The Back Track to Art

According to the online magazine Science Now, the secret to happiness is…

<drum roll>

… giving.

More specifically, happiness means not spending all your money on yourself, but giving some of it to help others (like the small and (financially) struggling arts organization in your home town).

Or as the story says:

Think you’d be happier if you won the lottery or just had a few extra bucks in your pocket? Think again. Overturning classic economic wisdom, new research shows that it’s not how much you have that matters, it’s how you spend it. People who donate their dollars to charities or splurge on gifts for others are more content than those who squander all the dough on themselves…

I know it sounds strange, but this notion was supported by three separate scientific studies. And having just lived through the Guild’s stunningly fun Annual Auction for the Arts, and having seen the happy looks on the faces of those who have spent their money for a good cause (i.e., keeping afloat their very own hometown art center), I know this notion to be true.

The question Tracy Davis posed in the midst of a local controversy over the Northfield Arts Guild’s decision to produce “Sex with Seven Women” —”What’s art for?”—has caused me much reflection over the past few days.

And since I’m closing in these days on the one-year anniversary of my start as director of this organization, I’ve also been pondering this question: What is the Northfield Arts Guild for?

How I’ve come to an initial answer to this question has been colored by comments offered by the originator of this controversy, Beth Benson, first in her original letter to the Northfield News:

We have turned into a society that seeks to be enticed rather than inspired. The things we watch on T.V., the books we read, even the plays we attend have been debased appealing to the lowest common denominator rather than our sense of decency. We seek entertainment that appeals to the lowest common denominator rather than learn to appreciate the finer things… You have an opportunity as a Guild to bring out the noble and beautiful in society. Why waste your time on highlighting the perversions of society? Use your organization to inspire greatness and not sink to a level that only intends to shock with debauchery… Help people to love beauty. Fulfill the calling of your guild to create and support the creation of beauty.

And also in comments she wrote afterward in the midst of discussion on Locally Grown:

…the reason I published [my letter] in the public is because it’s easy to dismiss one person’s opinion. It’s harder to dismiss a community’s opinion. You have a community arts guild. When you put the name Northfield in the front of your organization, you are representing a community. If you want to produce works that need warnings on content, the community has a right to respond. I also wanted to motivate the community to inspire you to do better which you will find in my original letter.

Why did I right [sic] this letter?… I am watching a community I love go down a slope into moral relativism where there is no foundation with right and wrong. It honestly grieves me. But this time it was different. I believe that the Northfield Arts Guild has a calling to be great… I wanted my very public letters to try to get community pressure to expect greatness from our Northfield Arts Guild.

If Beth Benson’s sentiments were our guide, the purpose of the Northfield Arts Guild would be to “inspire”, “to bring out the noble and the beautiful in society,” to be “great,” to “represent a community,” and to provide “moral instruction.”

While I think that these are great purposes for the arts in general, and arts presenters like the Arts Guild more specifically, to aspire to—and I also think the arts often do achieve these things—the reality of how an arts organization like the Arts Guild operates is much different from how Beth seems to perceive.

At the risk of getting too technical about this, the Northfield Arts Guild is a private, mission-driven, nonprofit arts organization that is supported by membership and charitable donations. This means a few important things. Foremost, the Guild is not a public institution in the way that, say, the Northfield Library or Northfield Public School District are. We receive no local public funds whatsoever—none from the city, none from the county—to do our business or to pay our bills. (*We do receive a bit of money from the state, and I’ll talk about that in a moment.)

In practical terms, therefore, the Northfield Arts Guild does not “represent” the community. (Having “Northfield” in our name is likely a condition of location, more than anything else.) While we strive to take into account community feedback about what we do, since the community does not pay for what we do its actual impact on our operations is negligible. Instead, we are much more accountable to the systems and structures that support us and help us pay our bills.

About half of our support comes from charitable sources—either foundations or individuals. These foundations or individuals generally determine their giving based on their affinity for our organization’s mission. As I wrote in my last post, the crux of our organization’s mission is to “stimulate artistic activity in the greater Northfield area” and to “organize, support, and promote the efforts of the community in expressing, developing and appreciating art.” You’ll notice this says nothing about “representing” the entire community. It says nothing about “inspiring” anyone, about providing “moral instruction,” about bringing out the “noble and the beautiful in society,” or about being “great.” It does speak toward supporting and developing arts in the community, which is partially why we’re producing “Sex with Seven Women,” a local production by local artists. (Another reason we’re producing it? To raise money to support our operations; we have to make up for that gap in public funding somehow!)

(*Note: The Minnesota State Arts Board gives the Arts Guild its only source of modest public money based not on how well the organization represents the community, morally instructs, etc, but instead based on criteria similar to our mission. By the way, you might like to know that the Minnesota State Arts Board’s mission reads: “The Minnesota State Arts Board is a state agency that stimulates and encourages the creation, performance, and appreciation of the arts in the state.” Sound familiar?)

If I were suddenly to suggest, as an administrator, that the Northfield Arts Guild should turn its attention to the moral instruction of our wayward society by jettisoning its longstanding commitment to art made by local, living, working artists and instead producing nothing but medieval morality plays, illuminated manuscripts, and madrigals, I’d likely—and rightfully—be run out on a rail by the members and supporters who pay the NAG’s bills (and my salary).

It’s actually quite encouraging and uplifting that members of the community should feel such a sense of ownership of the Northfield Arts Guild that they are compelled to issue challenges and directives about what the Guild produces and presents. It’s great that people like Beth Benson still care enough about art and the role it plays in Northfield to issue challenges and make protestations about productions and programs they personally are not inclined to appreciate.

However, the sense of ownership that a community has for its arts organization is worthless without its providing, in turn, practical support for that ownership. If you really want to have an influence on what the Art Guild does, how it operates, what it produces, then being a community member and making comments from the wings is not enough. Because our programs are produced by a dedicated (volunteer) membership who believe in and support our mission (through membership, donation, and volunteer hours), the Northfield Arts Guild listens to them carefully and actively seeks to produce what they want in art. Indeed, we have been growing increasingly committed in recent months to doing just that.

That all said, we are not an exclusive club. Any one can join. Indeed, community members can best affect the Northfield Arts Guild when they are active participants and supporters (members) of the Guild. And rest assured, we do need all the participation and support we can get! We welcome any and all participants and supporters from every segment of the community.

To go back to the original question, I guess in a real way that’s what the Northfield Arts Guild is for. It’s for everyone—every person in the community—who wants to participate in and support the arts. If you really want to have a practical hand in the Arts Guild’s programming into the future, perhaps you should consider becoming a member today.

The Carleton College Advisory Council on College and Community Relations will hold a community gathering on Wednesday, December 12 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in Boliou Hall, room 104, on the Carleton campus. The purpose of the gathering is to provide updates on emerging plans for the development of the former Northfield Middle School and on the construction of a new student residence hall.

For more information, visit the original post on Northfield.org.

College students, by any chance do you sometimes wonder what our fair state of Minnesota has to offer in the way of arts activities and experiences for young, arts curious people like you?

Well, wonder no more!

The Northfield Arts Guild has helped create a new state-wide program designed for the arts curious college student (i.e., you!). It’s called LINK.

link-flyer.pdf

Through Link, you can tap into a whole world of art in Minnesota. All you have to do is get a discounted student membership at any arts organization in Minnesota participating in LINK, and you’ll get member benefits at any other LINK organization.

To learn more, just stop by Northfield’s community art center–the Northfield Arts Guild–located at 301 Division Street in downtown Northfield. Or call us at (507) 645-8877, or email us at office(at)northfieldartsguild(dot)org.

Last week, I was visiting Tom Proehl, the director of the State Arts Board, on Guild-related business. (More on this visit will be discussed in future posts.)

On the round coffee table next to his desk, I noticed a copy of a study about rural arts involvement published by the Montana Arts Council. I glanced at it quickly while Tom went to get coffee, but I became intrigued enough by the publication to later contact the Council and request a copy. And they actually sent me three publications: Building Arts Participation in Rural America: Learning to Increase Participation and the Return on Investment, Fundraising Ideas That Work in Rural America, and Building Arts Participation in Rural America: Learning from Montana’s Arts Organizations.

Now, I realize that Montana and Minnesota are completely different states, with unique demographics, political situations, social makeups, and cultural traditions. But already, in just skimming the first book (the one I’d seen at the Arts Board), I’ve learning something important.

It is this, from page 48: “Buy-in and community involvement (in rural arts organizations) come in response to concerted efforts to serve a target market.”

In other words, give the people you serve what they want above all else and you will be more successful.

A beautifully simple idea, and one that matches some changes that I’ve thought necessary in the Guild’s institutional philosophy: that we need to be less of a top-down programmer of the arts, but more of a service to a community hungry to develop arts programming that matches their needs.

More to come on these changes at the Guild, as well as regarding these studies of rural arts participation.