Here”™s an encouraging word from Maryland”™s Gov. Martin O”™Malley: “the arts in Maryland are not only a significant economic generator and source of well-paying jobs, but they are also critical to maintaining our outstanding quality of life. When we invest in the arts, we invest in our communities, our businesses and our citizens.”
What the arts do to enhance the human experience is well-known but it may have particular relevance today.
Traditional economic icons are crumbling around us ”“ banks, the stock market, insurance companies, the home we relied on for retirement ”“ and who knows what is next. As Peggy Noonan writes in her incisive opinion piece (WSJ 12-20-08), “There is a general air of collapse in America right now, the sense that our institutions can no longer be trusted.” As she quotes someone at a party, “It”™s the age of the empty suit.” Her conclusion: “We should experience the current crisis as a gigantic wake-up call. We have been living beyond our means, both governmentally and personally. We have to be willing to face up to our problems.”
Rather than attempting to recreate what we are losing, however, there may be other ways to improve our “quality of life.” In 1993, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was the primary publisher of “The Arts as an Industry: Their Economic Importance to the New York-New Jersey Metropolitan Region” in which the magnitude of the economic importance of the arts in the bi-state region was laid out in exhaustive detail. The study, published by the most unlikely public authority, makes the point that even in difficult economic times the arts continue to grow and maintain the quality of life we come to associate with living in the metropolitan region.
It is impossible to imagine New York City without the enormous role played by the performing arts. The graphic arts is equally dominant in the city. As the investment arm of New York City undergoes severe shocks and even contraction, we can be reasonably sure the arts will manage to keep right on going, just as they did in the Great Depression.
But what of life in the suburban areas? Have they discovered the power of the arts to maintain community and uplift in hard times?
There is a historic aspect to the role of the arts in hard times. Everyone knows about the Works Progress Administration (WPA) instituted by the government in the Great Depression. During the darkest days of the thirties, a primary goal of the program was to employ a variety of artists, writers and musicians so that the work they produced could help them make a living and subsequently enhance the quality of American life during tough economic times. Other goals developed as the work progressed, including a federal push toward the creation of a “national culture.” In today”™s money chase it is almost beyond belief that the U.S. government would have had such a goal in stressful times.
The financial support of the WPA hardly covered the staggering creative output of artists from all disciplines during the hardships of the Depression. Consider these artistic breakthroughs: Frank Lloyd Wright, architecture; Martha Graham, modern dance; George Gershwin in “Porgy and Bess;” Duke Ellington, removing music classifications in his compositions; Alexander Calder, creating art in the air; Orson Welles, wildly creative films that broke all previous barriers and so many more examples of artistic breakthroughs.
Is there something about limited financial resources that opens up the brain to new avenues of creativity? We have not seen such a remarkably original group of artists from all disciplines since that devastating period in this nation”™s history. Supporting the arts is hardly a panacea for the incomprehensible financial mess that we have foisted on the country and, indeed, the world. Only World War II actually did that for us in the ”˜30s.
However, when we finally reach the bottom of this downturn we must rethink our goals as a society. Greed and materialism have dominated the culture for some time but they have driven us into a ditch from which it may be difficult to re-emerge. Encouraging creativity of all kinds may be the best way to prepare us for a very different future as natural resources become more difficult to acquire. The Earth is finite, sometimes hard to believe. Remember the stunning photo of the earth as it floated in the endless blackness of space. Beautiful, but finite.
May unexpected blessings come your way in this New Year 2009.
Surviving the Future explores a wide range of subjects to assist businesses in adapting to a new energy age. Maureen Morgan, a transit advocate, is on the board of Federated Conservationists of Westchester. Reach her at mmmorgan10@optonline.net.
