Wow. DC's local cultural community is more myopic than I realized

Last Sunday's Post had a piece ("Advice for the Smithsonian Institution's new leader") interviewing local arts leaders with their suggestions for the incoming Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, David Skorton, a medical doctor and formerly president of Cornell University.

The Smithsonian is a grouping of museums and science research facilities, mostly located on the National Mall.  They are national museums, and with a couple of exceptions, don't focus on "serving" the local community in terms of cultural interpretation, other than residents having access to the facilities, just as anyone else.

(Note this map is somewhat out of date.)  Map of the Smithsonian Museums on the National Mall/in Downtown DC.

My discussion of this general issue is that DC needs to focus on developing its own set of cultural institutions, not out of a desire to duplicate the array of museums provided by the Smithsonian, but out of a recognition that we shouldn't expect the national museums or other national cultural facilities (Library of Congress, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art) to substitute for facilities of our own.

And out of a recognition that the "national" mission of the federal cultural assets can never adequately serve to meet local cultural needs.  The relative failure of the Anacostia Community Museum, a Smithsonian "eco-museum" is a case in point.

-- Proposal to build a Museum Park, including the Anacostia Community Museum, at Poplar Point

Assessing the Smithsonian in the context of other nationally pre-eminent museums and the national museums in other countries, I'd say in general, they don't measure up.  See the past blog entries:

-- "Dancing with the one that brung ya and challenging the dominant narrative""
-- "You don't gotta have art," about the controversy when then Secretary Clough acceded to complaints by the Catholic Church and ordered the removal of a video art piece from the Hide/Seek exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
-- "Museum of Censored Art, adjacent to the Smithsonian American Art Museum"

I argue that the Smithsonian has a tough time being great because its mission as a repository of "national memory" and its role as a federal government entity often means that its overseers--members of Congress--believe that its job is project American "greatness" rather than to be an institution that also questions and reinterprets the dominant narrative,

The Smithsonian is caught between this tension and as a result, its ability to be edgy or serious gets compromised.

This is not unlike the current controversy over the AP American History test ("Here's how AP US History became controversial," Business Insider) where many elected officials are concerned that the curriculum for the class is too focused on "questioning" and not enough on extolling American exceptionalism and greatness.

And if the Smithsonian doesn't measure up being compared to MoMA or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, let alone national museums in the UK, France, Italy, and Spain, what could Secretary Skorton possibly learn from the 11th Street Bridge Park, as suggested by  Dorothy Kosinski of the Phillips Collection or DC neighborhoods like Petworth, as suggested by Molly Smith of the Arena Stage or "Advisory Neighborhood Commissions," the local community boards that weigh in on city matters, as suggested by Edmund Fleet of THEARC.

(And hey, I am on the Design Oversight Committee for the Bridge Park and I think it is a great project.  But it isn't particularly unique on a national or global scale.  There are many similar examples of parks having great impact on cities, dating to Central Park in the late 1800s, and with more unique infrastructure related parks from Emscher Park in the Ruhr to of course, the High Line, but parks similar to the High Line pre-date that example as well.  THEARC is an amazing cultural space too.  And Arena Stage is a great regional theater.)

It makes sense that the two people interviewed who represent national institutions, William Adams, chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities, and Deborah Rutter, president of the Kennedy Center, had more relevant advice, focusing on connecting with equals at peer institutions and looking beyond the footprint of the US.

Be that as it may, many years ago, the then Under Secretary of Art, Ned Rifkin, convened an outside peer review study of the Smithsonian art museums.  The study said there was a great deal of room for improvement.  (While technically a part of the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Art is independent.)  The museum directors revolted, not cottoning to any criticism at all, and Rifkin was eased out (although this was also a result of other changes in top leadership and scandals around the same time).

2.  I have not had the time to track down either of these books, Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience and Who Owns America's Past?: The Smithsonian and the Problem of History, but I'd argue that both should be required reading for members of the local and national cultural community.

After such a reading, we'd be in a better place for making recommendations to Secretary Skorton about what he should be focusing on.

From the description of Who Owns America's Past?:

Never before has a book about the Smithsonian detailed the recent and dramatic shift from collection-driven shows, with artifacts meant to speak for themselves, to concept-driven exhibitions, in which objects aim to tell a story, displayed like illustrations in a book. Even more recently, the trend is to show artifacts along with props, sound effects, and interactive elements in order to create an immersive environment. Rather than looking at history, visitors are invited to experience it.

Who Owns America’s Past? examines the different ways that the Smithsonian’s exhibitions have been conceived and designed—whether to educate visitors, celebrate an important historical moment, or satisfy donor demands or partisan agendas. Post gives the reader a behind-the-scenes view of internal tempests as they brewed and how different personalities and experts passionately argued about the best way to present the story of America.

Foreign language learning and (DC) schools: an old H Street idea

There's been media coverage lately of parent interest in ensuring the opportunity for language learning in DC schools ("Parents want elementary pupils to learn foreign languages," Washington Post; "How One District School Is Tackling English Language," WAMU).  It reminds me of an idea I developed about ten years ago, but didn't seem to resonate, at least at the time.

Back in my H Street Main Street days, and the planned focus om the arts for the east end, one of my Promotions Committee members, Vanessa Ruffin, made the very good point that the "arts and culture" focus shouldn't be limited to the Atlas Performing Arts Center and some taverns, that it should go beyond the commercial district and permeate the neighborhood.

So we started to explore and expand on her point.  One way we took up the idea was to promote artist studios in homes not unlike how the Maryland Arts & Entertainment Districts work to do that in their respective areas.

And we talked about recruiting artists to live in the area, like the Paducah Kentucky Artist Relocation Program-- it's hard to remember that back then, housing prices in H Street, Trinidad, and Rosedale were still comparatively cheap.

Another was to explore the use of some commercial space on Florida Avenue for galleries, something that happened for awhile with the Conner Contemporary Gallery, although the space is now going to be used by the Capital Fringe Theater program.  (One of the best potential buildings, Jimmy's Tire, burned down...)  One suggestion was to expand on the idea of the RL Christian Library "portable" to a bigger and better library focusing on the arts, to leverage the arts focus of the commercial district.

Finally, to reposition the schools in the neighborhood as an element of the arts district, the idea was that each of the elementary schools could specialize in different arts disciplines (performance, visual, media), including "language arts" and :foreign language arts."

And the three public buildings in the area at the time that were vacant (a school building on the Miner School campus, the old firehouse on Maryland Avenue (pictured at right), and the old police building on 9th Street NW) could be converted to arts facilities, for example, a glass studio, ceramics studio, etc.

(Another model would be the Gateway Arts Studios and Gallery in Brentwood, Maryland.)

Again, a new library could have been developed to support the program as mentioned above.

[Since then two of those buildings have been converted to private housing.  The third building is still vacant.  The area has another school building, Prospect, and the Sherwood Recreation Center, which could be integrated into the concept as well.]

Each studio building site and the schools could also have a resident artist program, and the idea was that the school would develop cultural programs around the language in association with other cultural organizations, embassies, etc.

The elementary schools in the broad catchment area of the H Street commercial district were Gibbs, Ludlow-Taylor, Maury, Miner, Wheatley (Trinidad), Webb (now closed), JO Wilson (which already has a well-respected French language program).  Someone else suggested that Eastern High School (or Spingarn) could be repositioned as an arts high school and the schools boundary patterns could have been changed accordingly.

Note that recently it has been proposed that Roosevelt High School in Ward 4 develop an "international focus."  That could have been developed as a counter-focus for either high school, and a joint arts-international studies cluster could have been developed for middle and high schools, with students taking courses at both schools.

In terms of foreign languages, at the elementary school level that would have been six different languages in addition to French, which is already offered at Wilson and has been for many years.

German?  Russian?  Chinese?  Spanish?  Japanese?  I never developed the concept to the level where these languages had to be specified.  (And of course, charter schools are eating DCPS' lunch in terms of offering foreign language studies as a way to recruit students to their programs.)

It would have been interesting to work with those embassy-connected institutes like Goethe Institut (German) to co-promote language learning, and even to extend it to the community beyond the programs specifically for the students in the DCPS system.  Or to work to get some of those institutes to open in DC, where they are not currently operating (like Spain's Cervantes Institut).

The basic idea as far as the schools were concerned was that special "cluster school" programs were already successful elsewhere in the DC Public Schools district and using the same concept as a springboard to school improvement would be another way to recapture, repattern, reposition, and improve a set of schools, in conjunction with other public improvement initiatives in the area (the H Street improvement program primarily).

At the time, the school system had worked with the urban design studio of the University of Michigan School of Architecture (one of the professors has a focus on urban schools) to create an improvement concept for the Spingarn campus (which at that time had a high school, a vocational high school, a junior high, and an elementary school), and that could have been a simultaneous lever of improvement as well.  That proposal fell by the wayside in the various changes of Superintendents of the school system.

cf "A case for cutting foreign language from US schools" -- I disagree of course, especially when you have the opportunity to integrate native speakers in the classroom and in a broader set of activities.  (The article misses the point that the issue isn't teaching foreign language as much as it is teaching it properly, and in cities like NYC--subject of the article--where there are so many native speakers of other languages, there is a rich opportunity to do it right and better.)