Our city of Baltimore faces serious economic challenges, as does every city in our nation, and our nation itself. Fundraising has become very difficult for arts organizations, including the Peabody Institute, at a time when their endowments have suffered huge losses. When individuals and families are worried about job security, salary reductions, cost-of-living increases, and the future in general, are the arts simply a luxury to return to once the crisis has passed?
The answer is no. In times of crisis, the arts bear witness. They provide an essential outlet for the range of heightened emotions we feel: confusion, frustration, anxiety, and despair. Most important, they remind us of life’s joys and of the strength and resilience of the human spirit.
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Music, abstract and experienced in real time, is unique among the arts in its capacity to engage an individual’s emotions and take him or her on a spiritual journey with the composer acting as a personal guide. Yet music has its greatest effect in a public setting. The experience is magnified for all by the multiple “lines of transmission”: among the performers, among the audience members, and between performers and audience. The performance is different, each time, because you are there.
Appreciation for the arts comes from participation, and the earlier this process starts, the better. At Peabody, we see music as a right for all children, and a critical way to nurture creativity and divergent thinking. Our teacher-mentoring program, now in its 10th year, currently reaches 77 Baltimore City music teachers at 78 public schools. A new program, called “Tuned-In,” provides full scholarships for study at the Peabody Preparatory to talented young people from economically disadvantaged families, along with field trips, group rehearsals, and the services of Peabody piano students as accompanists.
We are just one of the Baltimore arts organizations expanding their outreach programs as part of a renaissance of partnerships. Tragically, this renaissance is threatened by the economic downturn. There is an “arts ecology” to cities, an interdependence among artists and arts organizations, both public and private. Just as in nature, when pieces are taken away, the overall ecosystem suffers. Our ecosystem for the arts in Baltimore is under great strain and each setback has ripple effects that extend throughout the city and region.
In a recent essay (Washington Post, Dec. 29), Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser makes the troubling point that while industry and Wall Street are receiving bailouts, arts organizations are “quickly and rather quietly falling apart.” Kaiser argues for an emergency grant and for legislation allowing greater access to endowments, adding: “Washington must encourage foundations to increase their spending rates during this crisis, and we need immediate tax breaks for corporate giving.”
I could not agree more that governments need to take immediate measures to support the arts, directly and indirectly. Baltimore has already seen one cherished organization, the Baltimore Opera Company, declare bankruptcy. We all need to rally around it, and our city’s other arts organizations, which add value to society and answer some of our deepest questions. Let us ensure we protect a part of our lives that we simply cannot do without, in these times and in the better times to come.
Jeffrey Sharkey is director of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.
