Thursday, May 28, 2009
Speak Up!
In June, the Minnesota State Arts Board is hosting public forums on the use of the Legacy Amendment funds. Dates and locations (all across Minnesota) can be found here: http://www.arts.state.mn.us/calendar/public-forums.htm
Please go to one of these events and voice your opinion about how the new money from the "arts amendment" should be used. I know you have ideas about this and I don't want to hear you complain if you don't share those ideas!
Speaking of sharing, the White House wants to hear your stories and ideas about the importance of healthcare reform: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/healthcarestory
We'd love to hear those stories, too, so if you feel like sharing your healthcare story with us - send it to nikki@springboardforthearts.org.
So get out there and make sure that artists are represented locally and nationally!
-laura
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
First Spring
In April, I started working at Springboard for the Arts to create the new Development Consulting Service for small arts organizations. I’m so glad I did! Springboard has totally renewed my passion for creativity, community and empowerment. The world is what we make of it and few people are better at illuminating, moving, provoking and inspiring us than artists.
Just this week I met with a media artist who highlights the successes and accomplishments of the entire arts community, an elder artist and poet from Somalia who wants to unite youth through music, a young rock music musician who wants to promote sustainability, a leader in the dance community who wants to preserve an archive of two decades of African American dance in Minnesota and the director of one of the country’s best community-based arts organizations. These people and projects reminded me of a few things:
1) We are so lucky to live here. The massive numbers of individual artists, the bustling nonprofit arts community, the dedicated arts funders, philanthropists, audiences and thriving professional creative sector are an embarrassment of riches. Each week there is something or someone who inspires us.
2) We need to be creative and smart. Especially in this economic climate, sharing resources, brushing up our business skills, thinking strategically about how the financial and personal health of one affects the health of all is even more important. This year will be remembered for its challenges, but also for how we all learned to stretch, to do more with less. To slow down, think hard and move forward with intention.
3) We have everything we need. Whether its resources, people or ideas, I’m a firm believer that there is plenty to go around once we get out of the way. Sometimes in letting go of ideas about how things were or should be, that the real energy appears. Artists are masters at creative problem solving, making something of nothing, moving people, ideas and energy around until the magic happens.
Springboard’s reason for being is to cultivate an environment for more magic to happen – in your creative work, in the wide-sweeping creative community. And that, is a very good reason to come to work in the morning!
- Betsy
Labels: arts fundraising
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Announcing the “Osgood Dogood” Exhibiting Artists!
Last week, I had the pleasure of conducting a review to select artists for our first-ever visual art exhibition & sale at Springboard’s Osgood Dogood bash. I am pleased to announce this year’s exhibiting artists and to share the difficult task our jury faced!
First of all, we had an awesome response to the open call. Both the number of artists who applied and the breadth and originality of the applicants’ work were humbling. I found myself relieved not to have a say in the voting process (since I organized the applications), as this wouldn't be an easy task...
Our jury (made up of Springboard staff, board of directors and committee members) spent hours silently reviewing work samples and applications. To ensure fairness, each applicant's materials were reviewed blindly (applicants’ names were not revealed until the meeting adjourned) and for an equal amount of time. After the review, each juror was asked to anonymously vote for five applicants.
The jurors struggled to select just five applicants. “Can we really only choose five?” So, we decided it was necessary to choose six artists- instead of five- for the exhibition. (Even so, more whining ensued! "Can we really only choose six?"). It was a tough decision but, after tallying up the votes and further deliberation, the jury unanimously selected six artists who represent a variety of artistic disciplines:
Teresa Cox, paintingBetsy Dollar, collage
Chris Faust, photography
Deborah Foutch, mixed media
Karin Jacobson, jewelry
Kristine O'Brien, batik/lighting
Each artist will exhibit five artworks priced between $100 and $500. In addition, the artists will have extra pieces for sale that are priced under $100. All artwork shown at the Osgood Dogood will be for sale, with 50 percent of proceeds benefiting Springboard for the Arts!
The Osgood Dogood bash is coming up on Friday, June 26 from 7:00 to 11:00pm at the McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul, Minnesota. The event will also feature Springboard performing artists, to be announced. Stay tuned to Springboard’s website for more info and RSVP details.
To everyone who applied for the Open Call: We are in awe of your work. We hope you will apply again for future Springboard exhibition opportunities!
Thank you!
-Nikki
Finding the Smallest Unifying Particle in the Human Universe: An Artistic Theory of Everything
by Eric Booth for Chamber Music magazine
NOTE: I originally received this excellent essay in pdf form via Sharon DeMark. Eric generously gave us permission to make it available here on the blog - I hope this helps more people read this important and insightful piece. - laura
We human beings have a long history of proposing theories to unify disparate truths. This yearning to find a transcendent meaning for separate bodies of evidence may be one of our distinguishing traits. You have probably noticed this impulse in your own life: a series of experiences prompts the sense that something is hidden in the bundle of them. Your inner smarts work on the challenge—rationally, via various unconscious processes, and even while sleeping. The “Aha!” moment of identifying the deeper pattern in the evidence is satisfying and joyful; it launches a whole new set of possibilities for you as a person, as an artist.
I see the separate disciplines and fields within the arts and arts learning in that light because, although they seem to comprise disparate bodies of truth, my gut tells me that meaningful, unifying, common truths await, hidden in plain sight. Truths, that when embraced, can change the status quo.
You would be hard pressed to argue that we are a unified field. Practitioners of different art forms just don’t think of themselves as part of a larger functional entity. Even though multidisciplinary performances and presentations are increasingly common, the various artistic tribes compete more often than they cooperate, believing that the concerns they share are less significant than the ones they face on their own. A regional theater company looks at a choral ensemble and does not see much resemblance; a string quartet looks at a small dance ensemble or a struggling art gallery and does not see itself mirrored there.
Likewise, the divisions within arts education never seem to resolve. We waste energy on the same familial tiffs we have had for decades: disciplinary instruction vs. arts integration, arts education for art’s sake vs. arts education to produce other benefits, certified arts instructors vs. teaching artists, in-school learning vs. all the learning that happens outside of school—and what about the granny who plays the ukulele? These old hostilities, prejudices, and cross-purposes persist within a culture of scarcity, eroding the expansive, inclusive impulses that got us into arts-learning in the first place.
As a consultant, I have had many opportunities to try to build local arts partnerships and consortia; the usual strategy is to identify common goals and thereby foster a joint commitment to actions that will lift all the organizational boats together. Sometimes progress is made, and there are inspiring examples of success in a few cities; more often, the separateness of the participants is palpable and pervasive, caution and distrust remain entrenched, and the proposed partners have no shared language. This last point takes a while to surface, and is hard to admit—each doesn’t really know what the other is talking about, or the separate fields don’t agree on some fundamental point. You don’t believe me? Try discussing with an artist from another discipline what you think creativity really is.
The current painful economic constriction may be the catalyst we need to change our habits of thinking and jump us out of our ruts. As Rahm Emmanuel said when he was appointed White House Chief of Staff: “A crisis is too good an opportunity to waste.”
What Good Is a Unifying Theory, Anyway?
Newton's theory of universal gravitation (1687) provided a unifying explanation for separate bodies of evidence on tidal patterns, Galileo's theory of Earth's gravity, and Kepler’s laws of planetary influence. Adopted by scientists, and then by Western culture at large, Newton’s theory erased the truth as it was known, writing the new understanding of reality and sparking an explosion of inquiry into forces of attraction in physics.
Two and a half centuries later, the term Unified Field Theory (also known colloquially as the Theory of Everything) was coined by Einstein and captures the drive of his mature years to find a deep, unifying truth beneath persistently separate but related bodies of evidence. Einstein sought to explain the distinct forces of relativity, electromagnetism and gravity by discovering the fundamental particles that interact in all.
That ongoing search by physicists later led to quantum mechanics, the formulation of string theory, and—now—searches for the theoretical Higgs boson. Particle physicists know of five fundamental kinds of bosons—the term for the smallest particles in the universe that carries force. Four of the five types have been observed experimentally; these are called gauge bosons. The Higgs boson is hypothesized yet still unseen; but the drive to find it is not theoretical—you may have heard news reports of the recently completed construction of the Large Hadron Collider by the European scientific consortium called CERN. It is an underground, 17-mile-circumference atom smasher near Geneva Switzerland, and the most expensive construction project in human history. At this point, it is the greatest technological hope to provide evidence of the Higgs boson and how it works.
If we come to know how it works, the Higgs boson may unify the currently separate force fields of gravitation, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces. Some physicists believe that the discovery will explain such ultimate mysteries as why matter becomes mass and why there is something instead of nothing. No wonder that the Higgs boson is sometimes called the God particle.
For those outside of particle physics, the search for a unified field theory can be seen as quixotic and pointlessly conceptual, the work of eggheads who can't boil an egg. We live in an aggressively anti-intellectual culture, particularly unfriendly to meta-headed endeavors, but even that bias can’t deflect the truth that the impulse to find unity underneath seemingly disparate phenomena has led to some of the greatest breakthroughs in human understanding.
How Does It Apply to Us?
I believe the time has come for arts educators and others in the arts to grapple with their own unified field theory. We have lived and struggled separately and sometimes fear we may die separately; yet I see an emerging belief that we have much in common and that we enhance the visibility and viability of all if we identify and act on our common ground. Dozens of cities and regions are trying to build a local arts and/or arts education community to better their collective future. Information about this very impulse in Dallas, Richmond, Portland, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Providence and New York came across my desk in various forms in just one day, yesterday. Last summer’s National Performing Arts Conference in Denver is another case in point. It was the largest such gathering ever, explicitly dedicated to building a more unified field; and the thousands of participants voted on common steps to build a national community.
Jim Collins, keynote speaker at the Denver conference, made a couple of points that went right at the heart of our challenge. Collins is a highly influential and credible business “guru”—the author, consultant, and leader of the bestselling “good to great” research on what makes businesses excel. I confess I was none too thrilled that a business leader was positioned as the keynoter for this historic arts gathering; part of me cringed that we would be asked to use a business model to come together as a field. But Collins has studied nonprofit organizations extensively, is an expert on what organizations must do in turbulent times (yes, that’s now), and he’s passionate about the arts—so I listened with an open mind. Lucky thing, too, because he made two points that I found essential to the consideration of a Unified Arts Field Theory.
Re-thinking the “Mission Statement.”
Collins’s first point—not controversial—was that in turbulent times, an organization must get the right people “on the bus,” refocus on its primary mission, and experiment boldly to fulfill that mission. But his second point was a follow-up so challenging that many people didn’t take it in. He said that most of us in the arts have a completely wrong-headed idea of our true mission (or core values or beliefs, but let’s not get stuck in semantics). Collins argues that we mistakenly assume our mission is to present our particular and beloved artistic canon, the greatest artworks, old and new. He suggests our core values are exactly not that, that our favorite artworks are the means by which we have try to fulfill the core values of art, and according to his research, that is exactly where we must experiment. To rediscover our purpose, to live long and prosper, we must let go of our focus on programming favorite artworks, old and new, and instead boldly experiment with engaging people in artistic experiences. We must reconnect with the human art instinct.
The excellent new book The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton (Bloomsbury USA, 2008) argues compellingly that art is a universal human evolutionary advantage that goes back to our Stone Age roots.
The arts have been around since at least Day Two of human history (ornamental jewelry goes back 80,000 years, painting almost as far—and that’s not mentioning our impulses to create dance, music and to tell stories, which undoubtedly are even more ancient). Artistic expression is not just the province of artists; it appears spontaneously, irrepressibly, throughout each of our lives, mostly in forms and venues not identified with Art with a capital A. So, how have we let the identity of art get quarantined as an occasional pricey event in a special building?
Art appears in every endeavor raised to its highest level of expression, and more commonly in our conversations, hobbies, homes, as we dance at parties … anywhere people slip into the work and play of art. The core value for those of us in the arts professions—engaging people in the richness of the artistic experience—is to prompt that universal sense of meaning, richness, “specialness,” and satisfaction. It feels good—really good—the kind of good feeling that is hard to find in our overstimulated, materialistic, multitasking lives.
In order to unify our disparate arts, we need to find the quintessential elements of that human experience. We need to identify the fundamental particle or particles at the basis of the attraction, a Higgs boson for the human movement toward the artistic experience. And if we can agree around that unifying principle, I believe we can begin to answer the Jim Collins challenge in a powerful way, by experimenting boldly to bring people into the common, universal, highly-valued human experience of art. Not just those who already value the arts, but also those who aren’t in the club and don’t think about or care about the arts, yet yearn for fullness in their lives. We need to move the experience of art to the center of our intention, and reclaim Homo sapiens’ cultural birthright of artistic engagement.
What happens in gospel-choir-and-audience singing that can fill the recital hall and stir the soul? What is the element that turns a good conversation into a great conversation that can be delivered in every theater? How is it that an encounter with a violinist in a fifth-grade classroom can spark a kid to be more curious about social studies? What is the sine qua non, the irreducible core, of all the different ways in which the artistic impulse has expressed itself in human history?
Identifying Our Own Higgs Boson.
Our field needs the debate as much as we need an answer. To get us started, let me posit my own hypothetical answer to spark further answers from others. Get mad at my opinion, please, to fuel the sharing of your own.
I think the fundamental act is the spark of connection. The spark may be literal, as the firing of a new synaptic link in the brain; and it is also metaphoric for making something new. The etymology of the word art means to put things together. The Higgs boson of art is the individual’s act of creation, of putting together things that matter to that individual. This makes us human and makes us feel human, feel alive, feel connected to others. Making a connection, look at the idiom: creating something that bridges a gap of separateness.
This fundamental act of art occurs when we find the right word in a poem or the dance move that captures what we know and cannot say. We spark the arts connection when we enter a “world” made by someone else (a work of art, a spoken image, a story, an eloquent gesture) and find a personally relevant connection inside it. We fire the art connection when we pick just the right song to play for a suffering friend and when we listen deeply to a friend’s story and connect to its unspoken core. We slip into the physics of art when we resonate inside with the note just played, when we experience a sense of eternity under a night sky.
The power of the moment is not just “understanding” the world of a work of art, or “appreciating” it or even “enjoying” it. The boson is the creative act of making a new connection inside it. The fundamental power of an artwork is tapped not only by completing its construction, but also by making any meaningful new connection of your own.
Fundamental particles don’t just exist; they influence each other in ways that manifest as electromagnetism and gravity, creating matter. Similarly, artistic bosons do not passively exist, but accrue force that manifests as human affinities such as: intrinsic motivation (doing things from your personal energy and yearning, as opposed to extrinsic motivation, which drives all the other ways things happen in the world), curiosity, playfulness, satisfaction and gratitude (they seem linked in my experience), the recognition of beauty, the experience of love, and the cohesion of groups and communities. No wonder the arts have sustained since the beginning of human history—this is the list of the best parts of being alive. They provide unity, attraction, and the reason there is something to being a human instead of being nothing.
The unified field theory then challenges us to answer: What can we do, as believers in the power of the fundamental act of creation, to align our actions, our creations, our organizations, our intentions and interactions with everyone inside and outside the arts to maximize that power? How can we create environments that effectively, irresistibly support and nurture that power? What events can we devise that are dedicated to that power, not merely to the presentation of artworks that we hope will contain it for those few who pay to attend?
Are you whining, “Why can’t we just play the heck out of Haydn quartets and be done with it? Why should we bother with all this?” Because fewer and fewer people are able to feel the spark of connection inside the canon of artworks we love, no matter how well you play the Haydn. If you are content with being part of the slow demise you complain about, fine. Our culture is not losing the art instinct, but turning it away from the fields that we believe are its most fertile ground. If you want to help the arts thrive and reclaim their ancient human birthright, start experimenting, boldly, with the clarity and care of a physicist, to find out how you can spark that act of creation in everyone you meet.
And the more important reason to grapple with the awkwardness of this challenge is that it recharges us as artists, in our most important cultural roles, as the voice of human truth, as re-creators of human relevance amid the dehumanizing forces of society, as fierce warriors for the human birthright of artistry in our brief time together. Our field does not have expensive new machinery to produce the evidence that will unify our field, but we can collide with each other in dialogue to find the evidence that guides us to experiment boldly, brilliantly, effectively, as artists do, to tap our most fundamental human force and channel it into artistic encounters.
Eric Booth is co-founder of the Mentoring and Arts Education Program at The Juilliard School, founding editor of Teaching Artist Journal, and author of the new book The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible from Oxford University Press. He works with arts education programs around the country. Contact: eeebbb@aol.com
NOTE: I originally received this excellent essay in pdf form via Sharon DeMark. Eric generously gave us permission to make it available here on the blog - I hope this helps more people read this important and insightful piece. - laura
We human beings have a long history of proposing theories to unify disparate truths. This yearning to find a transcendent meaning for separate bodies of evidence may be one of our distinguishing traits. You have probably noticed this impulse in your own life: a series of experiences prompts the sense that something is hidden in the bundle of them. Your inner smarts work on the challenge—rationally, via various unconscious processes, and even while sleeping. The “Aha!” moment of identifying the deeper pattern in the evidence is satisfying and joyful; it launches a whole new set of possibilities for you as a person, as an artist.
I see the separate disciplines and fields within the arts and arts learning in that light because, although they seem to comprise disparate bodies of truth, my gut tells me that meaningful, unifying, common truths await, hidden in plain sight. Truths, that when embraced, can change the status quo.
You would be hard pressed to argue that we are a unified field. Practitioners of different art forms just don’t think of themselves as part of a larger functional entity. Even though multidisciplinary performances and presentations are increasingly common, the various artistic tribes compete more often than they cooperate, believing that the concerns they share are less significant than the ones they face on their own. A regional theater company looks at a choral ensemble and does not see much resemblance; a string quartet looks at a small dance ensemble or a struggling art gallery and does not see itself mirrored there.
Likewise, the divisions within arts education never seem to resolve. We waste energy on the same familial tiffs we have had for decades: disciplinary instruction vs. arts integration, arts education for art’s sake vs. arts education to produce other benefits, certified arts instructors vs. teaching artists, in-school learning vs. all the learning that happens outside of school—and what about the granny who plays the ukulele? These old hostilities, prejudices, and cross-purposes persist within a culture of scarcity, eroding the expansive, inclusive impulses that got us into arts-learning in the first place.
As a consultant, I have had many opportunities to try to build local arts partnerships and consortia; the usual strategy is to identify common goals and thereby foster a joint commitment to actions that will lift all the organizational boats together. Sometimes progress is made, and there are inspiring examples of success in a few cities; more often, the separateness of the participants is palpable and pervasive, caution and distrust remain entrenched, and the proposed partners have no shared language. This last point takes a while to surface, and is hard to admit—each doesn’t really know what the other is talking about, or the separate fields don’t agree on some fundamental point. You don’t believe me? Try discussing with an artist from another discipline what you think creativity really is.
The current painful economic constriction may be the catalyst we need to change our habits of thinking and jump us out of our ruts. As Rahm Emmanuel said when he was appointed White House Chief of Staff: “A crisis is too good an opportunity to waste.”
What Good Is a Unifying Theory, Anyway?
Newton's theory of universal gravitation (1687) provided a unifying explanation for separate bodies of evidence on tidal patterns, Galileo's theory of Earth's gravity, and Kepler’s laws of planetary influence. Adopted by scientists, and then by Western culture at large, Newton’s theory erased the truth as it was known, writing the new understanding of reality and sparking an explosion of inquiry into forces of attraction in physics.
Two and a half centuries later, the term Unified Field Theory (also known colloquially as the Theory of Everything) was coined by Einstein and captures the drive of his mature years to find a deep, unifying truth beneath persistently separate but related bodies of evidence. Einstein sought to explain the distinct forces of relativity, electromagnetism and gravity by discovering the fundamental particles that interact in all.
That ongoing search by physicists later led to quantum mechanics, the formulation of string theory, and—now—searches for the theoretical Higgs boson. Particle physicists know of five fundamental kinds of bosons—the term for the smallest particles in the universe that carries force. Four of the five types have been observed experimentally; these are called gauge bosons. The Higgs boson is hypothesized yet still unseen; but the drive to find it is not theoretical—you may have heard news reports of the recently completed construction of the Large Hadron Collider by the European scientific consortium called CERN. It is an underground, 17-mile-circumference atom smasher near Geneva Switzerland, and the most expensive construction project in human history. At this point, it is the greatest technological hope to provide evidence of the Higgs boson and how it works.
If we come to know how it works, the Higgs boson may unify the currently separate force fields of gravitation, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces. Some physicists believe that the discovery will explain such ultimate mysteries as why matter becomes mass and why there is something instead of nothing. No wonder that the Higgs boson is sometimes called the God particle.
For those outside of particle physics, the search for a unified field theory can be seen as quixotic and pointlessly conceptual, the work of eggheads who can't boil an egg. We live in an aggressively anti-intellectual culture, particularly unfriendly to meta-headed endeavors, but even that bias can’t deflect the truth that the impulse to find unity underneath seemingly disparate phenomena has led to some of the greatest breakthroughs in human understanding.
How Does It Apply to Us?
I believe the time has come for arts educators and others in the arts to grapple with their own unified field theory. We have lived and struggled separately and sometimes fear we may die separately; yet I see an emerging belief that we have much in common and that we enhance the visibility and viability of all if we identify and act on our common ground. Dozens of cities and regions are trying to build a local arts and/or arts education community to better their collective future. Information about this very impulse in Dallas, Richmond, Portland, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Providence and New York came across my desk in various forms in just one day, yesterday. Last summer’s National Performing Arts Conference in Denver is another case in point. It was the largest such gathering ever, explicitly dedicated to building a more unified field; and the thousands of participants voted on common steps to build a national community.
Jim Collins, keynote speaker at the Denver conference, made a couple of points that went right at the heart of our challenge. Collins is a highly influential and credible business “guru”—the author, consultant, and leader of the bestselling “good to great” research on what makes businesses excel. I confess I was none too thrilled that a business leader was positioned as the keynoter for this historic arts gathering; part of me cringed that we would be asked to use a business model to come together as a field. But Collins has studied nonprofit organizations extensively, is an expert on what organizations must do in turbulent times (yes, that’s now), and he’s passionate about the arts—so I listened with an open mind. Lucky thing, too, because he made two points that I found essential to the consideration of a Unified Arts Field Theory.
Re-thinking the “Mission Statement.”
Collins’s first point—not controversial—was that in turbulent times, an organization must get the right people “on the bus,” refocus on its primary mission, and experiment boldly to fulfill that mission. But his second point was a follow-up so challenging that many people didn’t take it in. He said that most of us in the arts have a completely wrong-headed idea of our true mission (or core values or beliefs, but let’s not get stuck in semantics). Collins argues that we mistakenly assume our mission is to present our particular and beloved artistic canon, the greatest artworks, old and new. He suggests our core values are exactly not that, that our favorite artworks are the means by which we have try to fulfill the core values of art, and according to his research, that is exactly where we must experiment. To rediscover our purpose, to live long and prosper, we must let go of our focus on programming favorite artworks, old and new, and instead boldly experiment with engaging people in artistic experiences. We must reconnect with the human art instinct.
The excellent new book The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton (Bloomsbury USA, 2008) argues compellingly that art is a universal human evolutionary advantage that goes back to our Stone Age roots.
The arts have been around since at least Day Two of human history (ornamental jewelry goes back 80,000 years, painting almost as far—and that’s not mentioning our impulses to create dance, music and to tell stories, which undoubtedly are even more ancient). Artistic expression is not just the province of artists; it appears spontaneously, irrepressibly, throughout each of our lives, mostly in forms and venues not identified with Art with a capital A. So, how have we let the identity of art get quarantined as an occasional pricey event in a special building?
Art appears in every endeavor raised to its highest level of expression, and more commonly in our conversations, hobbies, homes, as we dance at parties … anywhere people slip into the work and play of art. The core value for those of us in the arts professions—engaging people in the richness of the artistic experience—is to prompt that universal sense of meaning, richness, “specialness,” and satisfaction. It feels good—really good—the kind of good feeling that is hard to find in our overstimulated, materialistic, multitasking lives.
In order to unify our disparate arts, we need to find the quintessential elements of that human experience. We need to identify the fundamental particle or particles at the basis of the attraction, a Higgs boson for the human movement toward the artistic experience. And if we can agree around that unifying principle, I believe we can begin to answer the Jim Collins challenge in a powerful way, by experimenting boldly to bring people into the common, universal, highly-valued human experience of art. Not just those who already value the arts, but also those who aren’t in the club and don’t think about or care about the arts, yet yearn for fullness in their lives. We need to move the experience of art to the center of our intention, and reclaim Homo sapiens’ cultural birthright of artistic engagement.
What happens in gospel-choir-and-audience singing that can fill the recital hall and stir the soul? What is the element that turns a good conversation into a great conversation that can be delivered in every theater? How is it that an encounter with a violinist in a fifth-grade classroom can spark a kid to be more curious about social studies? What is the sine qua non, the irreducible core, of all the different ways in which the artistic impulse has expressed itself in human history?
Identifying Our Own Higgs Boson.
Our field needs the debate as much as we need an answer. To get us started, let me posit my own hypothetical answer to spark further answers from others. Get mad at my opinion, please, to fuel the sharing of your own.
I think the fundamental act is the spark of connection. The spark may be literal, as the firing of a new synaptic link in the brain; and it is also metaphoric for making something new. The etymology of the word art means to put things together. The Higgs boson of art is the individual’s act of creation, of putting together things that matter to that individual. This makes us human and makes us feel human, feel alive, feel connected to others. Making a connection, look at the idiom: creating something that bridges a gap of separateness.
This fundamental act of art occurs when we find the right word in a poem or the dance move that captures what we know and cannot say. We spark the arts connection when we enter a “world” made by someone else (a work of art, a spoken image, a story, an eloquent gesture) and find a personally relevant connection inside it. We fire the art connection when we pick just the right song to play for a suffering friend and when we listen deeply to a friend’s story and connect to its unspoken core. We slip into the physics of art when we resonate inside with the note just played, when we experience a sense of eternity under a night sky.
The power of the moment is not just “understanding” the world of a work of art, or “appreciating” it or even “enjoying” it. The boson is the creative act of making a new connection inside it. The fundamental power of an artwork is tapped not only by completing its construction, but also by making any meaningful new connection of your own.
Fundamental particles don’t just exist; they influence each other in ways that manifest as electromagnetism and gravity, creating matter. Similarly, artistic bosons do not passively exist, but accrue force that manifests as human affinities such as: intrinsic motivation (doing things from your personal energy and yearning, as opposed to extrinsic motivation, which drives all the other ways things happen in the world), curiosity, playfulness, satisfaction and gratitude (they seem linked in my experience), the recognition of beauty, the experience of love, and the cohesion of groups and communities. No wonder the arts have sustained since the beginning of human history—this is the list of the best parts of being alive. They provide unity, attraction, and the reason there is something to being a human instead of being nothing.
The unified field theory then challenges us to answer: What can we do, as believers in the power of the fundamental act of creation, to align our actions, our creations, our organizations, our intentions and interactions with everyone inside and outside the arts to maximize that power? How can we create environments that effectively, irresistibly support and nurture that power? What events can we devise that are dedicated to that power, not merely to the presentation of artworks that we hope will contain it for those few who pay to attend?
Are you whining, “Why can’t we just play the heck out of Haydn quartets and be done with it? Why should we bother with all this?” Because fewer and fewer people are able to feel the spark of connection inside the canon of artworks we love, no matter how well you play the Haydn. If you are content with being part of the slow demise you complain about, fine. Our culture is not losing the art instinct, but turning it away from the fields that we believe are its most fertile ground. If you want to help the arts thrive and reclaim their ancient human birthright, start experimenting, boldly, with the clarity and care of a physicist, to find out how you can spark that act of creation in everyone you meet.
And the more important reason to grapple with the awkwardness of this challenge is that it recharges us as artists, in our most important cultural roles, as the voice of human truth, as re-creators of human relevance amid the dehumanizing forces of society, as fierce warriors for the human birthright of artistry in our brief time together. Our field does not have expensive new machinery to produce the evidence that will unify our field, but we can collide with each other in dialogue to find the evidence that guides us to experiment boldly, brilliantly, effectively, as artists do, to tap our most fundamental human force and channel it into artistic encounters.
Eric Booth is co-founder of the Mentoring and Arts Education Program at The Juilliard School, founding editor of Teaching Artist Journal, and author of the new book The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible from Oxford University Press. He works with arts education programs around the country. Contact: eeebbb@aol.com
Labels: Boson, Chamber Music, Eric Booth
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Are You a Modest Medici?
I want to think and talk a bit about supporting the arts by buying it. That might be by purchasing a ticket to a theater or dance performance, a concert or a film, but I want to talk particularly about owning, giving and collecting visual art and fine craft.
I recently used an analogy that seemed to resonate with people- buying and owning art is like drinking wine. For a long time John and Jane Q. Public were not sure that they knew enough to drink and serve wine confidently. Sure, one buys wine for special occasions, but one must know a lot about wine to choose the ‘right’ wine, or rely on the advice of experts. There are all kinds of rules; and well, wine is a complicated business.
I’ve observed that many people have a similar relationship with Art. They feel they just don’t know enough. They know what they like, but…
The wine industry undertook a multi-year marketing campaign to persuade people that it’s OK to drink what you like. In fact, what you like ought to be a deciding factor, i.e.: someone else’s opinion shouldn’t dictate your selection. (Now industry watchers report that anything with an animal on the label sells well, but that’s a topic for a different post.)
The #1 secret about collecting art is that you ought to buy the art you like and that you want to live with. Secret #2 is that you don’t need scads of money to collect art. As with my wine drinking analogy, once people feel comfortable, they often want to know more. In the process of gathering knowledge their tastes may change. (Or not.) The work you choose may accrue value, but you risk buying stuff you don't like if that's your only motivation to purchase. That approach is kind of like trying to time the stock market.
Dorothy and Herbert Vogel are poster-children (or poster-elders) for this. Dorothy worked as a librarian; Herb sorted mail for the post office in New York. They didn’t start out as typical art collectors. They're not wealthy, nor particularly schooled in art. They did enjoy going to galleries, meeting artists and buying artwork. Dorothy says, "We buy what we like, what we can afford, and what can fit into our apartment."
They started collecting in 1962 and by now have collected roughly 4,000 conceptual, minimalist, and post-minimalist artworks. They’ve donated it all* to museums, including 50 works each to 50 museums- one in each state- with the proviso that the work must be exhibited within five years of being received.
“We hope that the exhibitions will encourage others living on small incomes to buy art too."
I’ll grant you that the Vogels are an extreme example, but the point is to buy what you like, fearlessly. Meet some artists- talk about their work and why they’re doing what they’re doing. Maybe you’ll buy something, maybe not, but don’t feel intimidated by the prospect. Art-A-Whirl is coming up in Minneapolis, on May 15, 16 and 17, 2009. This a perfect opportunity to test drive your aesthetic eye.
You can read a great article about the Vogels and their idiosyncratic collecting here.
-Kathleen
*They retained a few works just in case they need to pay for long-term care.
Labels: art collecting, Medici, Vogel
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
New Models
As I've said before, I think there are tools that already exist that we can use to solve some of our current problems in the arts community - especially the lack of new organizational models. One of those tools is fiscal sponsorship.
I believe that by combining fiscal sponsorship (which allows for tax deductible donations and grants without nonprofit incorporation) with other support and advisory services, we can create a new organizational model that allows individual artists and organizations to share infrastructure and administration while allowing them complete programmatic and creative independence. Will this structure work for all organizations? No, but that's not the point. The point is that we need to have a variety of different organizational structures to choose from, so we can align the purpose and mission of an organization with the way we structure it.
This model allows organizations to test the waters of nonprofit incorporation before committing, allows artists and small organizations to retain more creative control and intellectual property than the traditional 501c3, and consolidates administration efficiently.
This "fiscal sponsorship plus" model seems like the social entrepreneur's alternative to 501c3, just as the L3C may be the social entrepreneur's alternative to LLC. (For more on the L3C, read Kate Barr's excellent blog.)
Right now the clients in Springboard's Fiscal Sponsorship & Incubator program receive pro-bono legal services, organizational development help, check-writing, 1099 filing, grantwriting feedback, and other services in addition to the tax deductibility of their contributions. We just added these new shared development services which are available to the clients in our Fiscal Sponsorship program, as well as organizations with their own 510c3 status. Over the next year we'll be adding online visibility, marketing support and more training opportunities for our fiscal sponsorees, too. We have about 60 active fiscally sponsored organizations and artists.
The biggest challenge of fiscal sponsorship is how we talk about it. Many people have no idea what fiscal sponsorship or fiscal agency means (I certainly didn't before I started my work at Springboard) and others have had bad experiences or heard negative things about it in the past. And Fiscal Sponsorship and Incubator program is an accurate but cumbersome name. So, anyone have some good ideas for a new name for this thing?
-laura
Thursday, May 7, 2009
I love a parade.
I went with my family to the Heart of the Beast MayDay Parade last weekend. Parades make me cry. All of them. The tiny fourth of July parade in northern Wisconsin, where it's hard to tell the difference between the parade and people in their cars trying to get to the parade, makes me well up. And the big, beautiful, MayDay parade with crazy bands and amazing puppets and kids with dirty, dirty feet gets me choked up, too. I've never really known why. As we were leaving MayDay, my brother-in-law said, "that felt very patriotic." and I think that's it exactly. It's this perfect intersection of community, civic pride, crowds, and art.
This is the feeling we're all striving for when we talk about "audience engagement" and "civic participation" in the arts. A parade needs marchers (artists) and watchers (audience) but everyone leaves with a feeling of being part of something bigger than themselves. We can feel the joy of the performers, appreciate their tired feet and sweaty shirts; we wave flags and cheer them on; and sometimes, just sometimes, they throw us some candy.
-laura
