Friday, October 09, 2009
Conversation on the NEA
Theatre Ideas: "In response to Barry's question 'What would you like to see the Endowment accomplish? What policies should govern its actions? What should be its priorities? If you were to advise Rocco Landesman on what the agenda for the NEA should be --what would you tell him?'"
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2 comments:
While I agree with everything that the author argues in the article, the NEA should stop funding big organizations, they should not spend money on people "exploring their inner muse" and they need to stop promoting the masterpieces, the final statement is the one that makes me pay attention. The classics are good to know and are important to our culture, they are the genesis of our modern art, but at a certain point, one needs to stop paying so much attention to the past and look to the future. In 40 or 50 years the classics will be works that are new right now, what do we want to leave as part of our cultural and artistic legacy? Reinterpretation after reinterpretation of the classics? NO. Leave something new. The author also makes a good point about not funding large institutions, but one must remember it is these large institutions who have the clout to push for support for the industry and to keep the innovations coming.
The main suggestion of Scott Walker's that really resonates with me is the decentralization of the funding in major metropolitan areas that have a self-sustaining artistic economy. Even if it is terribly uneven within cities like New York, Chicago and LA, it's still important for the rest of the country to have access to creative original works. By keeping the national funding in these major cities, what is the government saying about the creativity of the rest of the country? I also have to emphasize what has already been said about creating new work is much more important than "re-imagining" the classics. The american artistic identity is a little convoluted when it comes to celebrating its own worth, and instead often falls back on previously proven works of art.
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