NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman on Art: Necessary Because It's Unnecessary

"I would argue that counter-intuitively, and even counter-logically, the value of art turns not on the notion that it is necessary but rather the opposite: we can live without it, but we don’t want to."

-- Rocco Landesman

From the NEA's blog Art Works:

Rocco Delivers the Blashfield Address

May 20, 2011
Washington, DC

On Wednesday, Rocco Landesman delivered the prestigious Blashfield Address at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. The speech, which has been given in the past by luminaries such as John Updike, Robert Frost, Helen Keller, and Louise Glück, commemorated the induction of ten individuals into the academy’s ranks. The NEA sends its congratulations to artists Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Malcolm Morley, and James Turrell; authors Louis Begley and Michael Cunningham; U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove; composers Martin Boykan and Aaron Jay Kernis; architect Robert A.M. Stern; and sculptor-composer Walter De Maria.

Below is the full text of Rocco’s remarks.

“The Play’s the Thing”

2011 Blashfield Foundation Address
Delivered by NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman

Art is necessary because it is unnecessary. I will elaborate in a minute.

I have not been invited to give the Blashfield Address because I have made significant contributions to scholarship or have created remarkable works of art. To paraphrase Max Bialystock: I couldn’t—I was a Broadway producer.

Instead, I am here today because of my current position as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. So I will begin by stepping happily into my assigned role, which is to make the case that the arts—most especially the theatrical arts, of course—are vital, important, and in a word, necessary. On the trading floor, this is called “talking your book,” and it’s what I do almost every day. We have a motto at the NEA, which is a two-word sentence with three meanings (and I think this audience might appreciate a triple entendre): “Art Works.”

The term refers first to the works of art themselves—what we fund at the NEA. Secondly, to the way in which art works on people. That is, the experience of art. And finally it refers to art as work, an important part of our economy and communities.

I have especially emphasized this last part, and have been traveling the country to show how a cultural presence in a neighborhood impacts civic engagement, child welfare, and economic growth. Those are especially useful talking points with Congress during the budget process.

But I would conjecture that not one of us in this room has embarked on a career in the arts (or letters) because of data that shows that art in schools reduces truancy by 35 percent, or that art in a city jumpstarts economic development. Most of us who have made a career in the arts did so because at one point in our lives we had an experience with a work of art that was indelible. The career chose us. This was something we had to do.

But why? What is it about this activity that is so compelling? What makes it so irresistible? This is a question for anthropologists, and they’re not exactly sure.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Opinion: In the Discussion of Cutting Supply, NEA's Landesman Cites the Rude Mechs

Last week NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman opened the conference on new plays at the Arena Stage, Washington, by challenging arts professionals to come to terms with the fact that a 2008 NEA study showed that audience numbers were falling while the number of non-profit arts organizations was surging. He set a tempest swirling in the theatre blogosphere.

Landesman made further points in a blog post today, citing the Rude Mechs (presenting I Can't Believe I'm So Happy at the conference) and others as ensembles worthy of increased support. He said, in part, that he wanted to make two points:

In a follow-up comment, I said that the NEA has been increasing the size of our grants, which means (given a stable budget) necessarily making fewer grants. A number of people took this to mean that the NEA should only fund large institutions. That is totally wrong. I have found no correlation between the size of an organization and its creative output. The best work in this country comes out of organizations across the spectrum of budget size—just look at the offerings from Arena’s #NewPlay Festival, which featured productions from the Foundry Theatre, Ma-Yi, Children’s Theatre Company, and the Rude Mechanicals. All four are deeply worthy of support; none of them is “large.” We should never talk about survival of the largest; we are here to ensure the survival of the most creative and most dynamic.

Two. When I say that “decreasing supply” has to be on the table when talking about the future of not-for-profit arts organizations, in no way do I mean that that is the only thing that should be on the table. Here are some other things that I have lobbed out in conversations:

Increase arts education. We dove deeper into the SPPA data, and discovered that arts education is one of the only reliable predictors of future arts participation. Not age, race, ethnicity, or income level, but arts education. Exposure to the arts—early and often—builds future audiences.

Take advantage of related demand. As we are watching audiences at not-for-profit arts organizations shrink, we are seeing an explosion of demand for singing and dancing. Prime time network television is filled with Dancing With the Stars, American Idol, Glee, and So You Think You Can Dance. Should we dumb down what we are doing as a sector and ask J-Lo to be America’s cultural arbiter? Absolutely not. But to borrow a phrase from Bill Ivey, Americans are hungry for and will seek out an expressive life. Our not-for-profit arts organizations need to also be feeding that hunger with what we offer.

Offer free samples. I have just returned from the opening of the New World Symphony, which is broadcasting concerts for free on the outside of its building. The highest quality video and audio are allowing people to sample what happens inside the concert hall. It is not exactly the same thing as the grocery stores that offer free tastes of hickory-smoked sausage, but if you offer a taste of a high quality product, people will come back for more.

Technology is key in this: the NEA’s Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation shows that people who consume art via the Internet and electronic media are nearly three times as likely to attend live arts events, that they attend a greater number of live events, and that they also attend a greater variety of arts events.

Examine our arts infrastructure. There are 5.7 million arts workers in this country and two million artists. Do we need three administrators for every artist? Resident theaters in this country began as collectives of artists. They have become collectives of arts administrators. Do we need to consider becoming more lightly institutionalized in order to get more creativity to more audiences more often? It might also allow us to pay artists more.

Read Rocco Landesman's full comment at Artworks, the NEA's official blog. . . .

Opinion: Obama Plays It Safe with the Arts, Wall Street Journal

available at the on-line edition

June 11, 2009

Obama Plays It Safe With The Arts

By DAVID A. SMITH

Last week President Barack Obama announced Jim Leach as his choice to lead the National Endowment for the Humanities. Mr. Leach, an Iowa Republican who served 30 years in the House before losing his bid for re-election in 2006, notably went against his party last year by endorsing Mr. Obama, not John McCain, in the presidential race. Now that President Obama has picked Mr. Leach for NEH and Rocco Landesman, a successful Broadway producer, to head the National Endowment for the Arts, the Obama cultural team is complete.

Of the two, Mr. Leach is more surprising -- if only because his cultural qualifications aren't as immediately obvious. But he was a solid supporter of the endowments while in Congress, and both the National Humanities Alliance and Americans for the Arts recognized his contributions. He's also familiar with academia, having recently taught at Harvard and Princeton.

Still, Messrs. Leach and Landesman are probably not the choices initially expected from a president who was being lobbied just a couple of months ago to do something as bold as create a cabinet-level department of arts and culture. These are the choices, rather, of a president who doesn't want this to be a political fight. With these nominations it's also clear that Mr. Obama is not making a statement that great change is needed at either agency. This is not to disparage these choices -- both of which, in addition to being rather surprising, are quite good, at least in the eyes of those who think both endowments are already following a wise course. In fact, given the constituencies that rallied most vociferously behind Mr. Obama in the campaign, his choice of these two men ought to elicit a sigh of relief from conservatives.

Taken together, what might these two nominations mean for the relationship between the government and the arts under the Obama administration? Do they signal any new directions for these agencies?

Not necessarily. Both endowments currently enjoy considerable support in Congress and, given the history of the NEA in particular, this is no small achievement. While some supporters of the arts are quite upset with the direction the NEA has taken in the past few years (more about this later), there's no denying that it's in better shape than it ever has been. It enjoys broad support in Congress in part because it has steered clear of controversy and extended its good effects.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .