Ideals vs. Reality
It usually doesn't take long for a major recession to stop inspiring empathy for one's fellow human beings, and just start getting on everyone's nerves. If you work in an affected industry (and honestly, whose industry hasn't been affected by the last two years of economic turmoil?) you've undoubtedly got co-workers whose morale has plummeted and whose attitude at work has taken a turn for the nasty, even if they started off the downturn determined to do whatever it took to help pull everyone through. The bottom line is that we all seem to have a limited supply of good will before we start looking around for someone to blame for our situation.
Those of us in the arts are no exception to this rule, and increasingly, it seems like the journalists who cover the arts are getting decidedly antsy as well. Early on in the recession, you could sense a certain amount of sympathy from the press for arts groups trapped between a fiscal rock and hard place, which wasn't surprising, given what a precarious state newspapers themselves are in. But the new year seems to be bringing a change in the winds, and I've started to notice more writers penning screeds against the cuts to artistic product being made by many of the nation's orchestras and opera companies, crippling once-in-a-lifetime-recession be damned.
What troubles me about this shift in journalistic focus isn't that writers are calling on big-budget performing arts groups to remember their artistic mandates - that is, after all, one of the more important roles of the press. But I must admit that I resent it when writers hide behind big platitudes while failing to take an interest in the nitty-gritty of their subject. Too often, arts writers implore the largest local performing arts groups to take more and bigger chances at the riskiest possible times, without acknowledging what a suicidal leap of faith it could be.
Much as I would love to live in a world where taking unpopular but principled stands is predictably rewarded by public acclaim, we all know that isn't the world we live in. Put another way: do I like that my orchestra and many others are checking every last artistic decision we make against the bottom line right now? (And then re-checking and re-re-checking it just to see if we can squeeze a few more drops of blood out of the stone?) No. I hate it. And so does everyone else in the business.
But at the risk of coming across like an apologist for the front office of a floundering baseball team, I just don't think it's responsible to expect organizations that survive on the generosity of our donors to celebrate a crippling recession by making demonstrably risky artistic decisions and then demanding even more money to fund them. And the truth is, if we did start making a habit of that, the same journalists who are now decrying a lack of originality in our programming would be lining up to demand accountability on the fiscal side.
One of the occasionally unpleasant side effects of being an arts group that caters to hundreds of thousands of paying customers per year is that you don't have the luxury of squeezing yourself into a niche market very often. Full-size orchestras employ close to 100 musicians alone, without even counting staff, and opera companies employ far more. No nonprofit theater company or dance troupe even comes close to that kind of overhead. To stay afloat, we've got to fill a 2,500-seat concert hall on an alarmingly regular basis, and that's a lot different than an organization that needs to sell 300 tickets a night.
Furthermore, much as we might like to imagine that it's possible to completely separate artistic decisions from financial ones, I've just never seen any evidence that that's a workable reality in any but the most outrageously wealthy of arts organizations. And it strikes me as odd that, at a time when much of the news media is still asking the question of how much of our previously inflated American lifestyle is still affordable post-meltdown, so many arts writers seem to be indignantly demanding an immediate return to 2007-era thinking.
P.S. You'll notice that I didn't link to any particular offending article or commentary before beginning this little rant. It's a bit gutless, I know, but I basically didn't want to seem like I was singling out any one journalist and/or risk getting into a debate over the merits of that one piece. (Besides, if you browse the music headlines on ArtsJournal on a regular basis, you could likely make your own list of such commentaries.)
Those of us in the arts are no exception to this rule, and increasingly, it seems like the journalists who cover the arts are getting decidedly antsy as well. Early on in the recession, you could sense a certain amount of sympathy from the press for arts groups trapped between a fiscal rock and hard place, which wasn't surprising, given what a precarious state newspapers themselves are in. But the new year seems to be bringing a change in the winds, and I've started to notice more writers penning screeds against the cuts to artistic product being made by many of the nation's orchestras and opera companies, crippling once-in-a-lifetime-recession be damned.
What troubles me about this shift in journalistic focus isn't that writers are calling on big-budget performing arts groups to remember their artistic mandates - that is, after all, one of the more important roles of the press. But I must admit that I resent it when writers hide behind big platitudes while failing to take an interest in the nitty-gritty of their subject. Too often, arts writers implore the largest local performing arts groups to take more and bigger chances at the riskiest possible times, without acknowledging what a suicidal leap of faith it could be.
Much as I would love to live in a world where taking unpopular but principled stands is predictably rewarded by public acclaim, we all know that isn't the world we live in. Put another way: do I like that my orchestra and many others are checking every last artistic decision we make against the bottom line right now? (And then re-checking and re-re-checking it just to see if we can squeeze a few more drops of blood out of the stone?) No. I hate it. And so does everyone else in the business.
But at the risk of coming across like an apologist for the front office of a floundering baseball team, I just don't think it's responsible to expect organizations that survive on the generosity of our donors to celebrate a crippling recession by making demonstrably risky artistic decisions and then demanding even more money to fund them. And the truth is, if we did start making a habit of that, the same journalists who are now decrying a lack of originality in our programming would be lining up to demand accountability on the fiscal side.
One of the occasionally unpleasant side effects of being an arts group that caters to hundreds of thousands of paying customers per year is that you don't have the luxury of squeezing yourself into a niche market very often. Full-size orchestras employ close to 100 musicians alone, without even counting staff, and opera companies employ far more. No nonprofit theater company or dance troupe even comes close to that kind of overhead. To stay afloat, we've got to fill a 2,500-seat concert hall on an alarmingly regular basis, and that's a lot different than an organization that needs to sell 300 tickets a night.
Furthermore, much as we might like to imagine that it's possible to completely separate artistic decisions from financial ones, I've just never seen any evidence that that's a workable reality in any but the most outrageously wealthy of arts organizations. And it strikes me as odd that, at a time when much of the news media is still asking the question of how much of our previously inflated American lifestyle is still affordable post-meltdown, so many arts writers seem to be indignantly demanding an immediate return to 2007-era thinking.
P.S. You'll notice that I didn't link to any particular offending article or commentary before beginning this little rant. It's a bit gutless, I know, but I basically didn't want to seem like I was singling out any one journalist and/or risk getting into a debate over the merits of that one piece. (Besides, if you browse the music headlines on ArtsJournal on a regular basis, you could likely make your own list of such commentaries.)
Labels: stirring the pot, the business of music, the media
posted by Sam at
7:27 PM
5 Comments:
You said it... Blaming victims while the perps do business as usual.
We are in a deeper pile of ugly since we came down from the short-lived unity after 9/11.
Not sure how the Dufour situation (the link) reflects this, though.
Just an example of folks in the arts (allegedly) sniping at each other unnecessarily. I have no idea whether Dufour was misquoted or not, but it's a fact that orchestra folks love talking smack about other orchestras.
"but it's a fact that orchestra folks love talking smack about other orchestras."
If so, I suppose what goes around eventually comes around. I always thought critics/journalists viewed themselves as necessarily outside the communities they cover.
I always thought critics/journalists viewed themselves as necessarily outside the communities they cover.
Heh. Yeah. Just like local sportswriters do...
Seriously, I've attended "arts community" roundtables in the good old days of 1999+. The artists tell critics that making art is hard (true) and that critical nitpicking is destructive (probably true). The critics would just sneer that their job is to be objective arbiters of ultimate quality in service of both art and audience (mostly bogus). My only takeaway from all that as an audience type is that critics are remarkably thin-skinned. Well that and to stop attending those events.
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