MDL has just finished its run of Mr. Gale Pifer's four-part series on the arts in Madison. Pifer ends the series on a hopeful note in Friday's paper, offering a list of various groups, volunteers, and professional artists keeping the arts alive in the community. However, the series' overall message is that that noble corps of cultural crusaders -- Jim Swanson's writing group, middle school art teacher Ginny Freitag, wildlife artist John Green, arts promoter Beth Knuths, artist-author couple Allan and Eve Fisher, and our favorite local artist-entrepreneurs, Michael and Reina Hope -- are fighting a losing battle in the face of waning fiscal support for music and theater from our school district and the community at large.
Of course, the rhetorical structure of Pifer's opus makes sense. He offers a hard-hitting assessment of the problem but constantly intersperses reminders that Madison has a long tradition of great arts programs -- Bill Ireland's legendary high school band (and Jim Glanzer's profound influence on a full generation of middle school hornblowers and drum-pounders), lively theater from both SDSU's Prairie Rep and a community acting company started by Senator Mundt himself, a downtown art gallery with free art lessons for kids. These reminders of past arts achievements work in tandem with Pifer's optimistic ending to tell us that Madison can support a vigorous arts scene. We all just need to be willing to jump in and help.
So why don't we? Why do we accept our duly elected school board's prioritization of football (ten coaches for grades 7-12) over music (from what I read in the paper, one instructor for 6-12 band, one for 6-12 chorus, and one for elementary music)? How did we lose the ambition to stage community theater productions? Why did we let the city's need for more office space crowd out the old Firehouse Gallery without finding a way to ensure the city would help create a new community arts center?
Now I suppose the best supporter of the arts wouldn't sit around and ask these questions; he'd just get up and do make some art. And trust me: in the coming weeks, this artist will be out in the studio making more paintings. But this artist is also a blogger, with a compelling desire to sit around and chew on such questions (and maybe provoke you, loyal readers, to come up with some answers, if not solutions).
A conversation Friday evening with a former student, now just a friend, inclines me to wonder if economics plays role. This friend just moved to Madison and has been struggling to find a decent job. The want ads mostly seek wait staff and bartenders. Gehl has some welding positions that I hear pay $13 an hour, but even that doesn't go much farther than paying the basic bills for a small family. (My roughly $20 an hour barely does that, and I buy 90% of my teacher clothes at Goodwill.) Maybe people just can't afford a night out at a show.
But as far as I know, wages in Madison and South Dakota have never been very high. I'm not sure today's Madisonites are making significantly more or less than our predecessors. I'm not even willing to say wealth is more concentrated. We still have a large laboring and farming class that doesn't have a lot of spare money, but we also have an apparently growing class that can fuel a small housing boom on Lake Madison with some half- and three-quarter-million (do I hear one million?) McMansions. I see no clear indication that the town or county as a whole is poorer and thus less financially able to support the arts than it was in the 1960s or 1980s.
Maybe the regional wealth is relatively the same, but people are having to work harder to get it. Perhaps as we have shifted to the two-income household model, people find themselves having to work more hours just to keep up with their increasing taxes, tech bills (cell phone, wireless Internet, satellite TV -- all monthly budget expenses that hardly existed 20 years ago and haven't been offset by other immediate household savings), and daycare costs (another budget line item that has ballooned compared to previous decades' household budgets). If husband and wife are both out working all day to pay the bills, and if the kids are hustled through school and day care and other activities all day, by suppertime, the family may just want to spend time relaxing together at the homestead instead of running around town to arts events.
That explanation may not cover the issue entirely, either, since we still have hundreds of people regularly finding time to pack the gym for basketball games. Maybe we come back to priorities: in the old days (and I welcome my senior readers to correct any rose-colored glasses viewing of a false past here), maybe folks had time to see a couple games a week and catch a show or even volunteer to perform on stage or do some fundraising for the band.
I don't have a clear answer on this question. But something has clearly changed. Madison used to support more arts activities. It could support a similar number of arts programs now, but somehow the collective will has not formed to make that happen. Is the economy stopping us, or is it something else? Some mysterious demographic shift that has pushed creative types away? An influx of yahoos? Some shift in our education system that has promoted a devaluation of the arts? The answer to that question is the only thing missing from Gale Pifer's otherwise thorough and welcome discussion of the state of the arts in Madison.
Hi Cory,
ReplyDeleteI'm curious... how many of Madison High School's arts events do you usually attend in a given year? Please itemize as to how many band concerts, choir concerts, church choir concerts (like Mastersingers, Watch the Lamb or anything Gary Randall does), piano recitals, art shows, plays, poetry readings, etc you look forward to each year.
As for me... I like art, but not usually local art. I've been to many of the above (especially band concerts and piano recitals), but I can't remember liking a single one. I would rather enjoy a professional rendition (out-of-town musicians) of Beethoven's Fifth (out-of-town composer) on my CD player (made in Japan) in front of my comfy couch than put up with the dissonant warblings of apathetic students playing something written by a D-list contemporary composer in front of uncomfortable auditorium chairs that I have to pay to get to. Same goes for watching a movie rather than attending a High School play.
Mass production brings professional-quality art right into your living room for a very modest price. It's also art-on-demand that I can queue up at my convenience. Altogether, it's like getting Dom Pérignon at a lower price than water.
Sporting team preferences (like armies going to war) are somehow inherently a geographical thing. Why are there more Vikings fans, Twins fans, etc. in South Dakota? Because they are the closest. MHS merely provides the closest teams at the high school level. Sports, in this respect, are anti-art. No one expects all Germans to prefer Beethoven to the Beatles, but they are all expected to root for the German soccer team in the World Cup.
Kind regards,
David
"dissonant warblings of apathetic students"? Careful, David -- them's fightin' words! Woe unto you if you bump into Jenn Richards in a dark alley. (Of course, you probably don't have to worry about that, since you'll be safe on your couch listening to Beethoven.)
ReplyDeleteI'm a terrible supporter of local arts events. I will confess to similar hermitlike urges very similar to your own. Of course, one-year-olds have a tendency to keep one home as well. Erin and I managed to get to Doc Miller's spring play this year (funny, I didn't see any apathetic students on that stage). I've participated in Art in the Park a couple times, displaying my dissonant but not apathetic paintings (though I suppose you can argue that you can buy much better art in New York or even at Rehfeld's in Sioux Falls... and the market seems to support that argument thus far!).
But my behavior isn't the issue. The really interesting question remains: has Madison always been filled with lazy people like me (or connoisseurs like you) who don't provide enough to support to local arts? What sociological change has happened since the Bill Ireland days that allows, for example, the school board to cut the music program without provoking any real organized response from the community?
Even your repsonse, that local arts are shabby knock-offs not worth your time or money (and, gentle readers, let me emphasize for my own safety, that's David's position, not mine!), doesn't answer that interesting question. Local singers and actors are just as good now as they were in the 1960s... aren't they? School plays and musicals vary in quality -- some years we have a group of spectacular singers, while others the high school choir might struggle to find a solid group of basses -- but overall they draw from similar talent pools from decade to decade. Is something different now from the 1960s?
Jenn Richards was my high school chorus teacher back in Dell Rapids many moons ago... not a good idea to rip on her kids... dynamite is small, but powerful!
ReplyDeleteI'll take my five-bucks now, Jenn! LOL
The drive to Brookings and back allowed some more responses to David to percolate:
ReplyDeleteSomewhere in David's critique of local amateur arts events, he may ahve hit on a point. Maybe fewer people support the arts now because more arts are available through more media. Records, movies, and TV were expanding their share of folks' attention in the 1960s, but now we've had a generation or two for those art forms to really soak into our cultural psyche and perhapd weaken our attachment to live local events. We also have satellite TV, DVDs, video games, and the Internet competing for our attention. Maybe that expansion of media is the sociological shift I'm looking for to explain what's happening with local arts.
But the problem Gale Pifer discussed in his article, and the problem I'm wondering about, lies less on the consumer/demand side and more on the producer/supply side. Pifer doesn't talk about whether local arts events draw crowds. He talks about the dwindling number of producers of arts events: fewer students going out for band, less effort from the school district to hire music teachers and promote the arts, fewer willing directors for community plays. That's the puzzling side: why are fewer organizations (public and private) producing and promoting the arts?
On the topic of demand and supply, I'll admit I haven't been an active consumer of local arts. But, on that itemized list David asked for, does being a producer count for anything? I've written plays and readers theaters, coached interp and debate, directed speech tournaments, taught speech and writing and literature to dozens of kids, willing and unwilling -- heck, my day job since 1998 has been the arts!
I'm going to agree with David that we have more ways to enjoy art from the comforts of our own homes. And I'm going to agree with Cory that we need more producers of art.
ReplyDeleteBut there's something to be said of enjoying art corporately.
It's a communal experience, isn't it?
I watch far more movies in the home than in the theater, but there's still something special about enjoying art together with others.
And it's wonderful when students can create art together, whether it's in band, drama, whatever.
I've been having a different conversation lately with a friend about art. He's a college / career pastor and he's been trying to establish a list of the ten most influential cultural texts since 1900.
My list is on my blog (shameless plug):
http://stevewhite.blogspot.com/
These lists are always subjective, and always biased by the author's tastes, and era. But it's still fun to discuss :)
Still waiting for an answer to my question regarding trimesters from Cory's post below. Are they hindering participation in band and other artsy electives, or are they the wonderful thing they were first touted to be? I honestly am curious as to whether they are of benefit or not.
ReplyDeleteI questioned Gale Pifer (a very nice gentleman BTW) about trimesters, and he said they were covered under the "scheduling problems" excuse. But no one mentions them as such. Why not?
I enjoy the school band concerts, but it seems to me it's mostly parents and grandparents of kids that attend, as always has been. School plays are exceptionally good in Madison and surrounding schools, and I'm guilty of reading about them in the paper and then forgetting until too late to attend.
Here's an idea to promote arts in Madison. Buy the Mason's building on main street, if it's a decent building which I don't know. Make it an arts center. Plenty of room for arts exhibits, hall of trees at Christmas, maybe small catered dinners at times with a string quartet or Gale Pifer's big band or a few talented high schoolers, etc, exhibition of John Green's prints during hunting season targeting all the hunters looking for gifts to take home, etc etc.
Mostly though I would like to know if there are benefits to trimester scheduling or not.
Nonnie is right -- the silence on the trimester issue is remarkable. As a veteran of the trimester system, I'll note that the difficulty of taking a music course all year long is a huge problem for the music program. The trimester increased the number of courses a student could take per year by 1, from 14 to 15 (7 per semester vs. 5 per trimester). However, for the dedicated music student, the trimester system is a net loss. Under semesters, a student could take band and chorus all year and still have 10 course slots to fill. Under the trimester system, a student who takes band and chorus all year long wipes out 6 slots and has just 9 left for other courses. Over four years of high school, that's 4 courses the music student sacrifices under the trimester system that students in a semester system don't lose. Our best and brightest may want to sing and play, but when they compete against the top kids from other schools for college admission and scholarships, our kids can't afford to take that academic disadvantage. Different kids with different interests will approach that competition differently, but the net effect appears to be that Madison's kids sacrifice music participation and cast their lot with more academic courses on the transcript. It's too bad our district remains wedded to a scheduling system that puts musically talented and dedicated students at an inherent disadvantage in the college and scholarship race. Unless someone has data showing that the trimester system somehow compensates for this disadvantage, the district should scrap the trimester system.
ReplyDeleteMason's as community arts center? Oh, my wheels are turning! Maybe the city could make up for closing down the old Firehouse Gallery by buying Mason's (or at least funding its renovation) and making it a downtown arts center. I wonder how the costs (and benefits!) would compare with the defeated gym proposal....
ReplyDeleteSomeone should create an interactive museum, like St. Louis has.
ReplyDeleteThe City Museum is wonderful!
http://www.citymuseum.org/
Stuff made out of junk, stuff you can make, tons of fun!
Regarding the trimester class schedule at MHS, Madison is the ONLY high school in South Dakota to currently use the trimester. It is not music-friendly and I've heard it may be going away in the fall of 2008 in favor of a block or modified block schedule. I heard a few months ago of a committee that was being formed to study both schedules.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments on trimesters. If it truly is such a wonderful thing, many other schools in SD would be doing it. The fact that they aren't leads me to think that trimesters is not the way to go. Why did it take the Madison school board and administration 10 years to realize this and address it?
ReplyDeleteClair Welbon agrees! Friday's MDL runs a letter from the estimable Mr. Welbon saying straight up that the band won't recover numbers until we eliminate the trimester system. Thanks for the straight talk, Clair! Now let's urge the board to take some action!
ReplyDelete