It?s more than mere art, America. Artistic expression is the foundation of all we have, much of what we are.
About 400 representatives of 50 state arts agencies gathering in Baltimore today need to rise beyond their traditional frame of reference on public support of the arts.
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They could not have chosen a better city in which to do it. Baltimore is arts friendly, innovative and home to the incredible American Visionary Art Museum, the Cone Collection and Maryland Art Place ? not to mention generous patrons, including Eddie and Sylvia Brown and the Meyerhoff family. These in and of themselves are parables arts advocates must heed to ensure they do not poison the very thing they seek to nurture.
True visionary Rebecca Hoffberger sparked the astounding AVAM toshow “art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself.”
Works in the museum prove beyond any doubt that art defies orthodoxy, resists structure and soars above the mundane despite all obstacles. Art is antithesis of state.
Baltimore Museum of Art?s Cone Collection is one of the greatest assemblages in the world, proving a collection can become a work of genius.
Baltimore sisters Claribel and Etta Cone, mere private individuals, put it together. No government entity involved. At age 25, MAP is the perfect example of how to get maximum benefits for artists and the public at minimum cost in dollars or distortion.
So what? Big what. Artistic expression is the antecedent of mathematics, science and technology.
Undisputed founder of our Information Age, Samuel F.B. Morse, was no scientist. His day job was painting. Recently a physicist?s analysis of Jackson Pollack?s work shows the tortured painter was decades ahead of science on some fundamental truths about reality. And, according to the Maryland State Arts Council, last year the arts industry here contributed more than $1 billion to the state economy, providing 13,762 jobs.
Art lifts us as individuals, communities, nations and species. We must support the arts. But how? This is the challenge before the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and every other official arts organization. How to support without distorting, nourish without poisoning? Take a look at sanctioned Soviet and Nazi art to get some idea of how distorting and destructive government can be.
We need to get it just right. But then, that is what art is all about.
