Is there a Better Case for the Arts
March 14, 2005 1:09 PM   Subscribe

What Can Art Do for You? We’ve all heard that Art enriches our communities, makes our children smarter, and brings in money and jobs. In response to the recently released RAND study (PDF) which critiqued the arguments made by arts organizations for the funding of the arts, Doug McLennan of ArtsJournal.com invited “11 prominent arts people” to discuss if there is a better way to advocate for the arts. Why do we need to market the arts? Shouldn’t Art advocate for itself? Are there different ways to sell the benefits of the arts in this day and age?
posted by geryon (6 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
From one of the links: it is naïve to assume that in a world that makes most of its decisions on instrumental values, funding organizations (either public or private) are suddenly going to make exceptions for arts organizations.

For what it's worth, this is not considered naive everywhere. There are countries where the state, or local public organisations take it upon themselves to fund artists and art organisations, because it is thought that a living, healthy culture is part of the national identity and that alone gives it a special, exceptional status that has little to do with its instrumental values or expected benefits.
posted by elgilito at 3:16 PM on March 14, 2005


Fascinating reads.

Even though our school's art program draws kids away other private schools, we need to make a case for our worth every single year. The Rand Report and the ensuing discussion you linked are going to be circulated around our department this very afternoon. Thanks for linking them!
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:28 PM on March 14, 2005


Wow, that Rand report was great. Completely different from what I thought it would be.

I think it's always been clear that the best reasons to support the arts and to partake of them are what the report calls "intrinsict" benefits. It's a great--really great--idea to present those intrinsic benefits in a forthright, easily understandable way, to be up front about them and to explain them clearly. In graduate school we read all about the "intrinsic" benefits of the arts by working our way through the philosophy of aesthetics, and I've always wondered why the ideas in that tradition aren't more widely understood and clearly stated. I'll be passing that report out to people who question the value of the arts and who won't be reading Shelley or Eliot anytime soon.

Thanks for the post!
posted by josh at 4:10 PM on March 14, 2005


I'm not all that thrilled by a return to advancing "intrinsic value," even as it's been dressed up in a new outfit by the very smart folks at Rand. To me case making is about language and ideas that make sense to other people, not just to us. I've been in plenty of meetings in which the secretary of the symphony board from some midwestern city tried to convince a member of Congress that classical music "uplifts the soul." I prefer talking about economic impact and reading test scores, even if I cross my fingers and toes while I proudly "make the case."
--Bill Ivey from this link

I'm concerned about these intrinsic benefits. i think that they are much harder to argue, and as the study pointed out, economic and developmental arguments for the arts are very flawed. How can you argue for and describe to someone the importance of supporting art programs by saying that art can "connect people more deeply to the world and open them to new ways of seeing and experiencing the world." (from the Wallace Foundation RAND summary.) If numbers don't seem to convince people to fund non-profit art organizations, how can someone stand in front of a crowd and talk about intrinsic benefits to convince people to reach into their wallets?
posted by geryon at 4:41 PM on March 14, 2005


All in the world we need are artists prepared to suck up to the rich and get commissions. That's what gave us the Italian renaissance.
posted by jfuller at 5:28 PM on March 14, 2005


sell the benefits of the arts in this day and age?

The best art is free. Selling art is like the Professional Smile (see "Excerpt").
posted by stbalbach at 8:30 PM on March 14, 2005


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