Romney Vows to Eliminate National Arts Funding

Photograph by Matthew Cavanaugh/McClatchy Tribune

In another entry in the politicalization, and polarization, of Art in the United States, Fortune magazine leaked this excerpt from a forthcoming interview with Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney: 

First there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs — the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of these things, like those endowment efforts and PBS I very much appreciate and like what they do in many cases, but I just think they have to stand on their own rather than receiving money borrowed from other countries, as our government does on their behalf.

As we've written before, in the case of the Kansas Arts Veto, this represents a sad confluence of forces, of Culture Wars bullet points that impose a political rhetoric on artmaking itself (liberal, Blue State) and ignore, on the most basic level, the role nationally-funded arts have played in American Democracy, and even in "family values." Further, this ignores the overwhelming data suggesting how -- beyond the intangible benefits of artmaking -- such creative collaborations can transform local economies. The notion of "creative placemaking," which the NEA has brought to life in its Our Town grants for the last two years, is the most significant example of this thinking and its presence in the daily lives of folks across the country. 

As Ezra Klein wrote last week in the Washington Post, the cuts proposed above would not drastically alter the budget outlook. Reading between the lines here, it's clear that the Arts have yet again (along with Amtrak) found themselves caught in the crosshairs of reductive political rhetoric:

Here’s how it breaks down: In fiscal year 2012, the federal government spent $1.42 billion on Amtrak, $444 million on PBS, and $146 million on the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. Getting rid of all these subsidies would have saved the government about $2 billion this year — chump change relative to the scale of cuts that Romney wants.

Undoubtedly, we are in a national moment where properly-applied fiscal responsibility is necessary. Regardless of our political persuasion, and of our level of engagement with the arts, we must also recognize the necessity of fiscal creativity. 

Related Articles:

Responding to the Kansas Art Veto

The NEA and Creative Placemaking in Rural America

ArtPlace: Creative Placemaking in Rural America

ArtPlace: Creative Placemaking In Rural America

Roadside Culture Stand, The Wormfarm Institute; Katrin Talbot, Verse Wisconsin

Over the past few years we've frequently linked to the work of ArtPlace, a collaborative organization comprised of a number of foundations, federal entities, and banks that operates with a mission to promote creative placemaking across the United States. Unlike other organizations with interest in this term, ArtPlace emphasizes the role of the rural in contemporary American art and culture.

Last week ArtPlace announced 47 new grants, eight of which were specifically allocated, as large grants, to rural projects. In their announcement, "Creative Placemaking: Not Just For Cities,"  we learn of how these eight projects promise to manifest cultural and economic sustainability for their regions:

For decades, rural communities in the U.S. have seen steep declines in population as the next generation of youth follows employment to larger metropolitan areas. For these small towns and counties, there is a deep need to attract and retain talent – and art often “punches above its weight” when it comes to making places more vibrant so that people want to stay, says Carol Coletta of ArtPlace.

“Creative placemaking isn’t just for cities,” explained Coletta.  “These rural arts projects demonstrate that smart investments in art, design and culture as part of a larger portfolio of revitalization strategies can change the trajectory of communities and increase economic opportunities for people, whether the setting is rural or urban.”

Please find the supported projects below, with links to their work, and an informational trailer for the project. Much more information on ArtPlace can be found here:

Art-Force Program – $485,000 – Public Art Collaborative – Siler City, Greenville and Sanford, NC

Artists, art, and design are at the center of manufacturing renewal in three North Carolina communities through this cross-sector program that places artists in residence at under-capacity manufacturing plants and supports the production of artist-conceived and designed works.

Artsipelago – $250,000 – Quoddy Tides Foundation d/b/a Tides Institute & Museum of Art – Eastport, ME

Betting on art as the centerpiece of an economic comeback, Artsipelago will rebrand and connect a number of established efforts as well as develop artist live/work space and studio space to drive arts participation and ultimately talent retention in this rural, multicultural, coastal archipelago.

The Higher Ground Project – $273,000 – Higher Ground Coalition/The Appalachian Program at Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College – Cumberland, KY

This participatory community arts project and the coalition behind it will transform spaces to catalyze economic development by connecting art, design and commerce in a rural Appalachian coalfield county.

Paradise Garden Revival – $445,000 – Chattooga County, Georgia – Summerville, GA

The restoration and rehabilitation of the home studio and outdoor art environment of famed American folk artist Howard Finster in Summerville, Georgia will create an exciting anchor to increase cultural tourism and entrepreneurial economic development.

Sitka Arts Campus – $350,000 – Alaska Arts Southeast, Inc. (AAS) – Sitka, AK

Alaska Arts Southeast will transform a closed National Historic Landmark college into a multidimensional arts campus, bringing new life to rural Southeast Alaska.

Magic City Lofts – portion of $1,000,000 – Artspace – Minot, ND
In Minot, North Dakota, Artspace is developing a mixed-use arts facility that will bring new vibrancy to the cityʼs flood-ravaged historic downtown and create a new art gallery featuring Native American artists.

Wormfarm Institute’s Food Chain – $75,000 – Wormfarm Institute – Sauk County, WI

Marrying the local food movement with the arts, Wormfarm Institute will create an arts-infused caravan of mobile farm stands delivering a marketplace of food, art, and ideas throughout its eight-county region

Related Articles:

The NEA And Creative Placemaking In Rural America

Responding To The Kansas Arts Veto

Kansas Governor Brownback signing the 2012 state budget; John Hanna

[Editor's Note: As I am facing numerous writing deadlines, this seems like a good time to give a retrospective glance to the first two years of Art of the Rural. Over these weeks I will feature a few new articles, but also many favorites from the archives. Thanks again to everyone who has read and contributed; what began as a labor of love has become a project far larger, and far more rewarding, than I ever could have anticipated - and I deeply appreciate the readership and participation of such a diverse audience. Starting March 19th, we will offer new articles and share some new projects related to our mission.

Responding To The Kansas Arts Veto was originally published on June 21, 2011. To learn more about how national foundations only give 1% of their funds to rural America, please see our article here.]

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As many of our readers have heard, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback used the power of his line-item veto to erase funding for the Kansas Arts Commission from the 2012 state budget, a move that effectively shut down the organization and fired its staff. By deleting this state-sponsored entity, Governor Brownback also shut the door on matching funds The National Endowment for the Arts would have granted to the Kansas Arts Commission. 

Today we'd like to offer some viewpoints and commentary on this issue and its devastating repercussions for rural communities. We'll begin with this recent NPR report by Elizabeth Blair, aired on Morning Edition last week. Ms. Blair's piece is an excellent introduction to this debate, and to the contrary opinions by some in the arts community that suggest private funding would be a more effective and more liberating avenue. Below is an excerpt:

Private dollars have been really good for the Topeka Civic Theatre and Academy where Shannon Reilly is artistic director. The company is celebrating its 75th year. "Through most of that history we've been funded solely through ticket revenue, donors and corporate support," Reilly says.

Reilly says for the most part, they have avoided government grants and that has worked to their advantage. "More and more I've seen that arts organizations ... receiving tax dollars were constantly under fire about their programming and what they were doing," Reilly explains. "I like being responsible to my donors and to the people who were investing in what were doing more than a larger tax base."

While this model is certainly attractive, only at the close of her piece does Ms. Blair allow for this harsh reality: private funding for the arts is likely to replace (or exceed) public funding only in urban areas. We can turn to this Kansas Citizens for the Arts press release for further analysis of the rural dimension to Governor Brownback's arts veto: 

“With a stroke of his pen, the governor cost the State of Kansas $1.2 million,” said Henry Schwaller, chairman of the Kansas Arts Commission. “On July 1, nearly 200 local arts organizations and artists will lose critical support for local arts programs, operational funding and professional development. Without this support, jobs in the arts are at risk, and artists and arts organizations will lose the important infrastructure that has been created largely because of the funding and expertise of the Kansas Arts Commission.

Kansas Arts Commission grants were crucial to many organizations, particularly those in rural areas. If an organization received funds from the Kansas Arts Commission, donors were more likely to contribute to that organization, which leveraged additional dollars for the organization and its community. Because few foundation or corporate donors provide money for operations, the Kansas Arts Commission’s main grant program, Operational Support, was an important way organizations covered general expenses such as rent, utilities and salaries. Many organizations, particularly those in rural or impoverished areas, will find it difficult to replace the lost state and federal funds and will either restrict or eliminate important community programs, cut staff or close their doors.

The horrible irony here is that Governor Brownback's veto will disproportionately affect the life of the rural communities from which he has drawn overwhelming political support. His gambit overlays a national "culture wars" argument on the local arts programming in towns far removed from urban centers.  As The Kansas City Star writes in a recent editorial, Governor Brownback is "hoping to make points with conservatives nationally," while ignoring the local and regional dynamics:

As was the case with Brownback’s misguided attack on public broadcasting, he’s applying a national conservative cause to his home state, without considering the damaging impact on rural areas. Public broadcasting provides one of the only sources of news and information in the sparsely populated western half of the state. Urban areas, the target of this notion, have other options and can replace public funding. The elimination of public arts funding, again, isn’t likely to hurt the Kansas City area as much as Lincoln County, Kan.

As rural developers know well, while technology makes it possible to create new business in the high plains, new business will consider quality of life as much, perhaps more, than tax advantages. Brownback has handed surrounding states an effective tool to beat Kansas communities looking to attract doctors and needed professionals.

In the space of this site, we've tried to document and also to complicate the notion of "the rural arts," but Governor Brownback's arts veto sets a giant and unmistakable corrective in the midst of this project. While we can turn to The Daily Yonder and The Rural Blog for their excellent and consistent coverage toward defining what's at stake in the organizing "rural" moniker, there's another dimension to the other half, the "arts" definition, that we at The Art of the Rural have been perhaps slow to cover--and it lurks beneath the articles excerpted above.

This would be the irreducible political element, voluntary or not, that always coheres around the reception of the rural arts. What we find here is an amalgamation of regional assumptions, as well as preconceived notions about the "place" of the arts; in many respects it's a remnant of the politically polarizing climate of post-9/11 America. To return to the dreaded red-state/blue-state mindset (as I intimately learned while living in Boston), a great deal of people from the larger urban and suburban centers of America implicitly view arts-making as a "blue state" activity, complete with its own ideologies and politics.

What the Kansas arts veto makes abundantly clear is that even some public leaders from the interior of this country--despite a wealth of evidence beneath their noses--have refused to challenge this cultural orthodoxy, despite how reductive and just plain-wrong it might be. This is not a Republican vs. Democrat or conservative vs. liberal argument, but a case of recognizing that the arts are vital to all communities, and that they can speak for a range of viewpoints and cultural histories beyond the boogey-men of Robert Maplethorpe nudes or Chris Ofili elephant dung paintings.

In turn, those of us making art and working to ensure its reception need to continue to stress its "site specific" nature, and we need to welcome work which challenges our own political and cultural orthodoxies. 

In closing, we will offer an excerpt from last weekend's Kansas City Star editorial by Joyce DiDonato, arguably the most acclaimed opera singer in contemporary classical music. Born in Prairie Village, Kansas, Ms. DiDonato has spoken up for her home state in interviews around the world, and in the press following her award of the illustrious Gramophone "Artist of the Year" in 201o. (Her broken-leg performance of The Barber of Seville has become the stuff of opera legend.) 

Here is an excerpt from Ms. Didonato's eloquent response to Governor Brownback's decision:

This is the Sunflower State that I have proudly boasted about across the world, fearlessly defending it even in the face of harsh quizzical looks from the most skeptical of folks (“You live where?”). It’s the state of my first piano recital and choir concert. The home field of my artistic curiosity and education. The homeland that taught me to freely dream big and without limitation; one where the arts were once alive, vibrant and supported.

I’ve welcomed the assumption of being an unsolicited but mightily proud artistic ambassador for Kansas to the great cities of the world. Now, for the first time, I feel shame. Eliminating a state arts commission is an ignorant, short-sighted, fearful and unspeakably damaging act to the spirit and soul of this great state.

I’m not a politician or historian. I’m a humble opera singer, a home-grown product of an agricultural state that used to value the arts, like all great societies and cultures of the past. But my anger rivals a good ol’ western Kansas Category 5 tornado’s destructive force when I begin to think of where I’d be without an education fueled by the arts that informed my way of thinking. Or without a community theater, choir or art exhibit that gave me true solace and an emergency exit from some of the great crises in my life. Or without that musical outlet that helped me understand myself and the mystery of life a little better.

The NEA And Creative Placemaking In Rural America

selection from the cover to the NEA Arts Magazine

On Monday we discussed Double Edge Theatre, a visionary laboratory theatre group that can help to expand the dialogue of what's happening--and what's possible--in rural America and the rural arts. This effort continues today, and is aided by the recent issue of the NEA Arts Magazine, which is entirely devoted to how rural arts and culture organizations are enriching their local and regional places.

Rachel Reynolds Luster and I will be covering each of these organizations in greater detail, but I wanted to make sure that our readers had heard of this issue's publication so that they can peruse it and send the Magazine around to friends and colleagues. Following the link above will lead to a pdf, as well as a wealth of online features--including some well-produced videos. Here is the NEA's introduction to this publication; I'll include links to each organization:

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the United States has turned from a mostly agrarian, rural country into an urban, industrialized one. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, nowadays only about a fifth of the population live in rural areas, even though those lands comprise more than three-quarters of the country and are a major source of the nation's resources, culture, and traditions. Rural America may be more connected than ever before -- through the Internet, better phone services, and improved transportation systems -- but it still faces unique problems. As populations moved from rural to urban/suburban communities -- and metropolitan areas expanded into areas that had been rural -- serious problems have been left in their wake: aging and inefficient infrastructure, lack of employment, increased poverty.

This issue of NEA Arts looks at the creative approaches rural communities have been taking with the arts to help improve their communities socially, aesthetically, and economically. In Vermont, the Orton Family Foundation is bringing artists into the community planning process, while in the middle of Arizona's Sonoran Desert, the International Sonoran Desert Alliance has turned an abandoned school into artist housing, leading to new economic growth for the small town of Ajo. Two rural towns in Washington State take different approaches to utilizing the arts to revitalize their communities. On the Fond du Lac Reservation in Minnesota, art is used in a health clinic to promote the Native culture as well as for its healing properties. And in North Carolina, HandMade in America has shown that the traditional arts are a viable, important part of the local economy as well as the local culture.

The NEA Magazine and its web features also consider Donald Judd and his influence in Marfa, Texas (via the Chinati Foundation), the NEA Our Town program, Dave Loewenstein's mural projects, and The Wormfarm Institute in Wisconsin.  (Folks can read our previous articles on Mr. Loewenstein here and Wormfarm here)

The term "creative placemaking" is discussed at great length in an excellent paper by Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa; Creative Placemaking can be downloaded from the NEA here, and there's also a video that offers further information on the concept and its relevance to our current arts discussions: 

In creative placemaking, partners from public, private, non-profit, and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and cultural activities. Creative placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire, and be inspired.

There will be much more soon on all these ideas and these inspiring examples from rural America. Until then, we can enjoy the Magazine and the NEA video work.