Public Funding for the Arts?

If you had asked me a year ago whether public funding for the arts by City, State, or Federal Government was a good thing. I would have said, of course, it is. But. the situation has changed drastically and very quickly, at least from the Federal side.

Public funding for the arts can be justified on many grounds. As I have written several times in the past, it has been shown that just seeing art or listening to music has a calming effect and can help keep one healthy. Last month, I even wrote about doctors’ prescriptions for art. 

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2025/04/an-art-prescription.html

Actively engaging in the arts enhances education both by teaching discipline and encouraging creativity and innovation. We can also learn a lot about history through the arts of the past. Theater, movies and literature can bring the past alive. Also, the art created today acts as a time capsule for tomorrow. Both historic and contemporary arts play a crucial role in preserving cultural heritage and identity.

As a species, we have a need for collective interaction. We read so often that loneliness is on the rise because we are losing our ability to communicate directly, due to our absorption with all the technology we have at home. You have to admit that it is more exciting if you are in an audience with others and can share the experience rather than watching alone in front of your screen.

We cannot forget what the arts do for the economy. How many people are employed in a theater and the support thereof How many musicians play in a concert or orchestra. Movies and TV shows don’t just need actors. Have you ever followed the credits at the end of a film listing all individuals it took to put the movie together!? Contrary to the image of a lone painter in his studio he or she may have a back up team, an assistant, a publicist or a gallery that employs a number of people, including art handlers, packers and shippers. At the end of that line are the clients who purchase the art or buy tickets for the show.

What happens, however, when the government makes the decisions on what should be communicated, be it by the artist, the producer, or the editor? During the McCarthy era, when communists or left-leaning artists and intellectuals were considered the enemy, a professor teaching advanced mathematics was fired for his leftist political beliefs, though the latter had nothing to do with the former.

How much influence should a donor of any sort have on arts and educational organizations. Public schools are funded by governments because it is vital to any country to have an educated and functional population. But what happens when government gets involved in editing out parts of history such as slavery or the holocaust. Is it in the interest of a “Government of the people, by the people, for the people" to keep their constituents ignorant?

What happens when one individual or an administration, be it local or federal, has the power to dictate what we are allowed to learn or see or even create?

In China, today, there are severe restrictions on what can be portrayed in the arts. An artist who portrays anything that the government considers against its interests can be sanctioned, in some cases which can include a prison sentence.

In that situation, citizens cannot know about the ideas that were not being allowed, only what the government finds to be appropriate and in its interests.

Self-censorship will limit the creativity of artists who want to make a living from their art and the same will be true for arts organizations. It is easier to follow party lines and accept what someone else thinks you should enjoy or think. It is appropriate for a young child to be guided by parents and teachers, but in this country, we have been encouraged to question, explore, and expand our horizons beyond those limits. It has made us an admired world world-leading nation.

We are losing the ability to decide what we like or what is good or bad with our current administration’s desire to eliminate the NEA and the NEH and dictate what can be presented by government-funded organizations. I want to be able to have broad exposure and make my own judgments. It is not a question of good art or bad art, or right art or wrong art. This is an existential threat to art itself as all art comes from a creative process which involves free thinking and imagination without restraints.

Fritz Scholder

Fritz Scholder (1937-2005), born Fritz William Scholder V, is a Native American artist enrolled in the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians. He has worked as an artist creating paintings, monotypes, lithographs, and sculptures. I have mentioned him a few times in various Missives but never devoted one to him. Like so many who have been born of mixed blood, Native American and European, he made his choices; he did not want to be pigeonholeed, but his work relates to Indian issues.

He is generally considered the leader of the New American Indian Art Movement.

A major retrospective of Scholder’s work at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in 2008 was titled “Indian/Not Indian”. Truman Lowe (Ho-Chunk), curator of contemporary art at the museum wrote, “Although one-quarter Luiseño (a California mission tribe), Scholder always insisted he was not American Indian any more than he was German or French, yet he became the most successful and highly regarded painter of Native Americans in U.S. history—a fact that raises the question of what ‘Indian art’ actually is”.

I like to relate my Missives to recent articles or events, and at this moment, there is an exhibition of Scholder’s works on paper at the LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, which will be on until June 7. All the images used here should be credited, “LewAllen Galleries and the Estate of Fritz Scholder”.

Most artists’ themes start out expressed on paper, with the immediacy of studies that develop into major works, making this exhibition particularly interesting to me.

Sholder’s self-portraits often grapple with issues of identity. He used his art to challenge the simplistic notion of "Indian" and to portray the complexities of his own mixed heritage. “Self Portrait in Roma” (1978), an etching and aquatint on paper from an edition of 50. shows an individual in classic, if somber, white man’s garb, with a questioning look on his face. The hand emerging from the white of his shirt holds what may be his etching tool.

Furthering the theme of complexity and stereotypes is his “Laughing Artist” (1974), an etching from an edition of 35. The image challenges stereotypical depictions of Native Americans wearing feathers and dancing or as solemn or tragic figures. Though from the and the not quite white coloring of the face you can infer that this is an Indian, but he still looks like anyone you might meet at a party.

“Indian at the Bar” (1970-71), lithograph in an edition of 75 from the “Indian Forever Suite” which consists of eight stone lithographs. The prominent Coors beer can held by the leering Indian, wearing dark glasses and a wide-brimmed hat, is clearly a comment on the alcoholism prevalent in the Indian population. Although many Native Americans object to the characterization, it was a subject Scholder depicted more than once.

My favorite print in the current show is “Indian Contemplating Columbus” (1991), an etching and aquatint on paper from an edition of 50. I like a slightly different title that it is known by better, "Native American Contemplating the Arrival of Columbus." The evocation of a faraway look in the face we cannot see of a figure identified by his moccasin and feathered headdress, I find haunting. How would things be if Columbus had not “discovered” America?!!!

It takes incredible talent and intellect for an artist to combine both sides of an issue so that his work tells the story. That is why I find Scholder’s work exciting, disturbing, and in the end, illuminating.

Our Very Own Dictator

It now seems that our administration wants to do away with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). As much as I want to write just about the arts there are times when I feel I have to speak out regarding the most important issues of the day that affect all of us. My blog has several thousand readers a week. The great majority are not subscribers but that is the nature of the internet and the ease of surfing the web.

Like it or not, I have a platform, and I will use it.

Authoritarian leaders, I prefer the term Dictators, have much in common. Basically, they rule by fear and the power of the purse. At the ripe old age of 80, I finally understand how a country can just give up and surrender itself to a single individual.

I have heard that people do not think it is fair to compare Trump to Hitler because Hitler came up with the extermination of 6,000,000 individuals. Of course, that was 8 or 9 years after he became Chancellor (Dictator) in 1933. But there are many other dictators that have followed similar paths if not his “final solution”. Though we have heard that Trump is setting up camps from which to deport our undocumented immigrants and even citizens.

It all gets scarier and scarier!

I found an interview online from the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs from 2019. Ece Temelkuran a Turkish novelist and political commentator had written a book, “How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship”. She wanted to warn the world about people like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has been “President” of Turkey since 2014. Temelkuran’s first point is that these individuals will say that they represent “real people” and not the elite. The takeover “takes a lot of silence, silent approval from ordinary people, and it takes a lot of normalization of absurdity and insanity before right-wing populism turns into a real fully formed authoritarian regime.”

Temelkuran also speaks of dismantling political institutions and the judiciary, and, towards the close of the interview, says, “The very end, which I hope doesn’t happen in this country or in the European countries, is criminalizing the opposition, stigmatizing them, and finally making them feel completely insecure and under attack so that they really literally leave the country.” Today we are learning of increasing numbers who have given up their government positions or been fired and former Trump appointees who have come out against him and are being “investigated”.

Viktor Mihály Orbán, who we have heard so much about from our President has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010. Did I forget to mention Trump’s closest pal, Vlademir Putin who was President of Russia from 2000 to 2008 and then again since 2012 to the present. So why shouldn’t Trump seek a third term if all his friends have stayed in office as long as they like?

So much comes down to money and fear. The billionaires often rely on government contracts or support for their projects. The newspapers hope to keep the “free press” but knuckle under to pressure fearing the loss of access. Law firms are told they will lose clients, and their lawyers will be denied entry to government buildings if they don’t stop suing the government. They have even been extorted to do pro bono work for the administration.

As I started writing Trump has declared all truck drivers must speak English. Sounds reasonable until you realize that these are grueling, and not the best paying jobs. Those willing to take them may very well be immigrants and to what level do they need English? But this Executive Order gives the government lots of leeway to make these jobs unattainable for immigrants.

Jeff Bezos, who I always thought of as one of the best of the billionaires, started to give in first when he would not allow an endorsement for President in 2024 in his newspaper, The Washington Post. Then he gave in again when Amazon was going to post how much prices would go up because of tariffs. This will harm his company more than anyone because people will just stop buying from sticker shock without a reason for the hike in prices. But Bezos has his fingers in other areas for which he will want and need government support.

Germany had the SA (Sturmabteilung) meaning 'assault division'. They were also known as the Brownshirts, infamous for their operation outside of the law and their violent intimidation of Germany’s leftists and Jewish population. Our Brownshirts include those pardoned for the assault on the Capitol when Trump came back into office. Our politicians are so fearful that they are doing the President’s bidding not just because they may be “Primaried”. Many have received threats of violence and fear for themselves and their families.

How long will we be ruled by fear if the courts and Congress continue to find excuses to sit on their hands? Let me conclude with the final speech from the 1940 film “The Great Dictator”. It starred Charlie Chaplin who also wrote, directed, and produced it. Please listen ...

Ruminations on a Museum

We have contributed various objects to museums across a number of states in the fields of European and, lately, Native American Art, but not enough to be worth even a single gallery in a museum. But one can fantasize!

I started to think about how I would go about building a museum. One would want it to be a destination place that people feel they must see. If you happen to live in France maybe there is a spare chateau you could renovate, or in Italy, a villa. In the United States, however, there are few pre-existing destination buildings available, so you start from scratch.

How does one call attention to a building? You could start with a striking exterior. A prime example is the Guggenheim Museum in New York, built in 1959 by Frank Lloyd Wright to exhibit the modern “non-objective” art collection of Solomon R. Guggenheim. A cylindrical building on a New York corner is certainly different and almost every New York resident wanted to look at it and some took a chance and looked at the art inside.

What about the Whitney Museum that opened a new building in 1966 to show their collection of American Art. It had to be quite different from the Guggenheim, so they hired Brutalist architect, Marcel Breuer, and if you liked it or not it became another destination building.

I use as examples the museums I knew and remember being shocked by when I first saw them. It took me a while to appreciate them. There are examples like these around the country if not necessarily as extreme.
Whether your museum is being built for one person’s collection or for a community, in a single field such as African art or a collection with the broader purpose of showing the history of man, there needs to be a clear concept. Once you have defined your concept, then you need to find an architect.

The Menil in Houston was built by Renzo Piano and opened to the public in 1987 to house the collection of John and Dominique de Menil . Dominique knew what she wanted so had a major role in forming their museum, which, by the way has the most unprepossessing exterior.

It is more often the case that there is a board of trustees with a committee that will go over portfolios of many architects and interview them to see if they will be compatible with what the board has in mind.
Of course, you want your public impressed when they come into the building. One device to accomplish this is by the atrium as you come into the building. A very large, high, open space which is not only impressive but has enough room for the large groups of people you are hoping to draw in, as well as for social events. The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts went through a major renovation and the architect chosen was the Studio Gang from Chicago and it opened in 2023. This architectural fact sheet will give you a great deal of detail. 

https://arkmfa.org/site/assets/files/5504/amfa_architectural_fact_sheet_-_06_03_24.pdf 
 

Here is an image of their atrium ...

There is another professional that the board and architect should introduce into the process, and that is the museum designer. Small exhibition spaces may be appropriate for some collections but will severely limit what art can be shown at the time or in the future. Decisions must be made on the variety of spaces you want based on what kind of art are you going to show. A large bright gallery, maybe even with a skylight is fine to show sculpture but would destroy a collection of works on paper. If you are showing decorative arts a gallery scaled to invoke a large size living room might be good. Galleries for temporary exhibitions will need to have flexibility, preferably with movable walls.

If you have an already established museum and are enlarging it, you must not overlook input from your museum team who have had to deal with where they have been working and what issues you and they are trying to solve beyond just creating more space. Practical considerations include more storage space if you plan to grow the collection.

Needless to say, in order to get a grip on costs, construction and engineers etc. need to be in the mix. Only in an imaginary museum can you skip the practical details😊 like temperature and humidity control and don’t forget the plumbing!

After considering everything I have mentioned above one should address the question of whether one’s collection is worthy of becoming a destination museum. With that criteria in mind my museum will have to remain a fantasy.