Arts funding - Ivan Hewett on the vices and virtues of American patronage
It's an article of faith among the British arts community that, when it comes to arts funding, our way - however niggardly, and whatever its faults - is better than their way, meaning the American mix of corporate and private patronage. Our way guarantees the freedom of the artist to be shocking; their way produces a tame corporate culture. Our way provides access for all; their way makes art the plaything of the rich.
But when you look close-ly, this neat dichotomy between state-sponsored virtue and privately sponsored philistinism starts to break down. True, the top rank of Metropolitan Opera sponsors in New York do wear tacky medallions on ribbons at opening nights. But the top prices there are less than at Covent Garden. Yes, there was an occasion some years back when a sponsor for a new production by the New York City Ballet took a dislike to the costumes at the dress rehearsal, and insisted they be scrapped. But there are also private individuals in the same city who pay, anonymously, for poor kids in Queens to go to ballet class.
The American system has all the virtues and vices of a system where individual whim is the key factor. Its weaknesses are patent, and performing artists in America constantly bemoan their dependence on conservative sponsors and patrons, and the lack of federal spending on the arts (the composer Steve Reich is fond of quoting the statistic that the city of Cologne's budget for the arts is greater than that of the National Endowment for the Arts, or NEA). But these artists are up against a deeply ingrained hostility to the idea of the federal government meddling in matters of artistic expression, enshrined in the constitutional protection of freedom of expression. It took the shock of John F Kennedy's assassination, and the soul-searching that followed, to create the NEA. But the history of that institution has been a troubled one. Its budget swelled from $25m to $255m during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. But, even at its peak, it was a modest sum compared to the British Arts Council's annual budget, and it was spread very thin. The former NEA director Livingstone Biddle claims that, thanks to the NEA, there are double the number of symphonies, ten times the number of resident theatres, and 25 times the amount of private giving.
But the real bulwark of arts provision in small-town America is the local arts councils (yes, there are such things), which rely on private giving. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations pumped tens of millions of dollars into them, and the effect was dramatic. In 1954, there were ten such councils in New York State; by 1959, there were 60. Another source of arts sponsorship in America is local funding. Hotel taxes in many cities are directed towards the arts; by 1993, they generated over $500m for local arts agencies. And many cities directly fund big institutions.
Both sorts of tax funding, the state and the federal, have been embroiled in the so-called "culture wars" that sprang up in the Nineties. The first shot was fired when the NEA supported an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs. Conservatives lambasted its "advocacy of homoeroticism". In the same period, Newt Gingrich led a sustained assault on the NEA, saying it had become "a plaything . . . art patronage for an elite group", and denounced its support of "avant-garde people who are explicitly not accepted by most of the taxpayers who are coerced into paying for it". Last year, Chris Ofili's dung-encrusted Madonna, part of the "Sensation" exhibition, caused an uproar when it was shown at the Brooklyn Museum. The mayor withheld part of the museum's grant on the grounds that the show was "sick stuff" that desecrated "the most personal and deeply held views of people in society".
Meanwhile, away from the limelight, the tide of private giving has continued to swell, doubling in real terms from $2.5bn in 1970 to $5bn in 1978, and redoubling to $10bn in 1992. Not all of this comes from wealthy people; in fact, the core funders of American symphony orchestras, museums and theatres are the thousands of small subscribers who contribute between $100 and $200 per year, encouraged by American tax laws, which allow any donation to be offset against liabilities, no matter how small. The result is a kind of informal democracy of arts funding, which ensures that the programmes of those orchestras and museums tend to be conservative.
But the very ethos of individualism and self-reliance that makes America conservative is also, surprisingly, the thing that allows pockets of radicalism to flourish - often in the most unlikely places. The town of Helena, Montana, is the last place you'd expect to find an old cinema converted into an arts centre for cutting-edge dance and experimental art. It exists thanks to the vision of one man, Arnie Melina, who charmed and bullied the locals into helping him. Behind the scenes of many leading arts institutions are a handful of monied people who, each year, quietly and with no publicity, bail them out of trouble - the Ojai Festival and Santa Fe Opera Festival are two examples. And, by and large, they stay out of programming decisions. One of the most remarkable of these idealistic individuals was Donald Kendall, the chief executive of Pepsi-Co, who during the 1980s supported the enterprising and often daring Pepsi-Co Festival at Purchase, in upstate New York. Each year, he would ask the festival's artistic director, Christopher Hunt, how much he needed. The sum was always a lot more than the year before, but whatever it was, Kendall wrote out the cheque - despite the fact that, in year one, audiences were scared away by the programming. Only once did he demur, when Hunt wanted some tasteful nudity in a programme booklet for Don Giovanni. "In Pepsi-land, there are no nipples or pubic hair," he was told.
It is true that, when it comes to sponsoring arts, rich people prefer something tangible you can hang on a wall and impress your friends with - which is one reason why post-war Abstract Expressionism happened in America, and the avant-garde explosion in music happened in Europe. New music in America has always been a poor relation of new art - compare the income of Elliot Carter, who as late as the 1960s was earning 25 cents an hour for his commissions, with the lavish incomes of artists such as Jasper Johns or Andy Warhol. And there is a rather depressing brand of conservative American new music - big, sleek orchestral pieces that trace a sentimental journey from travail to affirmation - which you regularly find in the programmes of the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics. But even so, you still find rugged individuals with the kind of passionate commitment to modernism that has become politically unacceptable in Britain. The philanthropist Betty Freeman, redoubtable supporter of new music as far afield as Salzburg, has declared that "Harrison Birtwistle is the greatest living composer". Would anyone at the British Arts Council dare to endorse that?
Ivan Hewett presents Music Matters on BBC Radio 3
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