Case for Funding a Healthy Arts Ecosystem
Ian Moss at Createquity makes a compelling case for arts philanthropy that focuses on infrastructure and avoids self-perpetuating cults of personality:
I don’t think it’s incumbent upon foundations to judge artistic merit. There are plenty of other people in this world who are perfectly capable of doing that, and arguably more qualified: curators, journalists, other artists, audience members themselves. Where foundations can add value instead is in setting up and supporting systems by which artistic activity is generated in their communities.
This makes a lot of sense to me, and not just from a self-interested standpoint. Let’s pull back for a second and get some context. Institutional funders, especially the old guard stalwarts, are notoriously risk averse. A common strategy (whether conscious or unconscious) for reducing the likelihood of misguided grants is to establish funding legacies. Funders identify successful individuals or institutions and fund them year after year, often for the same or similar activities.
This is an understandable impulse. Identifying and nurturing new visions is difficult work. Today’s avant garde is next year’s status quo, so you’re perpetually on a treadmill. Some people thrive on that kind of challenge, and I applaud them for their service. But the best discoverers of artistic talent, nine times out of ten, are working directly in the field as producers, promoters, curators, etc. I should confess that I spent several years trying to do that myself, and while I won’t admit to complete failure, suffice it to say that if I had been good enough at that kind of work I’d probably still be a producer today.
The most important decision I ever made at Fractured Atlas was our late 2001 shift from a curatorial strategy to a wide open one. By accepting that I lacked the vision or wisdom to reliably identify the next Jackson Pollack or even Richard Foreman, I democratized our whole approach to supporting the arts community. The new goals were about leveling the playing field by providing resources and tools that reduced the likelihood that real talent would be squashed by bad luck or poor access to vital services. Ultimately Fractured Atlas helps our industry’s “market forces” function more effectively by limiting the often significant impact of non-artistic factors (e.g. healthcare, funding, technology).
At the risk of tooting my own horn, I can report with confidence that this approach has worked surprisingly well. I’ve seen talented but undiscovered members in our fiscal sponsorship program go from raising $500/year to $50,000/year. When the work is good enough, money finds it. We just grease the wheels by handling the non-artistic stuff like IRS compliance and charities bureau filings.
Popular clichés notwithstanding, genius doesn’t get “discovered”. It makes itself known through perseverance and artistic quality that is compelling enough that it gets people talking. But for the system to work we need a healthy ecosystem. Infrastructure matters. Resources matter.
Which brings me back to Ian’s post… He’s essentially advocating a similar philosophy from a philanthropic perspective. By trusting “market forces” and investing in our industry’s infrastructure, institutional funders can maximize their impact while reducing their exposure to curatorial risk. It’s less sexy than playing Lorenzo de’ Medici, but then again it’s also less likely to get you stabbed in a Cathedral.
Happy New Year!
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Adam, its interesting to read your blogs, especially when I disagree with you! Here’s two thoughts related to recent postings. While I agree that funders should support infrastructure, I also think they should take risks. Eli Lee of the Center for Civic Policy makes a convincing argument that it is funder’s duty to take and support risks - that’s the point of the nonprofit sector, as compared to the marketplace or politics. Foundations get their special tax status because they take the risk to fund what the market may not be able to support or commit to something that is controversial or attempting something new.
The second response is to your questions about the NEA and federal funding - and your argument that decisions should be made more locally. I agree that the NEA is not the answer to all our needs, but I think it is vitally important to have a national conversation about the arts in all of their diversity. A good argument for federal funding for the arts is the comparison with the Civil Rights Movement. In the South it was very important that there was a federal set of principles related to desegregation, and that the country didn’t just rely on what local governments wanted to do. And in the arts, too often, there can be closed-minded local biases against excellent work if it doesn’t conform to narrow standards of art, (or politics for that matter.) The NEA’s Expansion Arts Program provided a means for work by many rural artists and artists of color to be validated when local governments would only support “high art.†I don’t think the federal government should dictate cultural policy, (and I recognize the importance of local decision making) but it can play a progressive leadership role - especially if it develops its policy based on diverse input from the field.
@Caron
Thanks for the insightful response.
I agree that funders can and should take risks. I just think in practice that they rarely do in a meaningful way, so I’m offering a more effective way to be safe! ;-) I also think that Eli Lee’s argument is a bit off target. For profits are much better risk takers in my experience, in part because the financial markets provide well established mechanisms for measuring and justifying risk. In the non-profit sector the upside tends to be wholly intangible and the downside catastrophic! The “point of the nonprofit” sector, in my view, is to provide services that have value to society but that market failures would otherwise prevent anyone from undertaking.
As for the NEA stuff… I don’t think the civil rights movement is a valid analogy. Stopping someone from systematically discriminating against other citizens because of the color of their skin is entirely different from forcing that same person to subsidize works of art that they may well despise. The former prevents the deprivation of liberty, the latter arguably curtails liberty.
Adam, thanks very much for your thoughts on my post and for sharing them with us here. I’m glad you agree with my argument, but I probably wouldn’t characterize the strategy as trusting market forces–after all, market forces are the ones that create the impact of the very non-artistic factors you mention! (healthcare costs, etc.) Perhaps you specifically mean artistic market forces, but here I don’t quite agree either. I think I know what you mean, but I guess I’m of the opinion that artistic quality is so inherently subjective that making those kinds of determinations on a real-time basis is next to impossible. Even the most professional curators choose to promote or ignore based on what is essentially informed personal preference–the only added value that they really bring to the table is the “informed” part. So I think what I’m really advocating is trusting the community–accepting the premise that, on some level, any art is good art because the presence of art in a community will naturally attract others who want to do it well. It’s sort of counterintuitive and a hard case to make to highly analytical people who, as you say, are risk averse. The challenge lies in encouraging them to focus on how much activity they are helping to make possible and not getting hung up so much on whether it’s the “right” activity.
Ian -
I meant “artistic market forces” in the sense that I’m imagining a theoretical ideal arts industry that is completely isolated from non-essential distorting factors (e.g. healthcare). An analogy would be to contemplate the market for New York City real estate if it existed without the specter of terrorism (which distorts various risk factors). It almost makes sense to consider such distortions “market failures” (even if they don’t technically meet the standard criteria).
From this view, professional curators are like professional stock analysts. Both make decisions based on imperfect information as filtered through specialized expertise. Such experts, along with the aggregated choices of “the community”, *are* the “market”.
So I still think we’re saying mostly the same thing, just from a different angle and using different terminology. On the other hand, it’s possible that I’ve completely missed your point twice in a row! ;-)
I think we are saying much the same thing, and your explanation is just the kind that will appeal to the smart businessperson. I just want to make sure that you’re not necessarily equating market success with societal success, even within our little community. I don’t automatically trust the market (even one shaped and focused by “experts”) to make those kinds of determinations any more than I trust program officers to do it. One of the things that I feel strongly about is that art does not have to have wide exposure in order to have significant impact. The history of modern artistic endeavor is full of fringe elements that ended up playing a pivotal role in the genre without ever overcoming their fringe status. Such elements are failures from a (traditional) market standpoint, whether one uses dollars created or eyes/ears reached as the metric, but tremendous successes from an artistic/societal standpoint.
Markets are not infallible and experts are right only slightly more often than non-experts. I think this is true for investment markets as well as the pseudo-market we’re talking about.
Here’s what it comes down to for me:
1) I’m more inclined to trust the aggregate thinking of a community than I am to trust the opinion of any single expert.
2) If you’re interested in supporting artistic quality, then funding organizations like Fractured Atlas is like investing in a mutual fund. You admit that you’re not perfect at finding and recognizing artistic excellence so you try to support as many artists as possible as efficiently as possible. As with a mutual fund, the upside isn’t as great as if you happen to nail one brilliant pick. But brilliant picks are rare and by investing in “the market” you maximize the likelihood that you’ll have a positive impact.