Cultural Policy

In the Reader last issue I reported on the Cleveland Foundation's decade-long effort (in partnership with other area funders, cultural institutions, and the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture) to make the case for local public support for the arts here. At the GIA conference last November, anyone within shouting distance of those of us from Cleveland must have heard that we were suc-cessful. The grins on our faces lit up the host celebration that first night.

New Year's Day, 1980, found Arlene Goldbard living in Washington, D.C. monitoring and reporting on our nation's de facto cultural policy. The fact that Arlene was doing this says a lot about the leadership role that many of us were counting on the federal government to play in leveling the field so that our many U.S. cultures would have an equal chance to express themselves, to develop, and, inevitably, to cross-pollinate. It was a substantial and beautiful vision then, and remains so today.

When we visit our physicians, we naturally assume they bring a bundle of knowledge and insight to the meeting. For one thing, we expect them to bring a broad and nuanced understanding of human physiology, and how its many interconnecting systems (circulatory, respiratory, muscle, nervous, lymphatic, and so on) influence our health and well being. We also expect that they know how and where to look for indicators of our health (taking our temperature, testing our blood pressure, checking our blood for chemical balances).

The Arts and the Public Purpose 92nd American Assembly

From May 29 through June 1 of this year, seventy-eight individuals interested in the arts in the United States came together for the 92nd American Assembly at Arden House in Harriman, New York to debate "The Arts and the Public Purpose." The American Assembly was established by Dwight D. Eisenhower at Columbia University in 1950. Each year it holds at least two nonpartisan meetings on topics related to United States policy, each of which gives rise to a book on the subject discussed.

Classical musics are comparatively rare; they seem to need for their existence not only a leisured class able to command a quantity of surplus resources but also a situation where that class is to some degree isolated from the majority of the people and possesses the social power to represent its own tastes as superior.

Intersections
This report began as a standard travelog, factual, but listless. The GIA conference title, Intersections, seemed appropriate, but irritating as it pricked at some memory I could not grasp.

The NEA has been mired in controversy for most of the past decade, during which time it has lost much of its appropriation and even more of its autonomy, as Congress has directed larger chunks of its annual appropriation to the states, earmarked other moneys for special purposes, and effectively placed off limits NEA fellowships for most kinds of artists.

On March 7, 1997, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, in conjunction with Community Partners, ARTS Inc., and the California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, convened a workshop titled "Arts Incubators: Building Healthy Arts Organizations and Healthy Economies." The seventy-plus participants included representatives of arts organizations, local arts agencies, municipalities, and foundations.