Author: Wry, Brann J.

Publication Year: 1981

Media Type: Report

Summary:

Never before have there been more artists, arts organizations, schools, broadcasters, filmmakers, arts councils, art centers, or multi-discipline arts events than there are today. This dramatic growth portends exciting challenges for the future of the arts, while implying that the population of this country has come in great measure to expect the arts to fulfill some need in its daily life.

Abstract:

Never before have there been more artists, arts organizations, schools, broadcasters, filmmakers, arts councils, art centers, or multi-discipline arts events than there are today. This dramatic growth portends exciting challenges for the future of the arts, while implying that the population of this country has come in great measure to expect the arts to fulfill some need in its daily life. Our museums strain to keep up with the demand; audiences for dance expand with a level of taste and discernment rarely seen in any market; films can be seen wherever and whenever, in theatres, homes and hotels; music is heard as a primary and secondary experience in the concert hall, the home, automobile. In terms of productivity alone, our present communications potential has implications far beyond our present best guesses.

But we are strained by a contraction of the economy that has changed our national psychology from one of growth to one of careful trimming, saving, and at times over-concern for failure instead of accurate assessment of risk. In the midst of this climate, it is comforting to see artists continuing to create, filmmakers and producers continuing to produce, museums continuing to collect and show, and playwrights, choreographers and composers continuing to fill our lives with their expressions of the hidden, though found, truths that make life worth living.

For our readership, then, we, the publisher and editors, assume that all of us are dedicated to finding better ways to get through the hard times and to make the good times even better. This commitment means at the very least inventing new uses of management and legal technologies for the enhancement of our basic resource, the artist. Aside from this assumption of dedication, we see this commitment as a basic necessity for survival. For the arts are in the unique position of dealing with resource and product all in one type of human being: the artist.

When we speak, therefore, of copyright, united funding, joint ventures, limited partnerships, superstations, satellites, target markets, audience development, FIFO, LIFO, and GIGO, let us remember that our talking and writing must pertain to that basic resource, the artist, and must have some relevance for the artist's enhancement. Without our creativity as managers, lawyers, trustees, and teachers supporting the American artists' creativity we shall make a difficult task almost impossible.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Community Development