Culture Has No Infrastructure - Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies

The New York Times

August 9, 1999, Monday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Page 15; Column 1; Editorial Desk

HEADLINE: Culture Has No Infrastructure

BYLINE: By Alice Goldfarb Marquis; Alice Goldfarb Marquis is the author of "Art Lessons: Learning From the Rise and Fall of Public Arts Funding."

LA JOLLA, Calif. The Pew Charitable Trusts, a $4.7 billion foundation known primarily for studies in politics and journalism, announced plans to spend $50 million over the next five years developing a "national policy" for arts and culture. In my opinion, this astounding amount of money isn't going to be well spent.

In an effort to unearth what a Pew press release called an "organizing framework" for this country's "remarkable cultural richness," the trusts will first send largess for an 18-month study by the Rand Corporation. Then it apparently will spend millions lobbying politicians to lavish more attention on the arts; it even hopes that for the Presidential race next year the parties will establish "a cultural policy plank in their platforms."

The point is, however, that American culture is so rich precisely because it has no organizing framework. In music alone, the marketplace and a patchwork of private and public financing support a dizzy spectrum, from hard-edged rappers to retro-swing toe-tappers to half the world's symphony orchestras (and 15 of the 20 best). In the 18 months that Rand's experts plod through their study, how many chamber ensembles will spring up, and how many will give up the ghost?

In any case, we already have something of a public arts policy: the tax deduction for contributions to nonprofit organizations, a device unique in the world. Encouraged by the tax deduction, gifts for the arts from individuals, corporations and bequests have steadily mounted in the last two decades; total giving to cultural endeavors surpasses $11 billion a year. Donors include 10 percent of all households, and more than 18 million Americans volunteer in some area of the arts.

Efforts to shape the nation's cultural offerings have always yielded poor results. For much of this century, elite patrons greed informally on a set of pious definitions that dissuaded the masses from getting involved: that high art is more worthwhile than popular art, that exposing children to high art will hook them into lifelong devotion.

But these benefactors, along with the intellectuals and critics of the era, largely overlooked the most vital American contributions to world culture. First they sneered at comics, ragtime, jazz and movies. In the 1920's, they badgered George Gershwin over his Broadway success. So strong was this current against the accessible that Leonard Bernstein agonized in his later years that he would be remembered only for "West Side Story."

Then, in the 60's, the National Endowment for the Arts was developed, in part to democratize the cultural landscape. Its creators wanted to encourage an avant-garde while amply supporting the traditional. It sought excellence but relied on patronage-wielding peer panels to nourish it. Applicants were seemingly judged more on their ability to write grant applications than on their ability to write plays. Today the N.E.A. hangs by a budgetary thread.

Now the Pew's cultural program officer points to the N.E.A.'s paltry financing as a sign of "a declining interest in culture." But Federal statistics show there is no crisis. From 1980 to 1995, the numbers of professional theaters and dance troupes held steady, art museum attendance boomed, opera was on a roll, and the jazz scene expanded.

The sad cultural news emanates most persistently from symphony orchestras, where attendance has sagged from a peak reached in 1988. Still, few have shut down: since it is unthinkable for such civic ornaments to go under, local and state governments put them on life support.

The most crucial aspect of public involvement with the arts is precisely this lack of structure. Millions of donors support what they like. This may be messy, but so is American culture. And policy is the last thing it needs.