Speech by Dana Gioia, Chairman,
National Endowment for the Arts
National Press Club, Washington, DC
June 30, 2003

Can the National Endowment for the Arts Matter?

Good afternoon. I thought I would begin with a poem that has nothing to do with politics, arts funding, or the press. It is a short poem by a very neglected poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It's called, "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls."

If the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts had spoken to this forum ten years ago, the topic might well have been "Should the NEA Exist?" At that time a serious cultural and political debate existed in Washington about whether the agency served a legitimate public function. It is my good fortune - and I believe our nation's good fortune - that the question of the NEA's existence was settled by Congress and confirmed by the Supreme Court in the late 1990s. The agency was changed in several significant ways, and its funding was reduced from its historical highpoint in 1992 of $176 million (under the first President Bush), but its basic mission and continuing existence was assured. Of course, some critics of the agency remain - and what public institution in a democracy does not need critics? - but these dissenters remain outside the majority. The NEA now exists on a firm foundation of bipartisan support.

Consequently, the question facing us today is both more interesting and more challenging - namely can the National Endowment for the Arts still matter? Can the NEA, that is, meaningfully regain its historical position as a strong and positive presence in American culture? The institution was greatly damaged during the culture wars of the previous decade. In the process it not only lost much public funding but (and this is a more significant defeat) it also lost public confidence - not only among average citizens but even among artists and opinion-makers.

The question today, therefore, is whether the Arts Endowment can be restored to its rightful place as one of the premier public agencies in the United States. The question is interesting because it affects the culture in which we live. It is challenging because there currently exists no consensus on the issue - only differing perspectives, sometimes radically differing perspectives.

This afternoon I would like to offer my sense of the role that the National Endowment for the Arts should play in American culture. I want to talk about the agency in its broadest, general sense rather than in terms of specific programs and policies. (I will be happy to discuss such specific issues later in the question and answer period.) So indulge me, please, as I wax philosophical - always a potentially embarrassing moment for a bureaucrat. I want to begin with a wider vision because I worry that the NEA's position in the American cultural landscape is not well understood - by either the agency's critics or its supporters.

In order to understand how the Arts Endowment operates, it is helpful to have some basis for comparison. By looking abroad, we can see how other nations manage similar cultural institutions. In countries like France, Germany, Mexico, or China, most arts funding comes from the state - either at a federal or local level. These systems tend to be simple, fixed, and centralized, often focused on a large Ministry of Culture. These organizations are highly political with arts personnel usually being members of civil service or political appointees from the ruling party. These systems provide smooth planning for arts organizations, but they also divide the cultural world into insiders and outsiders. The insider institutions tend to be well subsidized with large annual grants, and the outsiders survive on the margins of the culture, if they survive at all.

These subsidies are enormous by American terms. The last time I checked, the government subvention for Italy's dozen major opera houses was nearly ten times the size of the annual NEA working budget. Significantly, some of these lavishly supported houses had not staged a single production in the previous year because of organizational problems, labor issues, or reconstruction. Government support does not solve all artistic and organizational problems, or guarantee that an institution serves its local community.

In contrast to the European models, the American system of arts support is complex, decentralized, diverse, and dynamic. It combines federal, state, and local government support with private subvention from individuals, corporations, and foundations as well as - and let's not forget the obvious - box office receipts. The financial statistics differ by art form, and they change from year to year, but in broad, general terms about one half the income arts organizations receive is earned from box office or sales. The rest is donated - overwhelmingly from the private sector. Only about 10% of arts support in the U.S. comes from the government, and only about 2% from the federal government, of which slightly less than 1% comes from the National Endowment for the Arts. (I am, of course, excluding the enormous indirect subsidy the federal government provides by making cultural contributions tax deductible.) The ratio of federal government support is miniscule by European standards. And yet the American system works. How can this be?

Like most free market or mixed market systems, American arts philanthropy is complex precisely because it is decentralized and dynamic. Similar institutions often have wildly differing results because of their locations, artistic talent, cultural philosophies, and management. Likewise the dynamic nature of the system means that one decade's high-flying leader can suffer huge reversals - just as in corporate America. While no one relishes the ups and downs of the cultural economy, it does have the healthy effect of keeping artists and institutions realistically focused on their goals and communities. The best institutions make themselves irreplaceable in their chosen fields.

This cultural dynamism also provides new groups the chance to grow. Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater did not exist thirty years ago. Now it is one of the nation's leading theater companies. Jazz at Lincoln Center is even more recent. It was begun only eight years ago. Now it is the world's largest non-profit jazz organization. (I pause here parenthetically to mention, with unabashed self-satisfaction, that the NEA played an important role in fostering the growth of both organizations.)

Some of these new institutions are quite amazing. Rimrock Opera of Billings, Montana, for example, is the only opera company in the nearly 800-mile stretch between Bozeman, Montana, and Fargo, North Dakota. Only five years old, Rimrock now not only brings opera to its own community but also tours rural Montana and Wyoming from Glendive and Miles City to Cody and Casper, the sparsely populated high plains and mountain territories where the deer and the buffalo still roam, but Verdi, Puccini, and Donizetti have never before visited. As my Italian grandfather used to say in astonishment, "Only in America."

If the American arts system is remarkably complex, decentralized, and dynamic, it is also uniquely effective - producing a cultural landscape of enormous size and unmatched diversity. No one - not even the NEA - has exact statistics on American cultural institutions because they change so rapidly, but an expert estimate of different fields leads us to some astonishing numbers.

There are now more than 1,500 professional theaters - large and small - operating in the U.S. There are also more than 1,200 adult symphonies plus another 600 youth orchestras - not to mention about 120 opera companies. Meanwhile there are approximately 5,000 writers' conferences now offered around the nation - a statistic sure to make every writer in this room feel a little less special.

These groups are enormously diverse. Among the 1,200 symphony orchestras, some are huge professional organizations like the Boston Symphony that offer year-round concerts and international tours. Others are small amateur groups like the Cotati Philharmonic (in my home county of Sonoma, California) that gather to produce a few local performances each year. Some orchestras focus exclusively on modern and contemporary music. Others cover the entire symphonic repertory. Smaller groups specialize in Baroque and Renaissance music. That diversity, size and scope is confusing to anyone trying to summarize the field, but it reflects the vitality of American classical music.

In such a rich and dynamic artistic culture, what meaningful role can the National Endowment for the Arts play? The NEA's 2003 budget is only $116-and-a-half million dollars - of which less than $100 million is distributed after agency overhead is taken into account. In other words, what role can be played by an institution that provides slightly less than 1% of total arts funding? This situation is further complicated by the NEA's public mandate to support all of the arts, as well as arts education, in all fifty states - not to mention six U.S. territories.

From a European perspective, the NEA would seem doomed to perpetual marginality. The institution is surely too small and too stretched to make a difference. As reasonable as that verdict sounds, I would maintain that this defeatist perspective is wrong. It misunderstands both the nature of the U.S. arts world and the Arts Endowment. It also ignores the remarkably productive history of the NEA and its well-documented (if not equally well-known) record of transforming American culture. Finally, this perspective equates NEA effectiveness purely in terms of dollars without any recognition of how that money is spent.

An astonishing amount of the media discussion of the NEA overlooks an obvious fact about its past, current, and presumably future situation - namely that the Arts Endowment cannot now and, in fact, has never operated like a centralized ministry of culture. It has never possessed the resources to impose its will on the American arts world. It cannot command or control the policies of individual institutions.

Rather than being disappointed about this realization, I consider it purely neutral and objective. It is the proper and inevitable basis on which any truthful vision of the NEA's future must be built. I feel, therefore, absolutely no disappointment in the fact that the NEA cannot dictate the terms of American culture. That putative weakness is actually one of the agency's basic strengths. To build on the implied metaphor of "dictate," let me offer a more democratic verbal formulation of our role in American culture. The NEA does not dictate arts policy to the United States; instead, it enters into an ongoing series of conversations about our culture - out of which emerge thousands of collaborations, large and small, national, regional, and local.

The proper role of the National Endowment for the Arts is, instead, leadership, stability, and advocacy. These objectives may seem vague and valetudinarian compared with the centralized subsidy and control of some foreign systems, but they are powerful and proven strategies in a diverse and changing democracy.

Leadership is the most powerful strategy, but it requires some precise explanation, since the word leadership is a political piety solemnly uttered at every gathering of three or more in Washington. What sort of leadership can the Arts Endowment hope to provide in American culture?

NEA leadership begins with the illuminating fact that although the Endowment represents less than 1% of total arts philanthropy in the U.S., it nonetheless remains the nation's largest annual funder of the arts. This fact demonstrates the radical decentralization - and therefore diversity - of the American system. Just because a system is decentralized, however, doesn't mean that it lacks leadership, trends, or direction. Consider the stock market, where a single company's earning results can trigger a rise or fall in overall market results.

The NEA also has the enormously potent political and symbolic advantage of being the official arts agency of the U.S. government and the only truly national arts agency that supports and covers all of the arts in America. Consequently, it occupies a uniquely broad, public, and influential position. Cultural trends can begin anywhere in the U.S., but they may not be noticed for some time. But the NEA has the ongoing advantage - and disadvantage - of being highly visible at all times. Its politics, policies, programs, personnel, and funding are not only matters of public record but also of public interest.

The National Endowment for the Arts has a proven ability to initiate and sustain powerful trends. During the 1970s and 1980s under the leadership of Nancy Hanks, Livingston Biddle, and Frank Hodsoll, the NEA slowly transformed American cultural life - consciously creating the vast system of regional theaters, operas, dance companies, and symphonies that America now enjoys.

During this time, certain laws of what we might call American cultural micro-economics emerged. In study after study, the NEA learned that its grants had a powerful multiplying effect. Every dollar that the NEA gave in grants generated 7 to 8 times more money in terms of matching grants, further donations, and earned revenue. A $100,000 grant, therefore, delivered $800,000 in eventual funds to an organization. The reason for this multiplying effect is obvious: NEA funding has the power to legitimize a new organization and further validate an existing one. Such endorsements attract further support. As the old saying goes, "Nothing succeeds like success." In this way early NEA support helped create major ongoing arts organizations as diverse as the American Film Institute, the Spoleto Festival USA, and PBS Great Performances.

Stability may seem like a dull goal, but it is probably the most urgently needed and most challenging service the Endowment currently provides. As I have mentioned before, the very nature of the American philanthropic system makes it highly susceptible to changes in the economy. Arts funding is dynamic - which is a polite word for unpredictable and unstable. In good times we like the word dynamic; it means that budgets are growing. In tough times, however, it means that budgets are cut. And at the moment times are tough. Some have even called the current situation in the arts a crisis.

The most serious aspect of the present downturn is not in the budgets of individual institutions, despite the enormous challenges many of them face. The most disturbing issue is in the state arts budgets. Here the word crisis is unavoidable. After a decade of steady growth, state arts budgets have been cut back significantly - with a 21% decline over the past two years and greater cuts predicted next year. Some states have been particularly hard hit. California, for example, will be cutting its arts budget by 75% or more. Worse yet, several states have seriously debated eliminating arts funding altogether. Although no state has yet done the dirty deed, the mere debate suggests that the political and social consensus that once existed about the necessity of public support for arts and arts education is breaking down. For many people the arts and arts education are viewed as expendable, elitist luxuries rather than necessary elements of a healthy democratic society.

In this critical situation, the NEA has often provided the only element of financial stability. While American arts funding has declined over the past 2 years, NEA funding has increased. While stability in the abstract is a boring concept, in specific cases it means musicians are not being laid off from a symphony. It means playwrights see their new works presented as planned rather than being cancelled, and high school drama teachers continue to have a jobs. Given the alternatives in such cases, stability can seem positively exciting.

Advocacy is the third necessary goal for the Arts Endowment. The agency has a civic responsibility to articulate, explain, and champion the necessity for public support of the arts and arts education. Although there are many other organizations involved in arts advocacy, the NEA occupies a privileged position because it is the only national, comprehensive, established, and ongoing public agency in the field.

While I understood the importance of advocacy as a role for the NEA before coming to Washington, I did not then appreciate the NEA's singular role. There is at present a genuine and urgent need to create a new public consensus for government support of arts and arts education. In order to gain the necessary support at the federal, state, and local levels, this new consensus must be positive, inclusive, democratic, and non-divisive rather than confrontational, partisan, polarizing, and elitist. We also need to embody those goals in highly visible programs of indisputable artistic merit and enormous public reach - as in our new Shakespeare in American Communities, the largest tour of Shakespeare in North American history, or in the expanded NEA Jazz Masters program we will begin next January. While it will take many organizations and millions of individuals to build this new consensus, it cannot work without NEA leadership.

In addition to its official and national position, the Arts Endowment has another unique strength to bring to the area of advocacy - the hard won wisdom of having survived the culture wars as a public agency. No major cultural institution in America was subject to more prolonged and exacting criticism - from both right and left - than the NEA. No agency survives such a process without gaining clarity about its mission and its methods, its constituency and its challenges.

The National Endowment for the Arts is now clearly focused on its inarguably important mission of fostering excellence in the arts and providing access to the arts for all Americans. It understands that it must play an active and unapologetic role in reaching all Americans. Passivity, elitism, and timidity will not build an institution capable of meeting the challenges currently besetting the arts and arts education fields.

Let me conclude by stating overtly what I hope has been clearly implied by everything I have said so far. I am firmly committed to rebuilding the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts. We need more funds to address the challenges and opportunities we face in both the arts and arts education. But more money alone is not the answer. We must also confidently build a positive and inclusive vision of our necessary role in American public life. To restore the NEA's rightful place in American culture, we need intellectual clarity, organizational discipline, and bold but non-divisive leadership.

When so many claim that the odds are against us, how can a poet like myself not be utterly assured of the NEA's future success. To quote Shakespeare, describing a famous victory against the odds, I tell my fellow artists and arts advocates:

Leadership is, after all, the art of changing the odds in one's favor. Thank you.

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