MFN exemption that allowed the EU not to make any commitments toward liberalizing its audiovisual sectors. In the EU, this provision came to be known as the “cultural exception,” underscoring the firm belief that cultural industries were nonnegotiable.18 Since the Uruguay Round ended there has been a progressive hardening of the European position on cultural industries. Europeans still frame the issue

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in cultural-identity terms but have shifted the focus from cultural exception to cultural diversity. Canada and France led an international coalition to switch the cultural industry issue over to UNESCO from the WTO.This resulted in the introduction at UNESCO of a Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity in 2001 and Universal Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Expressions in 2005.The Preamble to the 2005 Convention starts by “affirming that cultural diversity is a defining characteristic of humanity.” Its thirtyfive articles affirm the rights of nations to formulate cultural policies that promote cultural diversity and protect indigenous cultures.Taken collectively, these articles outline a legal rationale against liberalization. One of the articles states that if there were a trade-versus-cultural protection issue in the future, it would have to be resolved in a spirit of mutual supportiveness that does not subordinate the UNESCO Convention. Conclusion In describing the relationship between cultural industries and international trade, this chapter has analyzed the growth of cultural trade and the importance of cultural identity issues. As cultural trade took off in the twentieth century, the need arose to design international governance and coordination mechanisms. Until the turn of the twenty-first century, most of the agreements forged honored each country’s autonomy in maintaining restrictions on cultural imports. The Uruguay Round (1986–1894) was a turning point; it sought to open up the audiovisual sectors to international trade. The Europeans took the so-called cultural exception position and worked through UNESCO toward a Universal Convention on Protection and Promotion of Cultural Expressions; signed in 2005, it went into effect March 2007, allowing them to protect their cultural industries. However, UNESCO lacks sanctions to enforce its conventions; it does not have an effective dispute settlement mechanism if countries decide not to abide by its provisions. Growing globalization means that most countries are benefiting economically from global cultural flows and may not be that interested in making restrictions effective. Advocates of free trade argue that cultures grow through exchange, resulting in dynamic hybridity and syncretism in the cultural industries. Cowen (2004) notes that Hollywood welcomes global talent and features diversity. The opponents of this argument, while welcoming the dynamism and creativity of exchanges, caution against the power of transnational firms that commodify culture and let only markets dictate cultural identities. Despite the argument, global trade in cultural products continues to grow. Many of the countries most opposed to free trade in cultural products—Canada and France in particular—are among the top ten exporters of cultural products in the world (see Table 12.1).

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Note s 1. UNESCO defines cultural products and services as intangibles and tangible goods and services but also tries to include ancillary products, such as information and communication technologies, necessary to disseminate such products (UNESCO 2005, 12). However, UNESCO’s estimates are conservative; they are gathered from customs receipts that, for example, count the original value of a film as it crosses customs but not the balance of payments that accrue from licenses and royalties, which in turn produce major receipts for the motion picture or the television industry worldwide.The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) estimates that total worldwide box office receipts were $23.24 billion in 2005, up from $17 billion in 2001 (Motion Picture Association Worldwide Market Research and Analysis 2006). Inasmuch as Hollywood dominates worldwide exports, a large chunk of this $23 billion accrued to the United States and does not show up in the audiovisual figures provided by the UNESCO. Scott (2002) notes that Hollywood earned almost $9 billion from exports of film and tape rentals in 2000. 2. Such trade surpluses exist. In the late 1990s, more jobs might have been outsourced from the United States to Ireland, a country of less than 4 million, than to India with 1.1 billion people. However, Ireland was seldom mentioned in U.S. debates. 3. This, of course, has not deterred the French from exporting their way of life. European Union (EU) countries account for more than two-thirds of the wine exports of the world. France makes up nearly one-third of the total EU production. 4. See Da Grazia (2005) for a discussion of how American mass-produced products exported to Europe in the twentieth century embodied American values and sense of purpose in the world. 5. Only tourism, as a subset of the global movement of people, is discussed in this chapter. 6. Richard Florida’s definition of the creative class (2002, xiii–xiv), for example, includes most information technology occupations apart from the ones mentioned in the text. He notes that while fewer than 10 percent of American workers were doing creative work in 1900, the number had risen to 20 percent in 1980 and nearly onethird by 2000, which amounted to almost half of wage and salary income to a total of $1.7 trillion in the United States. 7. Views of cultural globalization vary from those noting the clashes of civilizations, to modern day imperialism (McDonaldization) to cultural hybridity (Pieterse 2004). Samuel Huntington (1993) put forth the clash-of-civilizations thesis to argue that the fault lines among civilizations, primarily Islam and Christianity, were endemic and irreparable. McDonaldization refers to the homogenization of the world through commercial processes such as the opening of McDonald’s around the world (Barber 1995). Cultural hybridity refers to synthetic processes of cultural mixing and matching, similar to what Braudel was noting (also see Garcia Canclini 1995). 8. Analysts now note that more than half the world’s trade can be traced to intrafirm trade among the world’s multinational corporations. 9. For example, the distribution and consumption of pornographic content domestically and internationally are astounding. One survey reported in the Financial Times noted that more than 70 percent of the men ages 18 to 34 in the United States visit pornographic sites in any given month (Turpin 2006,W10). 10. The Philippines has long served as a source for architectural drafting. India and Taiwan are emerging as animation powerhouses.Video games are a big export from countries such as South Korea and China. 11. This paragraph builds on Jeancolas 1998. 12. The following discussion on TRIPS and GATSS is developed more fully in Singh 2008.

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13. See Feld 2001 for an understanding of intellectual property issues underlying world music, wherein Western artists repackaged and sold folksongs they had recorded in the developing world. Outside the realm of cultural products, two well-known cases are Texmati rice, which that made a minor modification on Basmati rice seed found in the Himalayas, and the neem tree, which that several medicinal qualities. Courts sided with Texmati in the United States but not in Europe. Neem tree patents were denied in the United States as well. 14. The European Union began in 1992 after the signing of the Treaty of Maastricht. Between 1985 and 1992, it was known as the European Community, and prior to that since 1969 as the European Economic Community. 15. As earnings from cultural products come from intangibles such as license fees and royalties, they are considered services rather than goods in world trade definitions. 16. MFN or most favored nation clause in international trade means that no nation is to be discriminated in application of trade measures. An MFN exemption thus allows Europeans to discriminate against any nation, in this case the United States. 17. Television programs in France, and in many other European states, are subsidized by film box office receipts, the majority of which are generated by American films and levies on blank videotapes used to record these programs. 18. The European Union negotiates as a single entity at the WTO. However, its single position often reveals fissures. The United Kingdom, the biggest cultural products exporter in the EU, and countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands are reluctant to go along with protectionist measures.

Se lecte d Re fe re nce s Barber, Benjamin R. 1995. Jihad vs. McWorld. New York: Ballantine Books. Braudel, Fernand. 1963/1993. A History of Civilizations, trans. Richard Mayne. New York: Penguin. Carter,Tim. 1997.“Lorenzo Da Ponte.” In New Grove Dictionary of the Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan Reference Limited. Cowen, Tyler. 2004. Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Da Grazia, Victoria. 2005. Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press. Feld, Steven. 2001. “A Sweet Lullaby for World Music.” In Globalization, ed. Arjun Appadurai. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Florida, Richard. 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books. Garcia Canclini, Nestor. 1995. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Held, David, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton. 1999. Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Huntington, Samuel. 1993.“The Clash of Civilizations.” Foreign Affairs 72:3. Irwin, Douglas A. 1996. Against the Tide:An Intellectual History of Free Trade. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jarvie, I. 1992. Hollywood’s Overseas Campaign:The North Atlantic Movie Trade, 1920–1950. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Jeancolas, Jean-Pierre. 1998.“From the Blum-Byrnes Agreement to the GATT affair.” In Hollywood and Europe: Economics, Culture, National Identity: 1945–95, ed. G. NowellSmith and S. Ricci. London: British Film Institute. Marlin-Bennet, Renee. 2004. Knowledge Power: Intellectual Property, Information & Piracy. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner.

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May, Christopher. 2007. The World Intellectual Property Organization: Resurgence and the Development Agenda. London: Routledge. Motion Picture Association Worldwide Market Research and Analysis. 2006. Theatrical Market: 2005 Statistics. Accessed from www.mpaa.org. Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. 2004. Globalization & Culture: Global Mélange. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Scott,Allen J. 29 November 2002.“Hollywood in the Era of Globalization: Opportunities and Predicaments.”Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.Yale Global Online. Available at http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id⫽479, accessed on May 1, 2007. Sell, Susan. 2003. Private Power, Public Law:The Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Singh, J. P. 2006. “The Evolution of National Interests: New Issues and North-South Negotiations during the Uruguay Round.” In Negotiating Trade: Developing Countries in the WTO and NAFTA, ed. John Odell. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2008/forthcoming. Negotiation and the Global Information Economy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Throsby, David. 2001. Economics and Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Turpin, Adrian. 2006. “Not Tonight, Darling, I’m Online.” Financial Times, April 1/2, W10–11. UNESCO Institute for Statistics. 2005. International Flows of Selected Cultural Goods and Services, 1994–2003. Montreal, Quebec: UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Accessed from www.uis.unesco.org/ev_en.php?ID⫽6372_201&ID2⫽DO_TOPIC. World Tourism Organization. 2005. Tourism Highlights. 2005 ed. Madrid:WTO. Accessed from www.world-tourism.org. World Trade Organization. 2005. International Trade Statistics 2004. Geneva:World Trade Organization.

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Key Date s in Culture and

1709 Statute of Anne in England enacted the first copyright law in the world. 1776 Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations. He notes the link between economic prosperity and specialization in the principle of division of labor. 1825 The English economist David Ricardo puts forth his doctrine of comparative advantage and expands Adam Smith’s ideas to apply fully to international trade. 1848 Corn Laws, which prohibited imports of corn in Britain, are repealed, ushering in free trade in Europe.The repeal helped to create the basis of free trade among nations, which in turn would later form the context for trade in cultural products. Free trade facilitated trade in cultural products such as publishing in the nineteenth century and would later include sound recordings and films. 1883 Paris convention on patents protects technology. It also applied to cultural industry technologies, such as audiovisual equipment, of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 1886 Berne Convention on copyrights. It mostly protected published materials in the nineteenth century but also applies to audio recordings in the twentieth century and beyond. 1927 Britain restricts imports of Hollywood films with the Cinematograph Films Act. May 26, 1946 Blum-Byrnes agreement between France and the United States restricts Hollywood film exports to France. 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is founded after the signing of the Havana Charter. GATT concluded eight rounds of trade liberalization between 1947 and 1994. Usually named after the place where they were held or launched, these rounds are Geneva 1947; Annecy, France 1949;

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Torquay, England 1951; Geneva (“Dillon”) 1956; Geneva 1960–1962; Geneva (“Kennedy”) 1962–1967;Tokyo 1973–1979; and Uruguay 1986–1994. 1970 World Intellectual Property Organization (IPO) is founded and located in Geneva, 1970s Services and intellectual property–intensive industries organize in the United States to ask for global service liberalization and intellectual property rights protection. 1974 The developing world issues calls for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) at the United Nations General Assembly to address global North–South economic imbalances and inequality. 1976 The developing world issues calls for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) at UNESCO, in conjunction with NIEO, to address communication imbalances (mostly broadcasting and journalism) between the global North and South. 1986–1994 The Uruguay Round of trade talks takes place through GATT. Services and intellectual property rights issues are on the agenda, mostly because of U.S. pressures, which include cultural industry lobbies such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). 1986 The United States, under President Reagan, leaves UNESCO. It views UNESCO’s calls for NWICO as counterproductive and instigated by the Soviet Union. 1992 European Union’s Television without Frontiers directive becomes effective.The directive reserves 51 percent of total programming on European television, where practicable and feasible, to domestically produced content in European Union countries. 1991–1993 Audiovisual dispute flares between the United States and the European Union at GATT’s Uruguay Round and produces a deadlock. The EU finally makes no formal commitment to liberalize its audiovisual or cultural industries in a move that was labeled the “cultural exception.” 1995 The World Trade Organization comes into being as a result of the agreements signed at the conclusion of the Uruguay Round in March 1994. Its charter replaces that of GATT. 2001 UNESCO member states sign a Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. 2003 The United States rejoins UNESCO.

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October 2005 UNESCO member states sign a Universal Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Expressions.Along with the Declaration of 2001, the convention urges countries to enshrine import protections to provide incentives for their domestic cultural industries.The move was instigated by Canada and France to check the growth of trade liberalization through WTO.

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Chapte r 13


Kevin V. Mulcahy

ANY DISCUSSION OF CULTURAL POLICY must take into account the importance of public culture and tradition “in giving a sense of uniqueness and meaning to the individual political cultures” (Pye and Verba 1965, 19). Accordingly, a comprehensive analysis of a nation’s development involves not only its political institutions and cultural well-being, but its cultural identity as well.The distinguishing characteristic of cultural policy in countries characterized by a legacy of coloniality is the importance of questions of identity and the politics that are involved in formulating its definition.“As with politics in general, cultural politics involves the expression of the collective values of a people, the feelings of people about their social and group identities, and above all else the tests of loyalty and commitment” (Pye and Verba 1965, 19). The issues associated with culture and identity are most pressing where there has been a legacy of coloniality—that is, an experience involving dominating influence by a stronger power over its subject states.This is not simply a matter of political colonization or economic dependency, but of a cultural dominance that creates an asymmetrical relationship between the center and the periphery, between the cultural hegemony and the marginalized other. In these circumstances, what constitutes an authentic culture and how this informs national identity is of central political and social concern. The consequences of coloniality have an importance in shaping such cultural policies, if only because national identity typically cannot be assumed. Indeed, the legacy of coloniality evokes the imagined communities (Anderson 1983) that were constructed to define nations that were not states in the empires that ruled in Eastern and Central Europe from the mid-seventeenth century until the end of World War I. Educated elites formalized dialects into languages and folklore into national sagas while composing music and creating literature in the new national spirit. It also followed that political history was reimagined to correspond with cultural identity. Similarly, the consequences of coloniality necessitated a reimagined public culture to counter the 197

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suppression of marginalized values.The related cultural policies seek to assert influence over the discourse that defines national identity. In this way, cultural policies have as a central goal the determination of which parties control the definition of their identity—that is, by whom a people are told who they are. In essence, postcolonial societies seek to reclaim a voice in telling their stories by creating their own cultural distinctiveness. For example, in the cultural ideology of negritude, Leopold Senghor, the writer and first president of Senegal, articulated a universal vision of a culture that would valorize the contributions to civilization of not only black Africans but also of the black minorities in America, Asia, and Oceania. Essentially, negritude is the “acceptance of the existence of this civilization and its forward projection into the continuing historical process . . . to accept the values of the civilization of the black world, making them a living, fruitful reality . . . in order to experience them ourselves and for ourselves, and also to cause them to be experienced by and for others” (quoted in M’Bengue 1973, 9). As such, negritude is an ideology of transnational cultural identity that challenges the hegemonic assumptions of Western cultural values. This chapter will review the major themes that have informed cultural policies given the legacy of coloniality. Little will be said about specific administrative structures, funding levels, or programmatic activities.What will be discussed are the ideological arguments and developmental imperatives that couple cultural sovereignty with political sovereignty. Cultural policies are not simply about support for the arts; they entail addressing major political concepts and redressing legacies of coloniality.These conceptual concerns include: cultural renaissance (Quebec); cultural reconstruction (Africa); cultural revivalism (Latin America); and cultural reclamation (Ukraine). Finally, some concluding observations will be offered about cultural nationalism and the politics of identity, with particular reference to Puerto Rico. What should be clear is that these cultural policy issues are found not just in imperial dependencies but also in regions that have been absorbed into modern states as a part of their nation-building experiences. Moreover, the experience of coloniality is not restricted to the former colonies of the so-called developing world but can also be found in the internal colonies of developed countries as well. Cultural Re naissance: Que bec Canada’s federal system, which resembles a confederacy, gives its provinces significant powers (much more than American states), especially regarding law, immigration, education and cultural matters.1 For example, Quebec alone among Canada’s ten provinces and three territories has civil law, rather than common law. Also, French is deemed the province’s official language (albeit unilaterally), and preferences are given to francophone immigrants. Indeed, what is most significant about Quebec’s cultural policy, and accounts for the

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seriousness with which it is engaged in the public arena, is its relationship between cultural and political identity. Cultural policy in Quebec is not just support for artists and the arts; it is also a matter of support for its heritage and the valorization of the French language.To put a complex matter very simply, the policy favors enhanced support for the francophone cultural heritage as well as contemporary French Canadian aesthetic expressions. Quebec’s cultural policy, then, is intertwined with constitutional and linguistic matters that have been at the heart of Canada’s ongoing debate about nationalism and federalism (Ministère des Affaires Culturelles 1992, 39–42). Starting with the “quiet revolution” in 1960, Quebec governments— Liberal, Union Nationale, and Parti Québécois—have sought to replace the long-dominant influence of the English-speaking minority with a self-confident and modernized francophone cultural identity.This revolution has largely been won, and the resulting renaissance of Quebec’s artistic and intellectual life transformed a provincial culture into one with an independent international standing. A frequent observation is that, while Quebec is politically one of Canada’s provinces, in cultural terms Quebec is a nation. The creation of Quebec’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs can be seen as a manifestation of the cultural nationalism of the 1960s, which predated the political nationalism of later decades. It was established by the government of Liberal Premier Jean Lesage for the purpose of maintaining and fostering all those traits and characteristics of the people of Quebec as a distinct cultural group on the North American continent. That cultural distinctiveness is its Frenchness and, in addition to goals of cultural development, the ministry also included an Office de la Langue Française under Jean-Marc Leger, a wellknown nationalist intellectual. This office was designed to oversee the “correctness and enrichment of French in Quebec as well as the promotion of greater francisation of Quebec society.” Overall, the ministry was charged with the task of supporting the development of French language and culture in Quebec (Lachapelle et al. 1993, 332). The ministry’s commitment to the revalorization of French culture was an official counterpart to the more general explosion of cultural ebullience during the quiet revolution, which saw new maturity of French Canadian artistic, dramatic, lyric, and literary production. In this highly charged, nationalistic environment, language emerged as a potent symbol of French Canadian cultural affirmation, political emancipation, and group identity.This was especially true for the Quebecois intelligentsia of teachers, administrators, journalists, and policy analysts, whose occupational skills involved the manipulation of knowledge and information. (This is a class that is termed in French travailleurs du langue, or “language workers,” for which there is no exact English-language equivalent.) For this technically skilled, francophone middle class, the survival and blossoming of Quebec society required the reconciliation of its French

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Canadian cultural heritage with the realities of a modern, urbanized world. “Otherwise, the French language and culture would survive in Quebec, as it did in Louisiana, merely as folklore, while English dominated the dynamic elements of Quebec life and inexorably threatened the cultural survival of the French-speaking people” (Levine 1991, 45). It is crucial to note that the cultural nationalism of the decades beginning with the quiet revolution is of a fundamentally different character than that of survival of the previous two centuries. There is arguably a remarkable continuity between the ethos of survival and that of blossoming. Both are rooted in the efforts of French Canadians after the Conquest in 1759 to resist assimilation and “a determination to survive, a ‘will to live’ as a cultural group.” As a result of their determination to retain their cultural distinctiveness, French Canadians have been engaged “in an intermittent, and at times bitter, struggle against assimilation by the dominant English group” (Quinn 1963, 3). The blossoming ideology, by contrast, was a modernizing nationalism that sought the economic empowerment of the francophone majority in Quebec. The fostering of French Canadian culture and the concomitant rise of the language issue as a matter of cultural survival mobilized the ethnic pride of francophones and “formed the impetus for a tremendous effort toward economic self-reliance” (Lachapelle et al. 1993, 331). In her introductory message to Notre Culture, Notre Avenir (Our Culture, Our Future), Quebec Minister of Culture, Liza Frulla, noted the fundamental importance of culture in Quebec because its francophone majority constitutes a unique society in North America. She argued for the necessity of Quebec having mastery over cultural matters within its territory (Ministère des Affaires Culturelles 1992, vii–viii). Whatever the political and constitutional recognition of Quebec as a distinct society, the status of French as the province’s official language, the predominance of French-language schooling, and ambitious francophone arts activities, mark it as a distinctive culture. In turn, this cultural distinctiveness distinguishes its approach to public support for the arts (Meisel 1989, and Meisel and Van Loon 1987). Certainly, there is no question of the centrality of language as a component of cultural identity; the defining element of Quebec culture is its French-speaking character. Quebec is identified first and foremost with the French fact, and its importance for the future of Quebec is decisive. Accordingly, Quebec’s cultural policy explicitly fosters the dissemination and consumption of French-language cultural products. In sum, Quebec’s national identity is centered on the language as the expression of the cultural heritage of its francophone population. A formulation of this sense of politics and culture might be that the language is the culture; the culture is the people; the people are the nation. Even with such a formula, Quebec’s cultural policy must assess the relative weights to be accorded a modern culture, which seeks to compete in the international

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cultural mainstream, and a provincial culture, which celebrates the uniqueness of its local folk arts. Cultural Reconstruction: Africa To the extent that colonialism is “one of the purest forms of cultural destruction,” it is because “it insistently degrades the self-image of those who are colonized” (Hogan 2000, 83). Consequently, a country’s independence is akin to being born (Zolberg 1993, 234), or, more exactly, to being reborn as the former colony emerges from its colonial subjugation. Postcoloniality necessitates constructing both a unique public culture and a distinct political culture if full sovereignty is to be realized. Much of the discourse on postcolonialism emphasizes the role of culture in the imposition of imperial rule and, by extension, in the liberation from imperialism. As the late Columbia University literary theorist Edward Said observed, “The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the major connections between them” (Said 1979, xiii). While formulated by Western scholars, missionaries, and administrators, the telling power of a construction such as Orientalism was that its hegemonic power was able to persuade the colonized that “the idea of European identity was a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures” (Said 1979, 7). Postcolonialism emerged when the colonized recognized and contested regulatory and hegemonic dominance (Ashcroft 2001). In essence, culture and politics are inextricably intertwined, as they are about the redefinition of national identity. This involves “legitimizing the nation to its own citizenry and (perhaps most important) to outsiders” (Zolberg 1993, 235).The nationbuilding project in newly independent nations is the creation of a core culture to replace that infused by the colonial power. “At the level of cultural policy, this means a core of common cultural practices, beliefs, customs and such has to be allowed to become manifest” (Alexander 1995, 216). In essence, a postcolonial public culture must reclaim and reconstitute its identity as a space and a people.“The search for authenticity, for a more congenial national origin than provided by colonial history for a new pantheon of heroes and (occasionally) heroines, myths, and religions” (Said 1994, 226) is an essential element in the creation of a postcolonial public culture where the land is redefined and reappropriated by its people. With reference to postapartheid South Africa, for example, this required not only the termination of a European- and white-centric public culture, but also the establishment of a society that rejected the colonial construction of African identities and “promotes an evolving core culture that is itself constituted by the pooling of different cultural streams from which the citizens of the country derive” (Jackson and Solis 1995, 217).

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Museums can play an important role in the process of cultural redefinition and reappropriation.This is especially the case of South Africa, with its history of systematized apartheid.2 Museums have the capacity to reconnect people to cultural legacies that have been severed by the experience of colonization. Museum representations can articulate ideologies about how a society perceives itself in determining what is culturally significant in defining a society and in constructing the face that it presents to its own people and the world at large. “In Africa, anthropological museums and exhibitions were often compliant in the imperialistic program of establishing one group’s superiority (White) at the expense of another” (Dubin 2006, 5) In a similar vein,Western fine arts museums as recently as thirty years ago would classify the artistic creations of indigenous peoples as primitive art (for example, the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibition, Masterpieces of Primitive Art from the Rockefeller Collection in 1978), or these artifacts were displayed in natural history museums within an ethnological context, that is, as artifacts exemplifying preindustrial, underdeveloped societies. It should be noted that there have been significant changes in such curatorial practices, as evidenced by the transfer of indigenous people’s art from the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History to the newly created Museum of the American Indian where curatorial decision making is exercised in consultation with tribal representatives. Moreover, its organization is not predominantly by aesthetic categories in the style of an art museum. Rather, it is closer to a historical museum in that it displays objects—both quotidian and unique—to document the development of tribal societies. Its closest institutional equivalent could be the Musée de la Civilization, which opened in 1998 in Quebec City. In a series of exhibits called Memories, the Musée de la Civilization encapsulates the daily life of the province from its origins to the present, giving the people of Quebec a sense of their French origins without stereotype and unmediated by the dominant English culture. In a similar fashion, the Johannesburg exhibition The Neglected Tradition: Towards a New History of South African Art (1930–1988) merits the distinction of a watershed cultural event by effectively changing the way in which South African art was perceived. Cultural sociologist Steven Dubin, echoing widely shared sentiments in the South African artistic milieu, argues that The Neglected Tradition represented a major corrective to the tyranny of aesthetic hierarchies that validated the apartheid ideology and inaugurated a policy of cultural inclusiveness.The exhibition presented the work of a hundred artists, the majority of them black, previously not exhibited, and relatively unknown. It also featured a catalog essay by curator Steven Sack that systematically evaluated a sixty-year period of black creative expression that had been largely ignored. Today, there is substantial consensus that the artists showcased in The Neglected Tradition are to be counted among the most gifted in South Africa.

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The Neglected Tradition also prompted museums to review their curatorial policies and to begin acquiring the work of black artists.The legacy of the exhibition’s revolutionary outlook is apparent in a later generation of scholars, curators, and artists who have received a very different sort of education than the one that reflected the racist perspective of apartheid.These changes in curatorial values are not simply technically significant, but reflect a profound shift in cultural policy.As realms of representation, museums are also sites of contestation, as they visually convey not just aesthetic insights but also the sociohistorical values of a community. Consequently, restoring black artists to their rightful place in the museum pantheon is not just a victory for aesthetic integrity but also constitutes an important realization of public policy goals. For the decolonized, a policy of cultural reconstruction is a necessary commitment to political reconstruction. Cultural Revolution: Latin Ame rica The Spanish colonial countries in Latin America became independent in the early part of the nineteenth century. However, many retained a dependency status: economically to the American colossus to the North and culturally to a Europeanized aesthetic and the values of a Hispanophile elite who subordinated their national identities to the perceived superiority of Spanish (and more generally European) cultural values. It is not surprising, then, that artists and intellectuals have been in the vanguard of Latin American political struggles of the twentieth century.Two of the distinguishing characteristics of modern Latin American culture are “an intense interest both political and cultural in the past civilizations and present life of the original inhabitants, with an attempt to revive native forms (Indianism or indigenismo), and an intense role for the social role of the artist” (Gowing 1995, 911). Nowhere was this confluence of the political and cultural greater than in postrevolutionary Mexico during the 1920s. Strongly committed to cultural nationalism, the secretary of education, Jose Vasconcelos, believed that art should have a direct and didactic public role.To this end, he commissioned a number of monumental murals from young Mexican artists to decorate the walls of public buildings. The names of the Big Three (Los Tres Grandes) are most familiar: Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and, especially, Diego Rivera.The complex phenomenon of Indian culture was not addressed solely in mural paintings, but the murals were a staple of a revolutionary art whose goal was not simplistic political indoctrination, but to affect a change in “consciousness and sensibility” (Hennessy 1971, 72). Moreover, this cultural policy of valorizing indigenous people and pre-Columbian history resonated strongly throughout Latin America and is manifested in the contemporary politics of Bolivia and Peru. In murals such as those of Rivera in the National Prepatory School and National Palace in Mexico City and the Palace of Cortes in Cuernavaca, the

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context of the iconography is art in the service of politics.The themes represent a new comprehension of Mexico’s identity as a nation,“replacing the previous colonialist ideology and subservience of its people” (Catlin 1980, 198). The murals’ images were meant to be pedagogical, “to convince their audience of certain virtues and to promote corresponding behavior” (Folgarait 1998, 12). The murals were part of a broader, nationalist program of popular education on the theme “What is Mexico?” For Vasconcelos, this endeavor had spiritual overtures: his teachers were termed Maestros Misioneros; his motto was “to educate is to redeem” (Folgarait 1998, 18). This approach gave precedence to Mexican national objectives and equated the importance of native cultural values with the generalized imperatives of the revolutionary process (Catlin 1980).Vasconcelos’s motives in forming a national culture through education echoed the sentiments of President Obregon. “The hope of every nation is the development of a morality among the people themselves.This is the great task of education and culture” (quoted in Folgarait 1998, 19). The mural painting, with its popular accessibility and ideological iconography, was the revolutionary art without equal: Not only was it possible to convey to a wide audience a sense of continuity with a largely forgotten past, and to give ordinary spectators a vicarious sense of participation in a great historical process, but also, being rooted in a popular tradition and employing popular themes, the art enabled painters to appeal over the heads of a philistine bourgeoisie, to break away from the exclusiveness of a narrow literary culture and to reach out to the wider illiterate society. (Hennessy 1971, 73) Moreover, the murals were definitely intended to be important. “Even today they are spoken of in awe by Mexicans, and guided tours of Rivera’s murals in the National Palace in Mexico City are conducted in almost ceremonial fashion” (Folgarait 1998, 12). Rivera and his fellow muralists also represented a cultural policy that succeeded in inculcating a “sense of nationality, with its own demos and ethos, for a major part of the Indian and Mestizo community in Latin America” (Catlin 1980, 211). The political agenda of the mural paintings was fourfold: first, creating a common national culture on a secular basis; second, formalizing an idealized version of the past; third, interpreting national history to give primacy to the contributions of the indigenous people; and fourth, representing a universe of commonly accepted national symbols and a pantheon of immediately recognizable national heroes (Hennessy 1971). In this sense, the overall objective was less historical and more mythopoetic. In sum, new nations and postrevolutionary nations seek to establish a history that will validate their new status and legitimize the new regime.Vasconcelos remarked about his history of Mexico:“I am not writing history; I am creating a myth” (quoted in Hennessy 1971, 76).

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The “Invention of Tradition” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) is not unique to developing nations, but it has a particular urgency when a new political culture is being created. In the case of the Mexican mural movement, a public culture was mobilized to assist in the creation of a political culture. The murals of its greatest exemplar, Diego Rivera, spoke to a socialist revolutionary ideal and to the integration of Indian and mestizo viewers into a working-class political and cultural ideology rooted in the Mexican experience, “As such, it stands as a kind of Summa Theologica of the modern Mexican revolution” (Catlin 1980, 211). The role of muralists in shaping cultural identity continues into the contemporary age as reflected in New Mexicanism muralists such as Dulce Maria Núñez, Lucia Maya, and Alejandro Colunja. Also, mural paintings began to appear in American cities in the 1960s as an expression of ethnic identity in the Chicano community.“The ethnic consciousness of that decade was instrumental in linking young Chicano artists with their cultural heritage. Art historians have suggested that Chicano Studies programs . . . about Mexican muralism were the primary agents that diffused information about the Mexican masters to Chicano artists” (Arreola 1984, 410). The revolutionary tradition in cultural policy was also followed by the Castro regime in Cuba (1959 to the present) and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (1979 to 1990). Leaving aside judgments about the absence of political democracy in these states, there is no question that both were committed to ambitious agendas of promoting cultural democracy as part of broader social initiatives. In Cuba the government created a network of casas de la cultura (modeled on a similar system introduced by French Minister of Culture, Andre Malraux in the DeGaulle government) to bring the arts to the provinces and to promote local artistic activities. In addition, Cuba has various state institutions with a cultural mission, such as the National Film Institute and the International Center for Latin American Arts and Literature. In Nicaragua one of the first Sandinista initiatives was a crusade for national literacy as well as the democratization of culture and the promotion of its popular accessibility. In the words of Ernesto Cardenal, who was then minister of culture, “We seek an integration of popular culture and high culture, of indigenous culture and international culture” (quoted in Craven 1990).3 It might be noted that several members of the Sandinista government were distinguished artists and intellectuals: Ernesto Cardenal, a renowned poet;Vice President Sergio Ramirez, a novelist; Alejandro Serrano Caldera, a philosopher and ambassador to the United Nations; and Armando Morales, UNESCO delegate and a painter. Cuba’s casas de la cultura exist in the municipalities that serve as the country’s administrative centers.These casas include libraries, performing and visual arts spaces to provide opportunities for performances and exhibitions,

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touring shows, and visiting professionals as well as local artists with an emphasis on participation by the young. “As statistics demonstrate, a direct consequence of these casas de la cultura has been an immense increase in amateur groups involved in music, theater, dance, and the plastic arts” (Craven 1990, 106). In a similar fashion, one of the first acts of the Nicaragua Ministry of Culture was the establishment of a national network of poetry workshops drawn principally from the agrarian and urban working classes.The goal was to create a nation of poets and it has been judged to be the most far-reaching writing program ever organized (Craven 1990, 111). In both cases, the cultural programs were designed to maximize revolutionary goals of enhancing popular self-worth through participation in the arts. These manifestations of cultural revolution are distinct, with their various emphases on instructional murals, arts centers, and poetry workshops. What they have in common is the use of cultural initiatives as part of a broader program of social transformation.At root, there was a commitment to enfranchising marginalized groups through involving them in a process of personal transformation by means of aesthetic participation. In effect, the socioeconomically excluded were to experience not just a political revolution but a cultural revolution through the development of a collective consciousness of their dignity and self-worth. Cultural Reclamation: Ukraine Ukraine may seem, at first glance, an unusual example of a developing country. However, the countries of central and eastern Europe under Communism were typically classed as second world. It is important to note that development is not simply an economic index, but relative to political, social, and cultural dimensions as well. Ukraine, for example, has exhibited dramatic sociopolitical problems with systematic official corruption, widespread election irregularities, and business illegalities in the acquisition of state enterprises. The Orange Revolution of 2005 was a popular uprising against such abuses. At root, it was a manifestation of deep cultural chasms, both historical and contemporary. Ukraine, an old nation (in the sense of a distinct people) became an independent country in 1991, but without a clearly established and commonly shared cultural identity. Ukraine shares many of the problems of other postcolonial states, including having to address identity self-consciously as a matter of public policy.The so-called Little Russians, as the Moscow/St. Petersburg metropolis regarded the Ukrainians, were an integral, if peripheral, component of the Russian nation.Yet, as Russians came to see Ukraine as a branch of their own nation, “a Ukrainian national movement began to articulate a distinctive Ukrainian culture” (Ash and Snyder 2005, 28). Even after independence in 1991, many Ukrainian intellectuals insisted that the “pervasiveness and persistence of the

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colonial status quo” gave the nominally independent Ukraine the status of “a kind of Creole state, that is, a state dominated by the descendants of Russian settlers and by Russified Ukrainians” (Riabchuk 2002, 53). The rise of modernization and urbanization in the nineteenth century coincided with a policy of Russification that created a widely held belief that there was a contradiction between things modern and things Ukrainian. “Ukraine has yet to liberate itself from the spell of the former metropolis and the inferiority complex of the forcibly provincialized” (Wilson 2000, 211). Not only did the indigenous population (native-speaking Ukrainians) become the oppressed majority in their own country in relation to the dominant Russophones, “but also the Ukrainophone would become firmly associated with village backwardness and ‘bumpkin-ness.’ In fact, this world became a kind of inner colony, a local Third World of kolkhoz (slaves) that provided the First World of the higher (Russophone) civilization with lower-class employees” (Riabchuk 2002, 53). It should be noted that the politics of identity in a heavily Russified Ukraine is not so much ethnic as linguistic and cultural. Ethnic Ukrainians predominate, especially in the part of the Ukraine west of the Dnieper River, while the eastern Ukraine gravitated toward Russia. Ethnic Ukrainians predominate, but there is rough equivalency between the number of Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers; the latter group includes ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Again, it is this cultural divide that is the most divisive aspect of Ukrainian society. The Russian viewpoint was expressed in the early nineteenth century: “A Little Russian language never existed, does not exist and shall not exist. Its dialects as spoken by the masses are the same as the Russian language, with the exception of some corruption from Poland” (Reid 1997, 88). “The theory that Ukrainian culture and language is nothing but Polonized Russian is still widespread amongst Ukrainians of a certain age and/or politics as well as amongst Russians” (Riabchuk 2002, 69). For example, during the Orange Revolution, Putin noted emphatically in Pravda,“The whole country speaks Russian” (quoted in Ash and Snyder 2005, 29). Not surprisingly, Ukrainian speakers see the cultural condition differently. Article 10 of the 1996 Ukrainian constitution clearly states, “The state language in Ukraine is the Ukrainian language.” Ukrainian nationalist thinking is reflected unequivocally in this key clause. Russian-speaking Ukrainians have been characterized as denationalized Ukrainians “who have been separated from their native language and culture by forcible policies of ‘Russification.’ ” In the view of some leading Ukrainian cultural figures,“Russified Ukrainians are those who recoiled from their own ethnic community for the most part not of their own will, but as a consequence of deliberate colonial policies” (Wilson 2000, 208). There is also a strong belief among Ukrainian speakers that while Ukrainians who speak Russian may give lip service to political

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independence, and to many historic symbols, they are, in cultural and linguistic terms, Russian in nature; that is biased against Ukrainian language and culture regarding it as low-status and peasantlike (Wilson 2000). In sum, Ukrainian cultural nationalism classifies Russian-speaking Ukrainians as agents of the aforementioned Creole nationalism, that is, proponents of a transcendent Russian culture in both its higher manifestations and the popular culture of mass fiction, rock music, game shows. The politics of identity raises the issue of whether political independence can be fully realized without cultural independence. For Ukrainian nationalists this necessitates a cultural policy that challenges the idea of its subservience to a cultural empire that undermines its national integrity. Effective political sovereignty, in this formulation, can only be realized through cultural sovereignty. Coda: Culture and Nationalism Of course, identity is not simply an issue for developing nations; shared values and traditions (whether invented or inherited) are essential glue for sustaining a sense of collective cohesiveness. However, developing nations have largely been the subjects of coloniality; this term indicates the direct governance by an imperial power or the absorption of contiguous territories into empires that aggressively impose cultural and linguistic suzerainty for the purpose of assimilation. It also includes the persistent hegemony of Europeanized norms over indigenous values in nominally independent nations. Doctrines of the “white man’s burden” and “civilizing mission” rendered Africans as essentially subhumans. Similarly, the pure-blooded Spanish ruling class in Latin America asserted a racial as well as cultural suzerainty over the indigenous peoples and those of mixed blood. In the same vein, the Ukrainians, certainly the Ukrainian-speaking amongst them, were stereotyped as a backward, cultureless peasantry in need of advancement through Russification and absorption into the Russian state. It has been noted that the destructive effects of colonialism are incalculable; these costs are largely associated with systematic cultural deracination. Since the cultural damage experienced by the former colony outlives the realization of political sovereignty, its cultural policy must inevitably deal with redefining a sense of identity. “Such attempts are vividly displayed in Puerto Rico, where the island’s cultural identity remains the most important basis for defining the national entity, and where the idiom of culture has historically served as a site for contesting power over the colonial state” (Davila 1997, 6). While Puerto Rico may appear to be a problematic example, as it is neither developing nor a country, it illustrates several aspects of cultural nationalism, that is, the relationship between cultural identity and national sovereignty. First, it should be noted that while economically developed in comparison to the rest of the Caribbean and Central America, Puerto Rico has a GDP

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per capita that is less than half that of the continental United States and as a commonwealth has a quasi-colonial status. Second, in this context, national identity is not a political definition, but is associated with cultural distinctiveness.“Specifically, discussions of culture and claims to be pro cultura, culturalista, or puertorriquenista (pro-Puerto Ricanness and things Puerto Rican) are all statements of national identity or self-identification with Puerto Rico as a culturally distinct unit” (Davila 1997, 10). Third, with the local autonomy afforded by its commonwealth status, the Puerto Rican government “made a concerted effort to define an official cultural policy and stipulate what could rightfully represent Puerto Rican culture” (Davila 1997, 4). National identity became “institutionalized” through a cultural policy and a cultural agency. “The Institute of Puerto Rican Culture was founded at this time, with the official task of defining and disseminating the constituent elements of Puerto Rico’s national identity” (Davila 1997, 4). In all this, Puerto Rico, with its condition of coloniality, that is, a culturally distinct (but subordinated) region and an official policy of cultural nationalism, is a synecdoche for cultural policy in developing countries. The difficulty is in formulating exactly what should be the nature of the national culture to be supported. Typically, such a cultural policy takes on two forms. The first is to stand in opposition to the colonial power’s hegemonic culture; in the case of Puerto Rico, this means opposing the commercial culture of the American other.The second is to invent a tradition that is typically an idealized nostalgia for a largely lost historical community.This might be a tenuous Gaelic revivalism (Hutchinson 1987), the fabrication of clan-specific tartan regalia (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983, 15–41), or a Puerto Rican identity revolving around agrarian folklore “and a romanticized and harmonious integration of the indigenous Taino, Spanish and African components of society, under the rubric of a Hispanic tradition” (Davila 1997, 5).The construction of an idealized cultural identity can be judged a necessary response to the destructive effects of colonialism. On the other hand, the construction may oversimplify cultural complexities and marginalize inconvenient minorities and their communal expressions. What can also result from even the most benign cultural construction is a policy that consigns the formerly colonized country to a cultural cul-de-sac as a traditional society of only anthropological interest. This can render its cultural sector out of touch with contemporary developments and unable to mediate the impact of an increasingly globalized world. For example, the anthropological concept of culture was used to justify Greenland’s political and cultural struggle for independence from Denmark, which culminated in home rule in 1991. Greenland’s cultural policy priorities for the first ten years of its autonomy were based on Eskimo cultural heritage. However, a younger generation of artists had little desire to see its artistic creativity and aesthetic

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idioms limited by ethnic, monocultural tradition, even as it had no wish to deny its origins. In 1991, the Greenland Parliament set up a Cultural Council that drew up a comprehensive national policy for funding modern arts activities while also promoting a revitalization of Greenland’s Eskimo cultural heritage (Dueland 2003, 425–426). In sum, the challenge that countries combating coloniality face in constructing a cultural policy is to value their redefined past while being receptive to aesthetic innovation and the possibilities of cultural syncretism. Obviously, this is not a challenge that can be easily addressed. Moreover, the power of a globalized culture, which in the minds of many is synonymous with Americanization, makes the retention of national cultural identity a contentious issue even for countries such as France and Canada. These difficulties are compounded for nations with histories of coloniality that are only recently defining distinct cultural identities after long periods of sociopolitical subjugations. Note s 1. This discussion is based on Kevin V. Mulcahy,“Public Culture and Political Culture: La Politique Culturelle du Quebec,” Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 25 (Fall 1995): 225–249. 2. The discussion that follows is based on a manuscript draft of chapter 2, “A White Step in a Black Direction: Inertia, Breakthrough, and Change in South African Museums,” in Steven Dubin. 2006. Transforming Museums: Mounting Queen Victoria in a Democratic South Africa. (New York: Palgrave MacMillan). 3. This discussion relies heavily on the literature review in Craven (1990).

Se lecte d Re fe re nce s Alexander, Neville. 1995. “Core Culture and Core Curriculum in South Africa.” In Beyond Comfort Zones in Multiculturalism, ed. Sandra Jackson and Jose Solis.Westport, CT: Bergin and Garney. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London:Verso. Arpin, M. Roland. 1991 Une Politique de la Culture et des Arts du Québec. Quebec City : Les Publications du Québec. Arreola, Daniel B. 1984. “Mexican American Exterior Murals.” Geographical Review 74 (October): 409–424. Ash, Timothy Garton, and Timothy Snyder. 2005. “The Orange Revolution.” New York Review of Books, May 28, 28–31. Ashcroft, Bill. 2001. On Post-Colonial Futures: Transformations of Colonial Culture New York: Continuum. Balfe, Judith, ed. 1993. Paying the Piper: Causes and Consequences of Arts Patronage, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,. Catlin, Stanton L. 1980. “Political Iconography in the Diego Rivera Frescoes at Cuernavaca, Mexico,” In Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics, ed. Henry Millon and Linda Nochlin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Craven, David. 1990.“The State of Cultural Democracy in Cuba and Nicaragua During the 1980s.” Latin American Perspectives 17 (Summer): 100–119. Cummings, Milton C., and Katz, Richard S. 1989.“Relations Between Government and the Arts in Western Europe and North America.” In Who’s to Pay for the Arts?: The International Search for Models of Arts Support, ed. Milton C. Cummings and J. Mark Davidson Schuster, 5–14. ACA Arts Research Series. New York: ACA Books. Davila, Arlene M. 1997. Sponsored Identities: Cultural Politics in Puerto Rico. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Dubin, Steven. 2006. Transforming Museums: Mounting Queen Victoria in a Democratic South Africa. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Dueland, Peter. 2003. The Nordic Cultural Model. Copenhagen: Nordic Cultural Institute, 2003. Folgarait, Leonard. 1998. Mural Painting and Social Revolution in Mexico, 1920–1940, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Gowing, Lawrence, ed. 1995. A History of Art. New York: Barnes and Noble Books. Hennessy, Alistair. 1971. “Artists, Intellectuals and Revolution.” Journal of Latin American Studies (May): 71–88. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hogan, Patrick. 2000. Colonialism and Cultural Identity: Crises of Tradition in the Anglophone Literatures of India, Africa, and the Caribbean. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hutchinson, John. 1987. The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism:The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State. London: Allen and Unwin. Jackson, Sandra, and Jose Solis, eds. 1995. Beyond Comfort Zones in Multiculturalism, Westport, CT: Bergin and Garney. Kuzio, Taras, and Paul D’Anieri, eds. 2002. The Dilemmas of State-Led Nation Building in Ukraine.Westport, CT: Praeger. Lachapelle, Guy, Gerard Bernier, Daniel Salee, and Luc Bernier. 1993. Quebec Democracy: Structure, Processes and Policies.Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. Levine, Marc V. 1991. The Reconquest of Montreal: Language Policy and Social Change in a Bilingual City. Philadelphia:Temple University Press. M’Bengue, Mamador Seyni. 1973. Cultural Policy in Senegal. Paris: UNESCO. Meisel, John, “Government and the Arts in Canada.” 1989. In Who’s to Pay for the Arts?: The International Search for Models of Arts Support, ed. Milton C. Cummings and J. Mark Davidson Schuster, 81–92. ACA Arts Research Series. New York: ACA Books. Meisel, John, and Van Loon, Jean. 1987. “Cultivating the Bushgarden: Cultural Policy in Canada.” In The Patron State, ed. Milton C. Cummings and Richard S. Katz. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Millon, Henry A., and Linda Nochlin, eds. 1980. Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ministère des Affaires Culturelles. 1992. La Politique Culturelle du Québec: Notre Culture, Notre Avenir. Quebec City: Gouvernement du Québec. Mulcahy, Kevin V. 1995.“Public Culture and Political Culture: La Politique Culturelle du Quebec.” Journal of Arts, Management, Law, and Society 25 (Fall): 225–249. Pye, Lucian, and Sydney Verba. 1965. Political Culture and Political Development. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Quinn, Peter. 1963. The Union Nationale: A Study in Quebec Nationalism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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Reid, Anna. 1997. Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Riabchuk, Mykola. 2002. “Culture and Cultural Policies in Ukraine: A Postcolonial Perspective.” In Dilemmas of State-Led Nation Building in Ukraine, ed.Taras Kuzio and Paul D’Anieri.Westport, CT: Praeger. Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon. ———. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. New York:Vintage. Ware,Timothy. 1977. The Orthodox Church. New York: Penguin. Wilson, Andrew. 2000. The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Zanganeh, Lila Azam. 2005.“Out of Africa.” New York Times Book Review, June 12, 39. Zolberg,Vera. 1993. “Remaking Nations: Public Culture and Post-Colonial Discourse.” In Paying the Piper: Causes and Consequences of Arts Patronage, ed. Judith Balfe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Note s on Contributor s

Chris N. Burgess is a visiting assistant professor in the arts management program at the College of Charleston (South Carolina). He is completing work on a PhD in cultural policy from The Ohio State University, where he was a Barnett Fellow from 2003 to 2005. Joni Maya Cherbo is a sociologist who has taught and written extensively about the arts and cultural policy. She has served on a number of New York City art institution boards and committees and was the research director of the 1997 American Assembly,The Arts and Public Purpose. She headed the team that developed the 2006 National Arts Policy Roundtable for Americans for the Arts. Ellen Dissanayake is an independent scholar, writer, and lecturer whose writings about the arts synthesize many disciplines and draw upon fifteen years of living and working in non-Western countries. Author of three books and numerous scholarly and popular articles, she is currently an affiliate professor in the School of Music at the University of Washington, Seattle. Ann M. Galligan is associate professor and codirector of the Cultural and Arts Policy Research Institute at Northeastern University. She is executive editor of the Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society and serves as the research director for the Rhode Island Arts Learning Network. Maria Rosario Jackson is a senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Center at the Urban Institute and director of UI’s Culture, Creativity and Communities Program. Her research focuses on urban policy, neighborhood revitalization and community planning, the politics of race, ethnicity, and gender in urban settings, and the role of arts and culture in communities. Antoinette J. Lee’s career covers historic preservation,American architectural history, and the history of the Washington, DC area. She holds a PhD in 213

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American Civilization from George Washington University and has worked for the National Park Service and National Trust for Historic Preservation. Kevin V. Mulcahy, is the Sheldon Beychok Distinguished Professor of political science and public administration at Louisiana State University. He has been an exchange professor at Université de Provence in Aix-en-Provence, Sun Yat Sen University (Taiwan), and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Montreal. Phu Nguyen is an attorney at the law firm of Irell & Manella LLP in Los Angeles. She studied art history at Stanford University and received her JD from Yale Law School. David B. Pankratz is a senior consultant with EmcArts Inc. He has also held senior positions with the J. Paul Getty Trust, Independent Commission on the NEA, and Urban Gateways, and is coeditor, with Valerie B. Morris, of The Arts in a New Millennium and The Future of the Arts. J. P. Singh teaches and researches international trade and negotiations, international cultural policies, and global development at Georgetown University. The author of three books and more than forty articles, he is also the editor of Blackwell Journal Review of Policy Research. Ruth Ann Stewart is clinical professor of public policy at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She has been an associate director and senior policy analyst in arts, humanities, and social legislation at the Congressional Research Service, the research and analysis arm of the U.S. Congress. In 1986 she was appointed Assistant Librarian of Congress for National Programs. Harold L.Vogel writes and speaks on investment topics related to entertainment and media, leisure, and travel. He is the author of entertainment and travel industry economics textbooks for financial analysts and currently heads an independent investment and consulting firm in New York City. He was the senior entertainment industry analyst at Merrill Lynch for seventeen years. Margaret Jane Wyszomirski is director of the Ohio State University Graduate Program in Arts Policy and Administration and former director of the Georgetown University Public Policy Program. In 1990, she was staff director of the bipartisan Independent Commission on the National Endowment for the Arts. From 1991 to 1993, she was director of the NEA Office of Policy, Planning, Research and Budget.

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Physics in the Arts

Patron of the Arts

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