Art Works

The following excerpts from NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman's recent keynote address to grant makers in the arts may be of interest to community planners as well as to artists. 

October 21, 2009

. . . . My colleagues in Washington cringe when I use words like "pathetic" and "invisible" and "embarrassing" to describe the NEA budget, so let's just say that the funds we have to work with are "not that large." England is the European country that is the worst public supporter of the arts. Their budget? $900 million. That would translate with our population to an NEA budget of $4.6 billion. That's not going to happen here in my great grand-kids lifetimes. But there are some significant things we can do with even modest amounts of new funding.

So I'm here to tell you today that we have a plan. But since this is America, before you have a plan, you have to have a motto. And it's not "no news is good news" or the recent "A great nation deserves great art."
It's a simple, two-word declaration: "Art works."

I hope you'll soon start seeing that logo everywhere. Why "art works?" The fact is that those two words sum up everything we are, or are going to be about, at the NEA. "Art works" is a triple entendre. Of course, "art works" is a noun, which encompasses the very stuff of what we do, the achievements of artists. Great "art works" is the objective of every grant we make.

Secondly, "art works" is a sentence that describes the very activity that I mentioned earlier: art works on and within people to change – that word again – and inspire them, it addresses the need we all have to create, to imagine, to aspire to something more, to become, if only for a few moments, more than we've been. It is the most hopeful of human activities. And one of the most essential.

And finally, and maybe most importantly, art works because arts jobs are real jobs. The 5.7 million people who have full-time arts-related jobs in this country are a part of the real economy. They pay taxes and spend money. Obviously. But we're going to be making a point beyond that. Any discussion of policy for coming out of this recession, any plan that addresses economic growth and urban and neighborhood revitalization has to include the arts. We know, and we can prove, that when you bring art and artists into the center of town, that town changes.

... Create an arts scene downtown, and small towns have downtowns too, and you change the place. Artists are great place-makers, they are entrepreneurs, and they should be the centerpiece of every town's strategy for the future. We know now that businesses follows labor, not the other way around.

... Companies seek a highly skilled workforce and that workforce seeks places with a high quality of life. And at the top of the "quality of life" criteria are education and culture. Business follows people and people follow other people. To twist the great line from "Field of Dreams" (here I am with sports metaphors again), "If you come, they will build it."

...I know firsthand that great art can come from the unlikeliest of places. A few years ago, I visited Eric, Oklahoma, where a museum was being dedicated to one of my idols, the great country music songwriter and singer, Roger Miller. He wrote the music for my first show, "Big River." While driving the 140 miles from Oklahoma city to Eric, you pass the hometowns of Sheb Wooley, one of the creators of rock and roll, the songwriter Jimmy Webb, and Garth Brooks. What is in the water there? There are certainly no music conservatories, probably precious few music teachers, no colleges, no arts centers, nothing. Just an inexplicable concentration of genius.

And we need to start yesterday. Between the time of my nomination and confirmation I reached out to a number of important foundation leaders and my conversations with them were more than encouraging. If there is one thing I'm sure of, it's that there are great projects, some of them already teed up, that we can work on together and achieve some inspiring early successes.