I’m compelled to agree with Foodleking, in that the federal government shouldn\u2019t be in the business of funding the arts. (I don\u2019t have as much of a problem with state funding, though, but that\u2019s another story.)<\/p>\n
Set aside the fact that art subsidies are outside the bounds of limited government defined in the Constitution, along with just about everything else that Washington does. In practice, the program is open to all kinds of abuses, and it creates a culture of victimization with those \u201cartistes\u201d who equate a lack of government funding with censorship, which is abject nonsense. Free speech protects your right to express yourself. It doesn\u2019t guarantee that the government will pay you for it.<\/p>\n
But if the government has to fund the arts, I\u2019m glad they got me to do it. And I\u2019m more than willing to rise above principle if I can get an occasional free trip to DC.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I was on a panel with six other theatre professionals from all over the country. I was there as a designated layperson, and it was a little embarrassing to go around the room and introduce ourselves and say what we do.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi! I\u2019m Artsy McFartsy! I\u2019m the artistic director of a big, important theatre in New York City!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHi! I\u2019m Sally Superstar! I\u2019m a Broadway actress with a resume as long as my arm!\u201d<\/p>\n
And then me.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi, I\u2019m Stallion Cornell. I rent vacation condos in Kauai.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everyone else was probably more artistically accomplished, but I took comfort in the fact that I probably make more money than all of them. A life in the arts is not a particularly lucrative one, even for people at the highest levels thereof.<\/p>\n
I was almost certainly the only Republican in the room, too, although the entire experience was surprisingly apolitical. There were no \u201cPiss Christ\u201d or Mapplethorpe S&M grant requests. The only time anything remotely political came into the equation was when people praised arts groups for \u201cnon-traditional casting\u201d and \u201cdiversity\u201d excellence. I think the word \u201cdiversity\u201d is woefully abused in most political settings. When politicians or university officials use the term, they\u2019re intensely concerned with irrelevant skin pigmentation differences and shun the genuine diversity of ideas.<\/p>\n
But that was neither here nor there. I think non-traditional casting is usually a good thing \u2013 once upon a time, I cast interracial leads in Guys and Dolls in lily-white St. George, Utah \u2013 so this didn\u2019t bug me all that much.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m bound by contract not to reveal the names of the applicants, the grant level amounts, or any real specificity about what we discussed until the awards are announced on April 1. But I can, hopefully, provide you with a few little tidbits you might find interesting.<\/p>\n
At one point, I questioned whether one group, which had a multimillion-dollar endowment and great ticket sales, really needed a grant from the NEA. The answer came back that the NEA does not consider financial need when they decide to fund grants. In fact, if your organization is financially unstable, they are far less likely to get a grant. The NEA, I was told, \u201cfunds the art they want to be associated with.\u201d<\/p>\n
At first, I was taken aback, but I liked that idea more and more as I thought about it. NEA grants are more valuable than the dollar amounts attached to them. They\u2019re essentially the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval in the arts world, and they enhance the stature of an organization in the eyes of potential donors.<\/p>\n
It all comes back to the principle that I kept hammering home when I was an artistic director for a struggling arts company \u2013 people fund vision, not need.<\/p>\n
Along those lines, I was disappointed in how few original musical theatre works were being presented. Most of the requests were to fund mainstream musicals \u2013 Guys and Dolls, Damn Yankees<\/span>, and, surprisingly, three requests for the musical Big River<\/span>. Those who asked for money to fund original works met with an enthusiastic response from everyone on the panel, although some of the work samples changed our minds. \u201cOriginal\u201d is not always synonymous with \u201cgood.\u201d<\/p>\n On a lark, I brought a copy of my own original musical<\/a>, hoping it would fall out of my bag and someone would say \u201cMy! What\u2019s this? Doesn\u2019t this need to be funded, too?\u201d<\/p>\n Yeah, swell idea. It stayed in my bag the whole trip.<\/p>\n All in all, my trip to DC was way too much fun. I ended the day visiting an old friend from USC that I hadn\u2019t seen in almost 15 years. I met her family, and her three-year-old son took the occasion to put Band-Aids on both of my thumbs, which I forgot to take off until the following morning.<\/p>\n Summing up: I was in Chicago, and Languatron didn\u2019t show. Wuss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I'mcompelled to agree with Foodleking, in that the federal government shouldn\u2019t be in the business of funding the arts. (I don\u2019t have as much of a problem with state funding, though, but that\u2019s another story.) Set aside the fact that art subsidies are outside the bounds of limited government defined in the Constitution, along with ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}