Arts for the Public Good
By Pat Boyd, Executive Director, South Dakotans for the Arts
 

The new Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts is a pragmatist. Rocco Landesman  has summed up his reasons for heading up the Federal funding agency for the arts in two words: Art Works.

Our country and our world need things that work. The arts are work, work that helps us fix other things that are not working. We need things that bring us together. We need things that enliven our struggling communities and cities. We need things that help us remember, help us communicate, and help us envision –especially when we are blinded by fatigue and fear.

Art works. This is the message, dear advocates. This is an era of practicality and percentages. The public only has time and patience for things that work. We are collectively involved in propping up, bailing out, rescuing, salvaging and resuscitating our public and private institutions, now stretched beyond any reasonable expectations. This is no time to confuse issues. No time for floral rhetoric -- public funding for the arts is funding for the public good. It is not for our individual tastes or idle entertainment. Individuals have to pay for that. You pay for your own tickets.

The United States does not allocate much of its treasure to the preservation and perpetuation of the arts, [13^th among industrialized countries]. Neither does South Dakota, our justifiably proud bastion of fiscal conservatism, regardless of party persuasion. Apparently our message has been too complicated, because more than four decades after its inception, the national endowment that Mr. Landesman heads still struggles with legitimacy in ways that other federal agencies do not.

That might be because we arts advocates are artistically and not mechanically inclined. Mechanisms are failing and we need to reckon with them. On the federal, state, and local levels, we need to invoke the mind and spirit of Da Vinci, without forsaking Monet. We the People are off balance, caught unawares.  Each of us is faced with the same challenge: to lead or to lay low. Imagine being elected to make a decision now, about anything. Imagine being entrusted to spend the hard earned money of South Dakotans. We need a clear view of the way arts work for people, and how they might work to help us achieve balance and grace, and to move on.  Then we need to pass the word.

We need to go local, because our message had better be clear: Art Works everywhere in South Dakota.  Our national partners are delivering statistics and evidence daily, and the South Dakota Arts Council’s Annual Report (www.artscouncil.sd.gov) details the distribution of federal and state funds to every corner of the state in 2009 -- but what does public funding for the arts do in your legislative district?

If the answer is unsatisfactory to you, it certainly will be to your legislators. This is a local problem, and you can solve it. You live there. Use your imagination, Leonardo. Fix things, make them better.  The South Dakota Arts Council exists to make the benefits of the arts available and accessible to your community and schools. It exists to help you, the citizen. The deadline for Project and Artists’ Grants is March 1^st.  While the SDAC may very well be the friendliest state agency on the planet, you do still have to apply. If you are granted public monies, it will be up to you. What will you do for the good of all? Use your imagination, and resurrect your mechanical pencil, because this is no time for shades of gray.

Be mindful of local resources. South Dakotans benefit immensely from the nonprofit sector. Volunteers and the public and private contributions to support their work carry the load for all of us. Both public and private funds are jeopardized by fuzzy messages now.  Why do people work so hard and passionately for the perpetuation of our arts and culture? Boil it down. It is because we know Art Works.

Keep making art work for South Dakotans. www.sdarts.org