
Some experts are estimating that the current economic meltdown will result in as many as 100,000 American non-profits closing their doors in the next two years. Of course, this is bad news.
But could there be a silver lining at the end of the firestorm? Even a reason for optimism?
I am reminded of a meeting I had in 1995 with the head of corporate giving for a major corporate sponsor of the opera company I was then running. We were sitting in one of many beautifully appointed conference rooms overlooking the Charles River, reviewing our company's application for renewed funding, somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000, not a big sum to the woman with whom I was meeting, but certainly substantial to a small company with an annual budget well under a million dollars.
In the midst of reviewing our proposal, she asked "How would you say your work is improving people's lives? Could you put it in one paragraph?" I launched into a monologue about empowering underserved communities by exposing their stories to the community at large through our interactive workshops in which case histories were often transformed into the plots of new operas. I described the blind folk who had attended our recent production, a collaboration with the Museum of Science in which we designed and mounted a musical performed in total darkness, told through sound and smell alone. I told heart-warming stories of the mentally ill and their overwhelming response to our piece based entirely on the works of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and others who suffered from depression.
It wasn't until years later that such conversations—and believe me, I had dozens of them during my tenure—began to trouble me for their broader implications.
As government funding dried up—first under Ronald Reagan and then under Bush and Clinton—the burden on the arts to justify their existence in terms of serving the needs of some hard-to-define Greater Good, seemed to increase exponentially. NEA panels had always been peer review panels, comprised mainly of established artists in any given field. Corporate boards and foundation boards were peopled with managers, consultants, attorneys and accountants, people who with nothing but the best intentions looked to find easily quantifiable justification for every dollar spent.
But art that is forced to prove itself worthy even before it is created will never rise to the level of true artistic expression. By definition it is doomed to fail for it is yoked to the cultural prejudices of the current climate and cannot break free if it is subject to "greenlighting" in corporate board rooms.
Is it possible that with the supply of "Greater Good" funding dried up, arts organizations might return to their roots—a pure and often inexplicable passion for producing whatever it is they produce? Period. With no fancy sociological justifications?
Wouldn't that be... swell?
Imagine going to see a new play, opera or installation that simply grew out of an artist's imagination without any underlying socio-political agenda. Wow!
There was one such project here in New York in recent years. Christo's The Gates in Central Park attempted nothing more than to be a stunning undertaking and the result was one of the most breathtakingly awesome gifts our city has ever received.
Should we be surprised that it took the artist three decades to obtain our consent?