Rocco Landesman is the tenth chairman of the
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Prior to joining the NEA, he was previously the owner of Jujamcyn - a company that owns and operates five Broadway theaters and taught classes at the Yale School of Drama.
On Tuesday, Landesman is coming to Cincinnati to talk arts at the invitation of
ArtsWave (the arts supporting organization formerly known as the Fine Arts Fund). Since taking office as Chair of the NEA in 2009, Landesman has been on the road discussing the importance of arts and culture as components of sustainable and livable communities. His trip to Cincinnati will mirror visits he has made across the country visiting cities and learning how 'art works' in neighborhoods and towns.
Prior to his visit Landesman took some time to answer questions from Soapbox Managing Editor Sean Rhiney about his vision for the arts in the United States and the role that our public institutions have in supporting organizations, programs, and individuals who make 'art work.'
***
Q: You've adopted the principle of "art works" as the mantra for your leadership with the NEA. Within those words are three 'definitions' of what it means, including the literal meaning that the arts are part of an economic engine that creates jobs, pays taxes and contributes to community revitalization. It seems like local and state arts organizations have utilized the 'economic impact' of the arts argument before, how does this message differ?
A: When I use those two words -"art works" - I have three meanings for them. (And as a recovering academic, I just can't resist a triple entendre.) The first meaning is works of art themselves. The paintings, plays, dances, and songs that are the creation of artists. The second meaning is a reminder of the ways that art works on audiences: to transform and transport us, to challenge and comfort, to remind us of who we are, and perhaps, to show us the people we may yet become. A purely dollars-and-cents argument ignores those first two meanings. But those first two meanings are essential, as they are the reasons that any of us went into the arts in the first place: we like the works of art themselves, and the way art works affect us. I would argue that anyone in the arts can point to an experience that has stayed with them. For me, if was a production of Long Day's Journey Into Night that I saw as an undergraduate in Maine that in many ways propelled me to have the career I have had. Beginning with those two meanings, lays the groundwork for my third meaning - "art works" is a bold declaration that arts workers are real workers who are an important sector of our country's economy. Yes, there is an economic component to that: both the direct expenditures for the actors, designers, directors, ushers, concession staff, and so on; and also the indirect impact of the restaurants, bars, hotels, and shops that arts districts support.
But this third meaning extends even further: the arts work to make places. We have been talking a lot about "creative placemaking" at the NEA, by which I mean the role that the arts can play in shaping the physical and social characteristics of a place. Bring artists to the center of town, and that town changes. Creative people from other sectors are attracted; businesses follow. Mark Stern and Susan Seifert at the University of Pennsylvania have 15-year studies that show that a high concentration of the arts in a town lead to higher civic engagement, more social cohesion, higher child welfare, and lower poverty rates. Ann Markusen at the University of Minnesota has worked on the role of the arts in strengthening local economies.
I think that "art works" neatly captures a larger and more nuanced discussion than just the economics.
Q: You're spending the first part of your chairmanship visiting cities and learning how 'art works' in neighborhoods and towns across the country. What do you expect to find in Cincinnati?
A: Most of my interactions with Cincinnati over the years have been through baseball, Graeter's ice cream, and Skyline chilli. So I know that baseball and food work here, but I have to admit that my knowledge of the arts in Cincinnati is not very far along. Of course, I know Playhouse in the Park -and saw the production of "Company" that came to Broadway. But this time, I am here in Cincinnati at the invitation of Margy Waller and ArtsWave. (Although they were the Fine Arts Fund when I accepted the invitation.) They have put together a great overview for me, and my day will include a walking tour of Cincinnati's historic arts corridor, the Know Theatre, meetings with arts funders, and a panel discussion with members of the arts community. By Tuesday night, I will have a lot more to say about the arts here.
Q: Would you tell me a little about your affinity for "creative placemaking"?
A: When I was appointed to the NEA, everyone assumed that I would want to make my mark on our theater programs. And I do care about our investment in the American theater a great deal. I want to make sure that we are encouraging our theatres to make bold choices that will move the art form forward and expand the American repertory.
However, when it comes to my work as Chairman, I cared more about doing something that helped the entire nonprofit arts field and something that would result in more investment in the arts from all sources. I knew from personal experience the ways that arts organizations can change the towns and cities they inhabit. I saw it in my hometown of St. Louis with City Garden. I saw it out the window of my former office in Times Square. And once I brought Joan Shigekawa on board as my senior deputy, she introduced me to Jeremy Nowak from The Reinvestment Fund and researchers who were invested in this notion of creative placemaking. I quickly realized that there were ways to support arts organizations to do what they do best - make and present art. But to give that support in ways that also achieved a larger community purpose. The arts need to be fully citizens of the towns and cities we inhabit, with all of the resulting rights and responsibilities.
We did a first round of grants in this area through our Mayors' Institute on City Design. This is a 25-year-old program that has urban designers work with mayors to solve real world problems. And this past summer, we made 21 investments in towns that had had their mayors attend one of these Institutes. I think the grant we made in Greensboro, NC is a great example. Action Greensboro is a not-for-profit organization in the Piedmont region of North Carolina that coordinates citizen initiatives to enhance the economy for this city of 250,000. In 2009, Action Greensboro teamed with the City of Greensboro on Downtown Greenway, a multi-use trail that winds through residential neighborhoods and business districts, one that literally encircles and defines its downtown.
With its NEA grant, Action Greensboro is funding public art installations as part of a planned renovation of an abandoned railroad underpass that links an economically disadvantaged part of the city to its center by way of the Downtown Greenway. The art will include the design and fabrication of 12 decorative iron gates to be placed in existing doorways along the underpass, through which will be seen two 60-foot graphic panels depicting parts of Greensboro's history. Innovative, artistic lighting will illuminate the entire area.
We are hoping to make more investments like this one through "Our Town," which is $5 million in funding that we have proposed for Fiscal 2011.
Q: One of your first initiatives is the Mayors' Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary. 21 projects in cities were selected - the unique aspect is that while the arts are at the center of these projects, the grants are partnerships among municipal, not for profit and commercial entities. Why is it so important to get cities and businesses to work with their non-profit art entities?
A: I am a recovering Broadway producer (as well as recovering academic), and I think that theatre is, by far, the most collaborative art form. That same spirit of collaboration exists throughout this administration and across the country, really. All of us who care about building more vibrant, sustainable communities need to work across our silos for our common purpose. For a creative placemaking project to succeed, I think you need three things:
One. A local history and tradition of art making. We cannot just parachute in and start projects where nothing exists. Two. A committed philanthropic community. Foundations, yes. But also the local businesses and individuals who are usually the most important investors in the arts. And, three, a local political infrastructure that "gets it." A mayor, a planning body, and a city council that truly understands what arts bring to town. I saw a great example of this in Peoria, where a museum is being relocated to the center of town with the support of labor, business owners, and the politicians, who passed a tax increase a year and a half ago.
With those three elements - with a true partnership in place - success will almost certainly follow.
Q: Your stated vision for the arts seems to be a call to action for cities to support the work of creatives, but not in the obvious way of financially supporting specific artistic disciplines or artists, but through community planning and development. Is this a sea-change in the way communities are supposed to view arts and the role culture plays in community, more as a development tool that creates great spaces for people to live, work and play?
A: I think this is a change, but one that has been a long time in coming. I have only been talking this talk for the past 14 months, but there are lots of people who have been walking this walk long before that. It just makes sense. Artists are citizens, and arts organizations are businesses. We need to be a part of policy conversations, so that we can be fully citizens of the towns and cities we inhabit.
And we bring things to the table that can help solve what many consider to be intractable problems. Many communities in this country, for instance, are currently set up with abandoned industrial spaces separating residential and business districts from a waterfront. Artists need rehearsal and studio spaces - spaces with high ceilings and sturdy floors.
By transforming abandoned industrial spaces into artist spaces, a community can re-animate a forgotten neighborhood. Given that most studio and rehearsal spaces create 12- or even 16-hours of foot traffic, they increase the presence of all kinds of people on the streets, increasing safety, and encouraging people to reconnect with their waterfront. We are supporting artists in the ways that they need - rehearsal and creation space - but doing it in ways that fits into a larger vision for the community.
Q: You were an undergrad from UW, and Madison is certainly a city that has been transformed by its arts of late. Do you think so called 'sleepy' Midwestern cities are uniquely situated to benefit from creative arts thinking right now, unlike more arts-dense cities such as New York?
A: I just spent a day in Madison, and I would push back on your characterization of the town as "sleepy." It is anything but. The Mayor is bringing a great earth works artist - Lorna Jordan - in as part of a design team for a major, new park. The student theatre was doing "Spring Awakening," a show we did in one of my theaters when I was still working on Broadway. And Andrew Taylor, who leads the masters program in arts administration in the business school there and who blogs as the "Artful Manager," is one of the best minds thinking about the arts in the country today.
The arts do not look the same everywhere in this country, nor should they. The arts should be specific to the places from which they come. In large, urban centers, the arts tend to take place in iconic institutions. In other communities, there is a larger percentage of what we call the "informal arts" - arts that take place in schools, houses of worship, community centers, and public spaces. At the NEA, we want to support both - the iconic institutions and the informal arts. Just because a town doesn't immediately look like New York or Chicago, that doesn't mean there aren't arts happening there. I spent a day with Jeff Daniels in Chelsea, Michigan, home of the Purple Rose Theatre. I spend a morning in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where they organize an annual summer music festival that draws a million visitors to this town of 70,000 people. And we just recently celebrated the NEA's 2010 Heritage fellows - a class that includes Indian dancers, sweet grass basket weavers, Ghanaian drummers, Irish flute players, and lauhala weavers. There is creativity and innovation everywhere, and we as a whole need to become better at recognizing it.
Q: The '90's were not kind to the NEA. Objections over funded, controversial projects and congressional attacks calling for the elimination of the program were just some of the issues previous NEA leaders faced. Why do you think art and the funding of art can be so divisive in a community as much as it's a community conversation starter?
A: The arts are at the very center of who we are as a people. They can be an expression of shared values, but they can also be a provocative attack on the status quo. The best art taps into deep feelings, sometimes to comfort and sometimes to confront. Art can be very uncomfortable. That can lead to strong reactions - for some of us, it draws us into the arts over our lifetimes and careers. For others, it creates strong negative feelings.
I really do think that in many ways the culture wars have subsided, and people are today focused on real issues of concern. That is my hope, and it has also been my experience over the past year in Washington.
Q: In the midst of an economic recession, with congressional budget cuts on both the federal and state level, the arts tend to be one of the first programs cut. For example, the City of Cincinnati recently lost its art allocation funding for individual artists in the last budget cycle. Why do you think arts are typically 'the first thing to go' and what can we do to keep arts funding a priority in our own communities?
A: In some ways, I think part of the problem tracks back to the arts community ourselves. The arts community - in many ways, rightly so - consider ourselves to be extremely special, to be "other," to be different and apart from the rest of society. There is a very positive aspect to this. Joan Jeffri, a professor at Columbia's Teachers College, did a study of aging visual artists in New York City, and she discovered that "artist" is a master identity. One that transcends race, gender, class, and age. As a result, aging visual artists have larger social networks than other older New Yorkers, and their social networks are markedly more intergenerational.
Artists affiliate with other artists. They recognize themselves in each other and want to be connected. They find each other, and then build communities, neighborhoods, organizations, and businesses. In many ways, New York City's SoHo neighborhood is the ur-example of this. And it is a great and powerful re-development story, but it is one that is colored by gentrification. Why? Because the flip side of artists feeling "special" and apart is that they often do not see themselves as having anything in common with the other citizens who live in a city or town. Take the issue of artist housing. Many artists talk about artist live-work space as a right that comes with the "specialness" of the artist. I don't need to build housing for Jasper Johns, he is doing just fine in Connecticut, thank you. I believe that we need to build artist housing because artists are an often low-income sector of the workforce, who often need subsidized housing along with other low-income workers. But we do not affiliate with other low-income workers because we too often see ourselves as separate and apart. (As one colleague put it, "artists are like, 'yeah, I may be poor, but I am not poor like you.'")
The same issue arises for artists trying to get health care or mortgages. The stumbling block for them isn't that they are artists, but that most artists earn a majority of their income as independent contractors. We would have a much louder group voice if we affiliated with home healthcare aids, childcare providers, temps, and anyone else who earns W-9 income.
So one of my challenges, as the leader of a federal agency charged with supporting the arts, is how to maintain and protect the "specialness" of artists, of the arts, while at the same time highlighting the commonalities with other sectors of this country, so that we are not the first one cut, but so that we are treated equitably with every other sector.
Q: Of course I have to ask, I've been told you're a part-owner of the Cincinnati Reds. You must be pleased with the team's performance this year? On a serious note, it seems like sports capture our country's fascination and pocketbooks - we'll build stadiums with the inference that having that economic driver is important. Why do you think it's easier for a citizen to recognize say, the value of having a professional sports team in their town vs. supporting a world class orchestra?
A: Sadly, I am not a part-owner. I had tried to buy the Reds with a group of people, but we lost out to Bob Castellini. I will be seeing a game with him while I am here, though. Can't wait.
I do not think that people necessarily support their sports teams more. If you take a symphony orchestra, every contribution, every ticket sold is a vote of support for that organization. But that support is just less visible than a giant foam finger.
Limited space is still available to attend the Chairman's visit. Visit here to rsvp. You can learn more about his trip to Cincinnati and full itinerary here.
Photo of Rocco Landesman by Michael Eastman.
All other photos taken at ArtsWave "Paint the Streets" by Scott Beseler