DC's arts administration debacle

Has been reported in the Washington City Paper ("Mayor Bowser's Office Attempts to Seize the Arts") and WAMU/NPR ("‘How Are We Going To Resolve This?’: Mayor, D.C. Council Chair Spar Over Arts").

It reminds me of the line that lawyers say about how "good cases make bad law," because the judge rules in a sub-optimal way, when a transformational approach was an option.

The way DC supports, funds, and "administers" "the arts" doesn't work very well, as I have discussed in dozens of pieces over the years, including, in the context of the new DC Cultural Plan, "What would be a "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for DC's cultural ecosystem."

In fact in my many thousands of words comments on the Cultural Plan Draft, I made the point that it didn't provide an evaluation of the major city agencies involved in "the arts" (DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, DC Public Library, DC Office of Cable Television, Film, Music and Entertainment, Events DC, etc.). And I offered counter examples of how it's done in Baltimore and Chicago.

DCCAH is hardly an exemplary example of a local government arts support organization.

But it's not likely that the Bowser Administration really has a better approach, even though they've recently created a "Creative Affairs Office" ("Mayor Bowser Launches New Office of Creative Affairs," City Paper; "What Will The Creative Affairs Office Mean For The Arts In DC," WAMU).

And the City Council lacks any expertise in the subject as well.

So, I am not very hopeful things will move forward in a beneficial manner.

I do think, had the Cultural Plan focused more on (1) creating a robust arts ecosystem and (2) evaluating the existing arts agency functions within DC government, that the city would have been in a much better position to move forward changes in how it organizes its participation in the development of arts, culture, and the creative economy.

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In talking with the person who was the project manager for the Cultural Plan, he said the basic thrust was shifting from the approach of "arts as revitalization" to "arts and the importance of equity and access."

While sure, arguably, that's a reasonable approach, I don't think it works if your arts-cultural ecosystem is seriously deficient or incomplete, which is what I argue, and have argued for many years, since 2003, when various DC cultural institutions like the City Museum and the Lincoln Theatre "failed" around the same time.

The "local" arts ecosystem has never been fully developed because the city has relied on the federal cultural institutions to deliver culture.

But this creates a big problem.  Those federal institutions are more focused on arts as consumption, presenting art, and not arts as production.  So the ecosystem that is necessary to support working artists is stunted.

That's why I continue to focus on the questions of "what is the necessary infrastructure to support the arts in terms of disciplines, organizations and institutions, and artists?" with a special focus on the gaps and missing elements.