In a recent editorial, Washington Post theatre critic Peter Marks calls for the Joe Biden administration to create a secretary of arts and culture position (subscription may be required) as a way to give the field a “seat at the table” in federal decision making. Anyone who works in the legacy arts hears some version of this argument at least once a month, dropped into conversations about how hard it is to raise money or sell tickets. Most people don’t really contemplate what deep federal involvement would entail, so Marks should be commended for thinking through his case. Unfortunately, that case is ultimately unconvincing, and it becomes clear as you read Marks’s essay that a department of arts and culture is a horrible idea.
Marks shows us that arts and culture are “ailing” in the United States with a list of other countries that have national arts and culture departments. This litany is supposed to shame us into believing that by denying our country a federal overseer of culture we are starving the field, but a closer look shows us that the United States comes off pretty well. According to Marks, the arts and culture industry accounts for $877 billion of our economy, which is 4.5% of our GDP. By comparison, Canada’s culture industry is only 2.7% of GDP, and culture makes up only 3% of the global economy. Clearly, as an economic activitiy, our culture is outperforming.
The bulk of Marks’s essay is taken up by the words of notable personages within the arts used to make his case for him. Henry Timms, the head of Lincoln Center, links the arts to Bidens’s campaign, saying, “‘(if) you think of the three major promises the new administration has made … all cannot be made without the [input] of the arts.'” Those three promises, according to Timms, are to facilitate unity, generate respect around the world (for the US, presumably), and foster diversity. I don’t know what world Timms lives in–I do, actually: he’s the CEO of Lincoln Center–but everything I’ve seen over the last four years shows me that creating an entirely new federal department, with a cabinet-level secretary, simply to help a newly elected President demonstrate his ability to accomplish three very vague goals strikes me as a little authoritarian. If Trump had set up a secretary of culture to fulfill his promise to MAGA, most of us would have been rightly outraged.
I also don’t buy that a secretary of culture would help fulfill those promises anyway, as we haven’t seen arts and culture generating much unity or goodwill lately. Practically monthly we see another article, book, radio show, or Twitter hashtag decrying racism and classicism in legacy arts like opera and orchestral music, and for a number of years its been well known that women are woefully absent from positions of power within the commercial music industry. Leaving aside the behind-the-scenes stuff, how we practice and consume culture defines us, and differentiates us from others. The music we make and listen to and the art we hang on our walls, the shows we watch on TV and the books we read, even the cars we drive (if we have them) and the clothes we wear, they all place us in relation to some group or class, and that creates difference. We can bridge those gaps, but we can’t pretend that art is some magical balm to fill them in. In some cases, it just makes it worse.
Michael Kaiser is pulled into Marks’s argument to speculate that the lack of a federal cultural department could be due to the Puritans, “who thought music and dance were evil.” Whether that’s true or not (it’s not), a reason to keep the federal government from playing more of a role in our lives than it already does today is the First Amendment. The United States is predicated on the idea that the federal government stays out of our way when it comes to cultural expression, be it through religion, speech, the press, or public assembly. One could argue this is the central theme running through our national cultural life, despite the seemingly endless contradictions and conflicts that arise within it.
Do we really want a top-down, federal agency responsible to the President having undue influence on our freedoms? Individual states, counties, and municipalities do a fine job of this already. They provide support to their cultural economies by providing venues (such as the Los Angeles County’s Music Center), educational institutions (such as the North Carolina School of the Arts), and grants. Some also conduct research that helps us to better understand the cultural landscape around us, as can be seen by the work that the Los Angeles County’s Department of Arts and Culture has done over the past few years. That’s more than enough government involvement in culture we need.
We know that economic stability and educational attainment are the two consistent markers of cultural audiences, regardless of ethnicity or other characteristics, so if our federal government really wants to help us practice our culture, there is couple of things it can do. First, it can solve the problem of economic inequality in this country, and get money in people’s pockets (it’s hard to want to play guitar when you’re supine on the ground with a boot on your neck). Second, it can make it easier for people to educate themselves, as artists or otherwise. Doing both of these things mean taxing rich people, which most high-art non-profit leaders will not like, because those rich people give their organizations money, making them look like heroes. In the long run, though, increased investment in the the economy and education will pay dividends by creating future generations of confident, healthy, inquisitive Americans who will become active cultural participants and practitioners.
Mark Likes Music 