Welcome to ARTNPerspective! It seems ironic that as I celebrate the inauguration of this creative endeavor arts agencies at the national and state levels find themselves in a precarious financial position. Across the country legislatures have submitted amendments to eliminate or severely decrease funding for the arts. Just last week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to drastically reduce the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts from approximately $167 to $125 million. Arts organizations from South Carolina to Texas are fighting for their lives as state governments, forced to reduce spending, place these agencies on the chopping block.
Arts advocates, such as Americans for the Arts, fighting to halt this trend argue that the long-term economic benefits generated by the arts outweigh the short-term solutions proposed by many Republican legislators. In a New York Times article Robert Lynch, the president of the aforementioned lobbying group states, "the arts provide 5.7 million jobs in the United States that generate $30 billion in taxes, nearly $13 billion of which goes to the federal government."1 Moreover, Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein contend in Psychology Today that "the arts stimulate economic development by fostering scientific and technological innovations," both of which are crucial to our nation's prosperity.2 Cutting arts and crafts programs they conclude will have profound financial consequences.3
Although some lawmakers might be swayed by this data, many people perceive the arts as non-essential, frivolous activities, especially the visual arts. On a recent visit to the St. Louis Art Museum I overheard a woman mockingly tell her daughter, "you could do that," while looking at the simplified forms and expressive colors in Karl Schmidt Rottluf's painting Rising Moon (1912). How many legislators voting to eliminate state arts commissions share this sentiment?
To save the visual arts we have to get people to open their minds. I propose that art venues develop a visual analysis checklist with interactive questions that teach people about visual language—lines, shapes, forms, colors, value, space and texture—and how artists use this vocabulary to compose artworks. Once people understand how an artwork is composed then they can begin to ask the question, "What is the artist trying to communicate?"
Many people are intimidated by art, or do not understand it, especially modern and contemporary works. We need to demystify the process of looking. Until people learn how to read visual language, they will neither truly be able to appreciate an artwork, nor grasp the important role the arts play in the development of our society. It's time for our state and national legislators to take a field trip to their local museum or gallery for a lesson.
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(3) Ibid.
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