January 30, 2004

White House Seeks Raise For the Arts

After years of being noisily vilified and then quietly rebuilt, the National Endowment for the Arts is poised to get a 15 percent raise, its largest in 20 years. Laura Bush delivered the news yesterday.

At a news conference at the NEA headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, the first lady announced that the White House would recommend to Congress next week that the NEA receive an additional $18 million each year for the next three years to underwrite an initiative called "American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius." Among other things, the money will give a boost to the beleaguered Martha Graham Dance Company.

" 'American Masterpieces' will introduce Americans to the best of their cultural and artistic heritage," Mrs. Bush said. "American arts are a reflection of our history and of the creativity of the human spirit. An appreciation and an understanding of the arts is vitally important for every American, especially for children, who will be the painters and the musicians and the actors of tomorrow."

Laura Bush, a former teacher and librarian, emphasized the benefits of art exposure for children, but the new NEA program is designed for "every level of learning." NEA Chairman Dana Gioia said the program would highlight the country's achievements in all arts forms, "from painting to modern dance, theater to jazz, classical music to literature."

The work will be available through touring shows, local presentations and arts education. The first year would feature dance, visual arts and music. The visual programs could include exhibitions on the paintings of the Hudson River School, pop art, southwestern Latino art or American photography, Gioia said. Partners for those tours could include Philadelphia's Barnes Foundation, the National Portrait Gallery and the U.S. Mint. He said the musical emphasis the first year would be on American choral masterpieces, which would likely include productions by singing groups VocalEssence of Minnesota and Chanticleer of San Francisco.

Because dance companies have such a hard time mounting tours, the NEA's support of traveling productions by the Graham company and the Paul Taylor Dance Company should be particularly welcomed by dance supporters. Graham, a genre-bending icon who reinvented the notion what dance could be, died in 1991. A legal battle over the rights to her choreography made it virtually impossible for the Graham company to stage any of her famous works, until a 2002 court decision cleared away the restrictions.

"They will be able to do what they haven't done," Gioia said. He added, that even though reintroduction of past work is key, "this is not designed to feature only the historic works of the canon."

Even though this is a new program, the grants will go through the standard NEA selection process. Gioia said the arts organizations will then decide what to perform.

If approved by Congress, the endowment's fiscal 2005 budget would stand at $139.4 million, up from the $121 million it received this year. This is still substantially lower than the record $176 million the NEA was given in 1992. Three years later a Republican-led Congress slashed the agency's appropriation to $99.4 million as an expression of anger over NEA funding for what some lawmakers perceived as obscene and objectionable art. The NEA fought for its life and slowly began to achieve a turnaround, gaining bipartisan support in the budget battles of 2000 and 2001.

The endowment's retooling came through developing a broad strategy of targeting underserved communities for artistic enrichment and funds, as well as designing programs that received specific blocks of money from Congress. "American Masterpieces" follows that pattern. Gioia said the new programs were not being launched at the expense of existing efforts. Last year the NEA approved 2,000 grants. Among other things, the theater grants supported 138 new plays. "In a democracy arts are not for the happy few, but for everyone," he said.

Days before the announcement of the president's budget message to Congress, Laura Bush has been happily leaking details of the proposal. Last week at a ceremony for recipients of national museum and library awards, she said the Institute for Museum and Library Services would also be getting more money. The museum component is slated for a $10 million increase, and the library segments $12 million.

The National Endowment for the Humanities will most likely also get an overall increase, said a Bush administration source. A source familiar with the budget says the White House will suggest a $23 million increase for the endowment's "We the People" history education initiative, which would make it the largest competitive grant program in NEH history. Last year's suggested appropriation of $25 million was cut back by Congress to $10 million.

In my former life before 9/11, I was an art historian and this positive step by the Bush Administration delights me! Yes!
The arts are an integral part of what makes a society great and don't doubt it for a moment!
(Ask the French. They're still coasting on Impressionism!)
Speaking of the French, I hope you're aware that the US took the artistic lead from them in painting after WWII and their liberation by us; the Abstract Expressionist movement led by Jackson Pollock in the late 1940's established the USA as an artistic superpower, along with our military superiority.
Before I got my M.A. in Art History in the early 1990's, I didn't know that there was such a thing as "American Art;" now, it's my favorite!
This article about the NEA boost mentions the Hudson River School, a group of landscape painters in upstate New York in the latter half of the 19th Century who captured the wilds of the Catskills and the Hudson River Valley for all time.
If you haven't enjoyed the works of Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Martin Johnson Heade and Thomas Kinsett, you don't know your own country's marvelous cultural history!
This article also mentions the Barnes Foundation in Philly: the Barnes is a national, indeed a world, treasure of Impressionist and African art which is in real financial trouble!
Founded by Dr. Albert Barnes, who made his fortune on baby eye medicine, it holds the world's largest collection of Renoirs, as well as considerable Matisses and Cézannes, as well as good canvases by other masters like Van Gogh and Picasso.
It seems the private money of the foundation has run out and the state of Pennsylvania, in the person of Clintonista Liberal Lefty Governor Ed Rendell , is trying to get his hands on the collection not to save it, but to sell it!
Needless to say, these art works are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
If the US government were able to step in and buy this collection on the behalf of all of we taxpayers, it would be wonderful!
(And this would make the proposed increased expenditure for the NEA of a mere $18 million more than pay for itself!)
Should the state of Pennsylvania get its hands on this collection, Ed Rendell and his fellow Democrat fat cats will break it up and sell it off, after raking off a nice "fee" for themselves, I'm sure! Then, they'll spend the millions in proceeds on their latest Liberal boondoggle(s), not caring that these irreplaceable works of art will go to minor potentates in Japan, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland (like financier Mark Rich!), where they'll never be seen and appreciated again.
Furthermore, Dr. Barnes appointed the trustees of the African-American college Lincoln University to be custodians of the art after his death.
They seemingly don't know what treasures they're protecting and have come close, through indecision and disinterest mostly, to just "letting" Rendell and the state of PA "take it off their hands." Mistake.
What the Barnes really needs is a new home--the art isn't displayed very well in its present location-- and that site, in Merion, is too far out of the way for many to make the trip, being particularly far from the Philadelphia Museum of Art downtown and the heart of Philly's culture.
If the NEA could help fund and find a new museum home for the Barnes and keep it together, it would be a huge cultural asset for the American people and it could be worked out that Lincoln University could be the beneficiary of museum patronage (a 2-fer!).
Some of the best pieces of the Barnes went on tour about 10 years ago (Finally! The Barnes had been virtually inaccessible to the public for decades due to Dr. Barnes's eccentric "rules.") and I was lucky enough to have seen it in Ft. Worth at the divine Kimbell Art Museum.
Let me assure that the collection is stunning.
The Musée d'Orsay in Paris has very little over the Barnes Collection.
(Read all about the Barnes and its woes in this newly released book:Art Held Hostage: The Battle over the Barnes Collection)
I am ashamed that my fellow Conservatives are carping at President Bush for adding some dollars to the NEA and NEH budgets!
Why should the arts be the sole province of the Left?
Does being conservative mean that we have to be illiterate and uncultured rubes?
The NEA was set up by LBJ as part of his "Great Society," so it should come as no surprise that it became the turf of Liberals. Perhaps for the last decade or so, they were the only ones paying attention to American arts and letters.
The Left is always seeking to infiltrate new areas of life and new venues for their shoddy way of thinking, not to mention new places they can park "pork" funds from taxpayers like you and me!
The NEA gave them a perfect outlet to do both, while advancing their Liberal political goals at the same time.
Is it any wonder that our hard-earned money has been channeled in the past to Mapplethorpe's photos of sadomasochistic gay sex or Serano's crucifix in urine?
By increasing the budget, President Bush is making a positive step in reclaiming the fine arts for America, to whom it belongs and which speak of the greatness of the American spirit!
I just read up on Dana Gioia, a learned Californian of Italian and Mexican descent who was the first member of his family to go to college...all the way to Harvard!, but I knew of Bruce Cole, whom Bush put in charge of the NEH, as a fine art historian and Italian Renaissance art scholar from my own post-graduate studies.
Apparently, he is going to launch this "We the People" American history initiative and while I wasn't blessed with children, I can tell from my online reading that America's school kids need plenty of help in that department!
I have found as a middle-aged adult, though, that much of my learning has taken place after my formal education was over, so I think that many of we grown-ups are going to benefit from better supported arts and humanities programs!
Remember, too, that Art is one of the finer human achievements that we're fighting this war for.
The Taliban, led by OBL, was adamant about blowing up those Buddhas in Afghanistan several months before 9/11.
Islamic societies who practice the more severe forms of shar'ia like the Taliban and the mullahs in Iran make it a point to ban music, art ("images of man"),and dance (where women are scantily clad).
I'll bet that Theatre and Film aren't even mentioned they're so taboo--I haven't forgotten how the Afghans unburied their TVs after we routed the Taliban and then rushed out to watch previously banned Bollywood films!
I don't have to tell you that America has a rich heritage of culture, but you should look into it if you're not sure or are "hopping mad" about President Bush spending your tax money on something that you think is "useless."
Great countries with great leaders are known to produce great art: when Queen Elizabeth I led Great Britain, there was the Elizabethan Age from which we have Shakespeare.
In the 15th Century, the city-state of Florence ruled by the De Medicis helped produce the Renaissance.
Contemporary "art" of the 1990's like Mapplethorpe's and Serano's, to cite the 2 most egregious examples, reflect the decadence, vapidity and meaninglessness that dominated our society at the end of the last century, sad to say.
Our "holiday from history" was captured in what was thought of as "art" as well as in our films, lifestyle choices and Oval Office adultery.
On 9/11/01, we came to our national senses and rediscovered what was great about ourselves and our history as well as the greatness of what we could become in the future.
What's to say that America in the 21st Century might not very well produce a "Bush Age" or Neo-Renaissance in the arts, culture and literature?
By upping the funding for our national arts program, a production of "good" art work that portrays American Beauty is much more likely than to leave it to its old Liberal "masters" at the NEA who funded projects with their Leftist PC political agenda and not an aesthetic one at the forefront of their minds.
From John Singleton Copley's portrait of Paul Revere to Helen Frankenthaler's latest "color field" abstractions, Americans are second to none (including the French!) in art, as in military might and economic vibrancy!
Check it all out and give President Bush and Lady Laura a break!
This is going to be good!
And if I haven't interested you non-"arty" citizens about the wonderful world of American Art, I'm certain that Sister Wendy can do a much better job!