Reform art management in the USA

SB Wang · 07-25-2006, 02:37 PM

Sharon's post reminded me that our whole artistic and cultural system needed to be reformed.
For instance: other countries have Minister of Culture: France, China,etc. Is that culture a secondary issue here ?
Curators of China Art Gallery are prominent artists, we don't have a central art exhibition gallery, except portrait competition.

Claudemir Bonfim · 07-25-2006, 02:59 PM

In Brazil there's a Minister of Culture, but I'd be very happy if this was a secondary issue in my Country, actually, this is one of the last issues to be considered by the Government.

Rebecca Willoughby · 07-25-2006, 05:38 PM

If you really want to see where a country places art and culture as a priority, look at it's school system. Art is almost non-existent. In south Louisiana, children only see "art" when their teacher gives them a color sheet to hang up for Open House night.

I started offering art classes after school two days a week to children about 4 years ago. My classes stay full and I have a waiting list. Parents and children are hungry for that creative outlet, but there is just never enough money in the budget to fit it in school.

I want to encourage you to try and spend four hours a week on art with children. There are plenty of dance lessons studios. Lots of places for music lessons and karate, but very, very few for art lessons. I don't do it for the money (although 24 kids @$65 a month isn't bad for 4 hours a week). The joy of seeing them finish a project and be proud of it is almost worth doing it for free!

Okay I've rambled enough.

Rebecca

Richard Bingham · 07-25-2006, 07:07 PM

Well, we have the NEA . . .

"Official" art systems have never produced the art which has endured. Patronage has. The last gasp of focused instruction and a heirarchic system for employing "workers" in the arts were the 19th century academies. Were they successful, nurturing a "climate" in which great art could flourish? I think so.

With humble admiration for those who can "teach" art to children, (I wouldn't take 10 times your $100 per hour gross, Rebecca) and full agreement such opportunities should be widely available and desirable to all, I tend to think widespread awareness and appreciation of "fine art" is more likely to "trickle down".

If acculturating the American public to appreciate and become knowledgeable about art is even a consideration in higher education, I think that generally, state supported university art departments have failed the public they are supposed to serve. In almost every other discipline, there are "real life" communities of professionals who demand certain standards of excellence from graduates of university programs . . . accountants, engineers, the medical professions.

However, the art departments truly are "ivory towers" from whence the entrenched sneer down upon the poverty of the common aesthetics the public which supports them holds, while they do little or nothing to improve the social climate to foster an enlightened appreciation of art in college graduates.

SB Wang · 07-26-2006, 01:05 PM

Give me a lever of enough length, I'll raise the earth---he said.
Give someone has a character of Cynthia Daniel, or someone else in SOG list, a chance to be a Minister of Culture, or the head of the Art Dept. of the Culture Ministry, (in China, it is so), for just a year, see the change.

Claudemir: I'm glade you seem to do well. I'd like to hear you more a reasoning.
Rebecca: Fully agree with you. Love to see a happy face with children.

Richard: Eloquent, indeed. Add that, in the big depression, 1930's, Rooselvet let artists for painting murals.Tthat is official patronage. China has a tradition of national art academy, where artists are supported by the nation.

Failed in direction, many cities don't have appropriate public art, a city's "face card". The papers and TVs are desert of fine arts, no ample place for good art. Money and poor taste are the reason. Where one can see a great art of our own, our Repin, or living Rockwell, that boosts our moral?

Richard Bingham · 07-26-2006, 07:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SB Wang

. . . Rooselvet let artists for painting murals. In your words, that is "official" but "patronage",also. . . The papers and TVs are desert of fine arts, no ample place for good art. Money and poor taste are the reason.

I had an impression that work paid for through the WPA was generally poor. Looking a little more closely, I found a lot of good work, done not by "breadline" painters, but by serious artists who in general had successful careers as artists aside from the WPA and NRA. That supports your claim. WWII and postwar prosperity shelved that impetus.

Money is necessary for patronage, whether it's fostered by individuals or the government. What do you see as the "pernicious" connection between money and poor taste? How do you elevate tastes without money?

This is a swell discussion!!

Rebecca Willoughby · 07-26-2006, 08:03 PM

What a great discussion!

Recently I received an invitation to a "Showing" of four artists from various parts of the south. It was at a regional art center and was funded by state art grant money. I found myself going from work to work and wondering how this work merited art grants when so many southern artists and Louisiana artists are being under served.

There was a prom dress from 1969 along with the picture taken prom night and an essay on the love and loss of the artist. Another featured work was a piece of 2x4 wood with holes drilled into it and five Barbie dolls and one Ken doll, mutilated in some form or the other, stuck into the holes. I could go on and on but I think you get the point. My husband walked around with me and after the second gallery representative approached us to see if we needed help "explaining" a piece he was ready to leave. When we were at the Biltmore in North Carolina a couple of weeks ago, we were once again looking at artwork and he looked at me and said, "See, I know this is good art and no one had to explain it to me!" I thought to myself that is so very true. The general public is just tired of funding art that has to be explained.

I spent seven years as an art major at the university level. I know what type of art is emphasized. Realism, portrait or otherwise, was ridiculed and graded poorly. That is just the way it was and as far as I can tell, still is.

There I go rambling again!
Rebecca

SB Wang · 07-27-2006, 12:22 PM

Money and sex, are major motif for many, their morale is discarded. The same trend contaminated today's art, treasure of super intelligence, coexists with garbage.

Aesthetic education is one of four basic education after moral, intelligent and physical education. Religion and art play important role for a healthy society. We may not like a boss to dictate, but we need a Ministry of Culture to serve.

We expect an appearance of a great person in America who leads a new era of culture and art. Catherine the Great is an example.

(In a common Chinese: wuo de hua wan le---my speach is over)

SB Wang · 08-03-2006, 01:41 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_the_Great

"Catherine subscribed to the Enlightenment and considered herself a "philosopher on the throne". She showed great awareness of her image abroad, and ever desired that Europe should perceive her as a civilized and enlightened monarch, despite the fact that in Russia she often played the part of the tyrant. Even as she proclaimed her love for the ideals of liberty and freedom, she did more to tie the Russian Serf to his land and his lord than any sovereign since Boris Godunov.

Catherine had a reputation as a patron of the arts, literature and education. The Hermitage Museum, which now occupies the whole of the Winter Palace, began as Catherine's personal collection. At the instigation of her factotum, Ivan Betskoi, she wrote a manual for the education of young children, drawing from the ideas of John Locke, and founded the famous Smolny Institute for noble young ladies. This school would become one of the best of its kind in Europe, and even went so far as to admit young girls born to wealthy merchants alongside the daughters of the nobility. She wrote comedies, fiction and memoirs, while cultivating Voltaire, Diderot and D'Alembert

Anthony Emmolo · 09-09-2006, 11:51 AM

At first read, Sharon's thoughts seemed a bit strong for me, but then I realised as a moderator, she's got a different responsibility than many of us do. Living here in China, I see the difference between American, and values, and those of China and the old Soviet Union. When I was a young child, and even in high school, art class was get out the crayons, and draw your favorite pop star. Mine were The Beatles and Jim Morrison. Here in China, I see ten year old kids learning to draw sitting in front of plaster busts of Voltaire, and the host of his buddies that we would only see in quality academies in the USA.

I am now studying with these great busts, regretting that my parent didn't have enough interest in the arts when I was a child to put me in such a rich atmosphere. Then again, while all of my friends were watching the Flintsones, would I have wanted to study seriously? NO!

20/20 hindsight can be painful.

Anthony