The Back Track to Art

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.

Today is precisely the end of my first six months as director of the director of the Northfield Arts Guild.

Do I hear a huzzah? …

Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s been a fun, if busy, ride thus far.

By way of a quick down-and-dirty six-month director’s report, here’s what I’ve mostly been up to thus far:

• Figuring out how this organization works, and how it manages to run so many programs that affect so many people in this town;
• Determining what sorts of fingers the org has in what sorts of pies, and which of these pies are most crucial to keep fingering;
• Learning the budget inside-out, and analyzing how our members’ and supporters’ money is spread across programs;
• Asking what do we do well–for our members and for our public–and further asking what can we do better;
• Meeting as many key Guild supporters as possible, and trying my best to remember all of their names;
• Writing grants, asking for donations, seeking sponsors, and becoming (or at least trying to become) an artsy money-making machine.

Stay tuned to my director’s blog for more details in coming months on these and many other projects and issues pertinent to the Guild and to the community of Northfield. In the meantime, here’s a quick request for input (which I’ll repeat a few more times in the next few weeks):

The Northfield Arts Guild is interested to hear from NAG members, from artists, from the NAG audience, and from community members–what do you want us to provide in the way of the arts to the city of Northfield? What hopes and dreams do you have for the arts in this town? What artistic services, programs, resources, or projects do you imagine digging your fingers into?

The Arts Guild wants to hear from you. Let us know what we can do for you. (You can either submit your ideas via the comments function on this blog, or you can email them direct to me at: michael(at)northfieldartsguild(dot)org.) Cheers!