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Reviews
SYMPHONY
How to Have Fun with Pitches
By Michelle Dulak Thomson
San Francisco Symphony
Pinchas Zukerman
(5/28/05)
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
A Broad Palette
By Benjamin Frandzel
EARPLAY
(5/23/05)
CHAMBER MUSIC
Songs and Strings
By Anna Carol Dudley
Thomas Glenn, John Parr,
& friends
(5/27/05)
CHAMBER MUSIC
Grand Finale
By Heuwell Tircuit
New Century Chamber Orchestra
(5/26/05)
OPERA
Nagano's LA Doubleheader
By Janos Gereben
Los Angeles Opera
Falstaff
Der Rosenkavalier
Los Angeles Philharmonic
(5/27-9/05)
MUSIC NEWS
Opera at Berkeley Symphony
By Janos Gereben
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Responses to Our 5/24/05 Question of the Week
Robert Commanday, Senior Editor
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Most people believe that business should be concerned and involved with the arts, right? Probably, but the question is whether most or many business decision-makers feel that way. Last Wednesday, a forum on the subject, one of 40 being presented in 20 cities, was held at the Museum of Modern Art, and a lot of the arguments were aired.
The essential issue lies in the difference between the two kinds of reasons why business (or government or just folks) should be involved in the arts. There are, on one hand, what have been called the "instrumental" benefits, those which are the "indirect outcomes of the arts experiences." These benefits range widely from the economic (jobs in the arts, monies spent in arts-related activity) to the cognitive (improvement in learning skills and academic performance), health, therapeutic, quality of life, social (promotion of social interaction among community members, building of community-organizing capacity).
The other kind of reasons are the intrinsic benefits, those "inherent in the art itself, valued for themselves rather than as a means to something else," those that "enhance the life of the individuals. These have to do with the individual’s direct encounter with the art work," the aesthetic experience. The definitions of these (and the phrases quoted) come by way of a major study conducted by the Rand Corporation (www.rand.org), underwritten by the Wallace Foundation. This report, Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts, was published in February and is available at www.wallacefoundation.org.
Last week’s confab on the subject, one of the 40 on a national series sponsored by MetLife Foundation, was under the auspices of and organized by San Francisco’s Business Arts Council (www.bizarts.org) and here it gets complicated. The BAC, an independent affiliate of the SF Chamber of Commerce, is allied to the national lobbying organization, with which it has been newly merged, Americans for the Arts.
The keynote of this discussion by five panelists was the summary of the Rand report given by Lucas Bernays Held of the Wallace Foundation. It concludes that whereas the arguments for the arts based on "instrumental" benefits seem compelling, with the statistics cited as evidence, over-emphasizing those undervalues the arts, gives an unbalanced even wrong impression of the natural purpose of the arts. Focus should be shifted towards drawing more Americans into the arts, bringing them to engaging arts experiences. It is the captivation and pleasure of the arts experience that is the first and last "justification."
It is easy to see how tempting it has been to stress the instrumental benefits when talking to those whose commitments to and understanding of the arts are unknown or suspected to be marginal. The figures quoted at Wednesday’s forum were, on their face, impressive documentation of the economic benefits. 10,000 jobs in the arts were cited, along with $120 million in auxilliary spending by patrons, and 800,000 visits to arts events in 2004, making the arts audiences in San Francisco (they probably meant the Bay Area) allegedly larger than the sports audience. That last doesn't seem entirely plausible, and while big numbers are always helpful, it would be more revealing if the figures were to be broken down: it's important to know what exactly counts as a "job," what exactly is meant by an "arts event."
The experience of panelist Robert Lynch, President and CEO of Americans for the Arts, leads him to continue to favor the use of the "instrumental" benefits argument, along with the other, of course. "You’re not bringing people together if they haven’t had the epiphany (of an arts experience.)" So one must show decision-makers the economic benefits derived from the arts. As head of what is in effect a lobbying agency, he acknowledged that (political/economic) muscle is involved to convince business or government action for the arts, but said that the power represented on the board of major arts organizations was not used. That influence is spread too thin.
I had always wondered that these boards did not use their substantial influence, thinking that if the combined boards of the symphonies and other major arts organizations in the state, those in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno, et al. were to lean on the state legislature, the California Arts Council would not only have its budget restored from zero, but multiplied at least to an equivalence with analogous agencies in other, more enlightened states. Lynch pointed out in a conversation after the meeting that only a very few on each board are vitally engaged and prepared to use influence on behalf of the arts.
He is correct. There may be 75 members of the Symphony’s board of governors and a comparable number on the boards of the Opera and Ballet, but judging from appearance and performance, those that are truly involved in the arts per se, a minority to be sure, are focused largely, if not wholly, on their own organization and its interests. Like those organizations themselves, they are not really concerned with the larger arts picture in the community, with the hundreds of other activities or even the individual artists resident in the area, that are part of the ecology that helps the Symphony, Opera and Ballet thrive as they do. For example, many people drawn into music by experiences at one of our regional symphonies, opera companies, or dance companies seek to heighten this by attending the big San Francisco Symphony, Opera and Ballet performances.
To be fair, many of those very board members, through the foundations that they direct or on whose boards they sit, direct grants and other support to hundreds of deserving smaller arts organizations. It is the reluctance of the parent boards to use their influence in the larger and specifically governmental area that explains why this state stands at the very bottom of the fifty in its support of the arts. Lynch suggested that there would be two or three exceptional members of each of these boards who might take on leadership for the arts in the larger community. It seems to me that identifying and encouraging these individuals and building a lobbying force might be as important as the effort to involve the business community, actually would be a part of that. It might start with the Mayor leading a task force.
In terms of private and foundation support for the arts (and whatever part the business community plays in that), the Bay Area is outstanding in the country. I believe that any survey would show that on a per capita basis, the activity, support and attendance for the arts is higher in the San Francisco region than in any other metropolitan area. Panelist Moy Eng, Performing Arts Program Director of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, reported that foundation’s $15 million annual support for 218 organizations over 11 counties, adding that one-third of that was for arts education projects. Arts education figures importantly in the conclusions of the Rand study concerning measures to draw more Americans into the arts experience, citing ideas that would be self-evident to those already involved in the arts, that for example, the earlier the better, and a "hands-on" participatory experience is deeper and more lasting than the purely receptive experience. Those and other aspects of the report are subjects for future discussion here.
Another of our major sources of support for the arts community is the San Francisco Foundation, represented Wednesday by its Arts and Culture Program Officer, John Killacky, serving as the panel’s moderator, setting the context, asking the questions. Panelist Eileen Loustau, Director of Investor Relations for the SF Center for Economic Development, was the single representative of the business community. She brought to the table her own experience working on this very aspect of charitable activities for Wells Fargo Bank and Charles Schwab. She described the important distinction in business between sponsorship (of a non-profit activity or program) and direct philanthropy. In terms of businesses supporting the arts as a quality of life factor for their employees, she pointed out the sobering facts that 90% of businesses in San Francisco have fewer than 50 employees, and 70% have fewer than five employees.
Panelist Barry Hessinius, Executive Director, Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet, the only representative of a working arts organization, surprisingly expressed the notion that our arts culture is overbuilt, that we have too many entities, that we are spread too thin. (Hessinius was the former director of the California Arts Council and faced the frustrating challenge of making arts grants for the entire state from a skimpy budget of $15 million (later $10 million, so his argument for reduction is understandable in the context of that experience). None of the panelists responded to this, or in fact to any of their colleagues’ remarks, and as there there was time left for only three or four questions from the floor, there was little interaction at all.
In fact, the sense of the meeting was that it was (a) informational; (b) preaching to the choir, since the audience was made up almost entirely of representatives of arts organizations. There were only a handful of attendees representing business organizations, according to a spokesperson for the Business Arts Council. There it is, isn’t it? Why business should be convinced to be concerned about arts and culture — or actually, How?
(Robert P. Commanday, senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)
©2005 Robert P. Commanday, all rights reserved
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From September 1, 1998 to March 1, 2005, SFCV has published, in addition to the Music News, feature pieces, and weekly editorials, 2041 reviews of Bay Area performances by: 51 symphony orchestras (433 reviews), 89 chamber groups (246), 36 new music ensembles and programs (224), 37 opera companies (275), 28 choral groups (127), 15 music festivals (85), 33 early music ensembles (156), 24 chamber orchestras (88), 6 musical theater groups (14), world music (14), recitals (357), youth music (10), other (12).
Michelle Dulak Thomson, Editor
Richard Thomas, Associate Editor
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