• RIP Artnet Magazine; more here. I will always be grateful to Artnet’s Ben Davis for being just about the only arts journalist worth his salt during the whole Yosi Sergant debacle.
• Congratulations to GiveWell, which has announced a not-quite-merger with Good Ventures, an emerging foundation led by Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz (the latter is one of the founders of Facebook). The blog post is a bit thin on details, but it sounds like this arrangement will ensure GiveWell’s financial security for some time to come while substantially enhancing its real-world impact.
• Indiana University is set to open the country’s first School of Philanthropy later this year. It’s early, of course, but these snippets from the article suggest to me that buyer beware: “As with any academic setting, funding is an issue….With the nonprofit sector roughly 5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product and 10 percent of the workforce, such [a] school could be a profit-center for the university, Rooney said.”
• One of the NEA’s lesser known programs, the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design, will now be a partnership between the NEA, the Department of Agriculture, Project for Public Spaces, the Orton Family Foundation, and CommunityMatters. CIRD facilitates and hosts workshops on community design in places with fewer than 50,000 people.

BIG IDEAS

• Michael Kaiser has a penchant for inciting digital controversy, and his recent two–part post calling bullshit on “new business models” was no exception. At the core of the debate is this central question: how much is the nonprofit arts sector going to change in the next 50 years? Kaiser says not so much; Adam Huttler, on the other hand, thinks quite a lot. Huttler’s second post on the subject, in particular, is one of his most thought-provoking and brilliant in quite some time. EmcArts’s Richard Evans and Sarah Lutman also weighed in.
• Whither the future of open data and philanthropy? The Knight Foundation is currently considering a proposal to digitize 10 years of IRS 990 nonprofit data and make it available to the public for free. GiveWell’s Alexander Berger, writing on his personal blog, argues that this presents a clear opportunity to GuideStar’s next president to reform its business model around open data. (GuideStar’s current president, Bob Ottenhoff responds in the comments.) And the Foundation Center’s Brad Smith makes a passionate case for data standards and greater transparency among foundations.
• We’ve now entered an era in which college-age students have never known what it’s like to have to pay for music. Casey Rae and J. Holtham have more.
• What is the future of museums?

BIG MONEY

• The Irvine Foundation has announced its first set of grants under its new arts strategy that emphasizes audience engagement.
• Jon Silpayamanant makes the interesting point that sports teams have a performance income gap (i.e., expenses that outpace ticket revenue) just like symphony orchestras do.
• Wait, nonprofits are allowed to have shareholders?
  

  The deal will settle a lawsuit the Koch brothers filed in February over shares that determine control of Cato. It results from the original division of shares between the two Koch brothers, Crane and late Cato Chairman William Niskanen. After Niskanen died of stroke complications in October, the Koch brothers claimed a founding shareholder agreement gave them the option to buy Niskanen’s shares. Crane held they should go to Niskanen’s widow, which would leave him in effective control of the organization.

  The settlement involves dissolving the shareholder agreement. In addition, Crane is expected to retire under an agreement that allows him to select his successor, though the Koch brothers could veto the hiring.

RESEARCH (AND EVALUATION) CORNER

• FSG’s Valerie Bockstette points out the dangers of measuring what’s easy to measure instead of what’s most important.
• The Colorado Health Foundation’s Anne Warhover describes her organization’s approach to impact assessment.
• If you thought the theory of change and measurement framework for ArtsWave was ambitious, just take a look at this new comprehensive sustainability plan for Rockford, IL, which intends to measure economic, social, and environmental outcomes in 16 categories including cultural life and the built environment. The transportation category alone tracks 43 indicators.
• Kudos to the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago for the most blockbuster release of an arts research study so far this year. Called “Set in Stone: Building America’s New Generation of Arts Facilities 1994-2008,” the report takes a critical look at the billions of dollars thrown by arts institutions at new buildings, museum wings, expansions, renovations, etc. during the decade and a half in question. Authored by then-grad-student Joanna Woronkowicz (as her dissertation), Carrol Joynes, and about a half dozen others, “Set in Stone” argues that much of that building boom was of questionable wisdom. The report is available in full multimedia regalia, even including an animated video, and scored a feature in the New York Times, along with reactions from The Atlantic Cities, Lucy Bernholz, the Nonprofit Finance Fund, and Sunil Iyengar (now Woronkowicz’s boss at the NEA’s Office of Research and Analysis). Elizabeth Quaglieri has a helpful summary over at Technology in the Arts. Congratulations, Chicago, you sure know how to get our attention!

ETC.

• Umm, please apply for the Createquity Writing Fellowship, Delali Ayivor?

Grand Rapids LipDub – photo by Rob Vander Sloot

Each year, Createquity offers a list of the top ten arts policy stories of the past 12 months. You can read the 2009 and 2010 editions here and here, respectively. In addition to the main list, I also identify my favorite new arts blogs that started within the past year. The list, like the blog, is focused on the United States, but is not oblivious to news from other parts of the world.

For the most part, 2011 saw the continuation of trends that had already been set in motion in previous years. The economy continued to be an issue for arts organizations worldwide, affecting government revenues in particular. The NEA moved in directions foreshadowed by its actions in 2010. And the culture wars, while not translating into meaningful policy change for the most part, were waged in the background once again.

10. Federal cultural funding dodges a bullet

The newly-elected Republican House of Representatives made a lot of noise this year about cutting funding to arts and culture, particularly the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after a forced scandal involving NPR’s then-vice president of development. Democrats refused to take the bait, however, and even amid multiple standoffs over the federal budget this year, cultural funding survived largely intact. The NEA escaped with a 13% decrease from last year’s originally enacted funding level, and CPB and the Smithsonian actually saw increases. Notably, the Department of Education’s arts in education budget was also saved (albeit with cuts) despite an Obama administration recommendation for consolidation under other programs. That said, the saber-rattling this past year leaves little doubt about the prospects for arts funding under a Republican Congress and President in 2013 and beyond, and it will surprise no one if the same battles are fought all over again in 2012.

9. Grand Rapids LipDub shows how creative placemaking is done

By now you’ve heard the story: city gets named on a top ten list of “America’s dying cities”; college-aged filmmakers galvanize the community to organize a coordinated response. The result: “the greatest letter to the editor of all time,” also known as the Grand Rapids LipDub. Involving thousands of people and requiring a near-total shutdown of the city’s downtown area, the video went viral over Memorial Day weekend and has received nearly 4.5 million views as of December 31. But more than the feat itself, the video is notable as an incredibly effective example of cost-effective creative placemaking. The mayor of Grand Rapids was very smart to give this $40,000 production (mostly raised through sponsorships from local businesses) his complete support: it is just about the best advertising for his city one could possibly ask for, conveying a completely unforced and compelling charm while fostering community pride among local residents along the way.

8. Crowdfunding goes mainstream

Just two years ago, Kickstarter was a novelty and no one had heard of IndieGoGo. Now, these and other “crowdfunding” platforms that connect creatives with fans and financial backers have become an indelible part of the artistic landscape, particularly for grassroots, entrepreneurial projects. This July, Kickstarter alone reached the milestones of 10,000 successful projects and $75 million in pledges over slightly more than two years, numbers that compare favorably with major private foundations’ support for the arts. Meanwhile, crowdfunding is fast becoming a, well, crowded market, with new entrants lured by the profit-making potential of serving as banker for the creative economy. RocketHub, USA Projects, and the Power2Give initiative are just three of the more significant new entrants of the past two years, and similar platforms are popping up to serve technology startups and the broader charity market.

7. Orchestra unions take it on the chin

The recession has been not been kind to arts organizations of any stripe. But it’s been particularly hard on orchestras, those most tradition-bound of arts organizations, forcing musicians’ unions to cough up big concessions. The resolution of the Detroit Symphony’s six-month strike in April had minimum salaries dropping nearly 25% and a partial incentive pay system introduced. The same month, the Philadelphia Orchestra filed for bankruptcy, seeking to avoid its unfunded pension obligations, and won 15% salary reductions from its musicians in October. The Louisville Orchestra also filed for bankruptcy late last year, hasn’t played since May due to negotiation impasse, and has started advertising for replacement players. The NYC Opera, after abandoning its longtime home at Lincoln Center, is threatening to turn its orchestra into a freelance outfit and cut its choristers’ pay by 90%.  The New Mexico, Syracuse, and Utica Symphonies all bit the dust, costing musicians hundreds of jobs.  The craziest story was perhaps the resignation of two-thirds of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra’s board because musicians took too a few days too long to accept a 9% pay cut. Breaking with tradition, the League of Symphony Orchestras this year sounded the alarm bells with a plenary session titled “Red Alert” at its national conference.

6. Another tough year for state arts agencies

The big headline, of course, was Kansas (see below). But state arts agencies, having already suffered big losses in 2009 and 2010, slipped backwards once again this year. More than twice as many saw decreases as increases, and in total appropriations dropped 2.6% as of August. Horror stories included Arizona Commission on the Arts, which lost its entire general fund appropriation (the agency stayed alive thanks to business license revenues); the Texas Commission on the Arts, which lost 77.7% of its funding; the Wisconsin Arts Board, whose budget was gutted more than two-thirds by controversial governor Scott Walker; and the South Carolina Arts Commission, which made it through with a 6% shave only because the state legislature overrode Governor Nikki Haley’s veto of the entire agency’s budget. Nevertheless, as in previous years, a few states and territories had clear victories: the Ohio Arts Council avoided a cut proposed by the Governor and instead achieved a $1 million increase, and the Utah Arts Council and Institute of Puerto Rican Culture saw increases of 50% or more. Still, state arts agency appropriations remain 40% below their 2001 peak levels – and that’s not even taking inflation into account.

5. Western Europe blinks on government arts funding, while South America and Asia embrace it

Already reeling from the UK’s decision to institute major cuts from Arts Council England and broader pressures on financial markets, Europe continued to see a move toward a leaner, more American-style cultural policy. The wave of change caught up the Netherlands this year, as Holland cut a quarter of its cultural budget. Meanwhile, as with the economy more generally, the balance of power is starting to shift toward former Third World nations. Hong Kong announced that it had hired starchitect Norman Foster to design a $2.8 billion, 40-hectare cultural district in West Kowloon; Abu Dhabi is building a $27 billion mixed-use development on Saadiyat Island featuring two gigantic museums and a performing arts center; and Rio de Janeiro has doubled its cultural budget in anticipation of the 2016 Olympics. Singapore and Shanghai are also seeing gigantic government investments in the arts.

4. Cultural equity #Occupies the conversation

It started small: just a poster in the magazine Adbusters, a ballerina dancing on the Wall Street Bull. But by the time October rolled around, Occupy Wall Street was a household name, changing the national conversation from one obsessed with austerity and the national debt to one that took a serious look at who benefits and suffers from our nation’s economic policies. Around the same time, the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy, a philanthropy watchdog organization that promotes social justice, published Fusing Arts, Culture, and Social Change by Holly Sidford, a broadside against the longstanding funding practices in the arts that make it hard for organizations representing communities of color to build a strong base of support. It didn’t take long for people to make the connection within both the arts community and the Occupy movement. And when news of the San Francisco Arts Commission possibly cutting its Cultural Equity Grants program hit during a national Cultural Equity Forum hosted by Grantmakers in the Arts – well, let’s just say it’s the most digital ink this topic has had spilled on it in a long time. I suspect, like so many times before, this particular conversation will dissipate without leaving behind any lasting change on a large scale. On the other hand, it’s a good bet that pressure will only continue to build on longstanding cultural institutions to justify the massive resources they have built up over the years.

3. Irvine Foundation gets engaged

About a year ago, I posted a comment on the myth of transformative arts experiences that struck a chord with readers. In it, I told my own “getting hooked on the arts” story and observed that “none of it involved being in the audience for anything….Getting out and seeing a show now and then is always nice. But getting to be in the show – that’s what’s truly transformative about the arts.” It turns out I’m not the only one who’s been thinking along these lines: in June, the James Irvine Foundation announced a wholesale change to its arts strategy that emphasizes audience engagement, including active participation. To support the new strategy, Irvine set up a new Exploring Engagement Fund that serves as “risk capital” for organizations to experiment with new programming strategies that are designed to increase engagement. Irvine is certainly not the first funder to focus its attention on audiences – the Wallace Foundation, for example, has made cultural participation a priority for years, and many have been happy to fund efforts to place cultural programming into context (“talkback sessions” and the like). But Irvine takes the concept much farther by explicitly encouraging programming that places the audience at the center of the experience, offering participants the opportunity to create, perform, or curate art themselves. It’s really quite revolutionary given the history of arts funding, and a lot of eyes will be on this initiative as it develops.

2. Kansas Arts Commission loses its funding

Proposals to eliminate state arts councils have become a dime a dozen in recent years. Just since 2009, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Texas, and several others have staved off threats of demise of varying seriousness. Experienced arts advocates, while taking each individual case seriously, tend to brush off the trend as a whole, seeing it as an inevitable part of the game. Except this year, the unthinkable happened: for the first time since the state arts council network was created in the 1960s, one of them actually had to close down shop completely. Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, fighting negative media coverage and his own legislature tooth and nail, followed through on his vow to destroy the Kansas Arts Commission and transfer its activities (but not its funding) to the nonprofit Kansas Arts Foundation. In doing so, he actually cost his state more money in federal matching funds than it saved in direct expenditures. National and local advocates are optimistic that this decision will eventually be reversed, but until then, Kansas has the dubious distinction of being the only state without a functioning arts council.

1. Creative placemaking ascendant

When Rocco Landesman was chosen to lead the National Endowment for the Arts in 2009, he almost immediately signaled his interest in the role of the arts in revitalizing downtown public spaces. Two-plus years into his term, “creative placemaking” has emerged as his signature issue, and the lengths to which he and Senior Deputy Chairman Joan Shigekawa have gone to promote it have been remarkable. Beyond the NEA’s Our Town grants, the inaugural round of which were announced this past summer, the big news this year was the formation of ArtPlace, a consortium of major foundation funders designed to extend Our Town’s work into the private sphere. Headed by former CEOs for Cities head Carol Coletta, ArtPlace has already distributed $11.5 million in grants and has an additional $12 million loan fund managed by Nonprofit Finance Fund. Its recent solicitation for letters of inquiry drew more than 2000 responses. Our Town’s future at the NEA is by no means assured, but by spurring the creation of ArtPlace, Rocco has guaranteed that creative placemaking will be part of the lexicon for quite a while.

Honorable mention:

• #SupplyDemand: the economics lesson heard ’round the world
• San Francisco Arts Commission implodes
• Doris Duke’s new artist fellowships
• LINC begins to wrap it up

And here are my choices for the top new (in 2011) arts blogs:

1. Lee Streby
2. New Beans (Clayton Lord)
3. ArtsFwd (Karina Mangu-Ward and others)
4. Creative Infrastructure (Linda Essig)
5. ArtPlace blog (various) – note the RSS feed on this one is impossible to find, it’s here.

As part of my independent study on public policy and the arts, I’ve been reviewing a significant amount of literature on the potential of artists and arts organizations to serve a revitalization role in so-called “transitional” neighborhoods and communities. While many studies show a clear relationship between the presence and density of nonprofit arts organizations and various indicators such as property values, population growth, and poverty decline, the directionality of the causal link has not yet been firmly established. Furthermore, even if it can be determined that the arts have this impact on communities, the abovementioned positive results tend to be confounded by troubling side effects of neighborhood growth, including increased income inequality, racial and ethnic tensions, and in some cases physical displacement. The extent to which these negative impacts can be mitigated remains an open question for those working in creative community development.

For many years, the standard approach to creative community development was, essentially, to stick a giant performing arts center in the middle of downtown to draw tourists and suburbanites (and their dollars) into the city. One of the first examplars of this strategy was New York City’s Lincoln Center, for which Robert Moses cleared a 13-acre city “superblock” that had housed 1700 families and 380 businesses. If anything, the trend has only accelerated, with major performing arts centers having debuted in places like Philadelphia, Omaha, Nashville, Austin, Dallas, Madison, and Miami in the past decade, and another one in Las Vegas on the way.

Unfortunately, I haven’t come across much empirical analysis of the effectiveness of these cultural institutions on revitalization of their surrounding areas. The evidence that does exist appears to be mixed. Though Lincoln Center can arguably be viewed as a success story, due to the transformation of its neighborhood in the 47 years since it opened, development by way of these “cultural palaces” suffers from significant downsides. For one thing, without further thought and investment toward guiding the surrounding neighborhood in a positive direction, these beautiful monuments to culture can turn into imposing, inaccessible behemoth structures that cater only to the car-driving rich. Since lively pedestrian traffic is the lifeblood of cultural districts, such a result signifies a missed opportunity to bring the investment to its full potential. Kansas City is trying a more comprehensive approach, pouring well over a billion dollars into downtown redevelopment this decade. The anchor developments, which include the Power & Light District (operated by the people behind Baltimore’s Inner Harbor complex) and the $413 million Kaufmann Center for the Performing Arts, are augmented by a number of other cultural facilities and commercial tenants. Yet this strategy isn’t perfect either; the tight, top-down control of the Power & Light tenant mix has resulted in what some critics term a “sameness” that saps some of the fun out of the place due to overcommercialization.

One “cultural palace” that seems to have worked out rather well is North Adams’s Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, or MASS MoCA. Backed by a $35 million investment from the state, the well-regarded museum had a dramatic effect on its surrounding community in just a few short years. In a 2006 study entitled Culture and Revitalization: The Economic Effects of MASS MoCA on Its Community, economist Stephen C. Sheppard and colleagues showed that in the three years following the facility’s opening the city saw significantly increased property values (within 1.7km of the museum), hotel tax receipts, total employment, and average salary per employee along with modest improvements in the number of small businesses in the city. It’s possible that, as a smaller city in a rural part of Massachusetts, North Adams was a more appropriate fit for a top-down investment strategy than most.

Rather than pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a few city blocks, some culture theorists instead advocate the cultivation of so-called “natural” cultural districts. These organically-occurring neighborhood hotspots for cultural activity are associated with numerous positive trends in their surrounding communities, as impressively documented by Social Impact of the Arts Project’s Mark Stern and Susan Seifert. In their 2007 brief on the subject, Stern and Seifert showed that block groups in the metropolitan Philadelphia area in the top quartile of cultural provider density were four times as likely as block groups in the bottom quartile to see their population increase and poverty decline during the 1990s. By defining a “cultural asset index” based on four measures of artistic activity in a neighborhood, the authors additionally demonstrated that 83% of the neighborhoods that showed significant improvement in real estate markets from 2001-2003 also scored highly on the index.

Supporting “natural” cultural districts will tend to take the form of subsidizing artists more so than high-profile arts organizations. One of the most common methods of doing this is by establishing live/work spaces for artists, of the kind that Artspace is known for developing. The problem with these “natural” cultural districts is that the gentrification often associated with them can be hard to rein in, especially in already-hot urban real estate markets. The rapid development of New York City neighborhoods, particularly Williamsburg, has forced the displacement of longtime residents and more recent artist immigrants alike. In addition, an influx of artists in a neighborhood does not necessarily bode well for relations between the artists and existing residents. A study examining two developing neighborhoods in Oakland, CA looked closely at these issues. The 23rd St. and Telegraph Avenue district suffers from both rapid gentrification and a lack of integration between the neighborhood’s old and new residents. Meanwhile, in the nearby Village Bottoms neighborhood, a community organizer named Marcel Diallo is trying to create a “Black Cultural District” by buying up properties and making them available to African-American “founding buyers” at a discount, thus heading off the problem of displacement. Can organic, bottom-up developments like these really be guided intentionally toward positive ends? To the extent that successful examples may exist, they have not yet shown up in my review of the literature.

Another tension arises when considering who should benefit most from creative community development. Two studies, Mapping Cultural Participation in Chicago and the Philadelphia and Camden Cultural Participation Benchmark Project, focused strong attention on some of the poorest neighborhoods in their respective cities, neighborhoods nearly bereft of cultural providers and with hardly any local participation in the city’s flagship cultural institutions. Yet the researchers found that while the symphony, art museum, and repertory theater have trouble reaching these residents, the few organizations that actually conducted activities or were based in those neighborhoods were much more likely to engage them, especially if their programming was culturally specific. To put this in context, remember that many mainstream cultural institutions worry themselves sick about reaching “diverse audiences”—it’s like the Holy Grail to them. This research suggests that they aren’t likely to get very far so long as they’re located in hoity-toity neighborhoods and showcase predominantly dead white male artists.

That information is all well and good to know, but can it be translated into action? Artists do seem to have an at times unfortunate tendency to want to cluster around people who are like themselves—alike, certainly, in terms of artistic focus, but also in terms of educational background and, seemingly, racial and ethnic heritage. This clustering means that even “natural” cultural districts, if supported in place, are going to tend to privilege neighborhoods that are relatively well-off compared to the poorest districts in the city. For this reason, I wonder if it is realistic to hope that truly neglected communities can be “saved” through the arts, or at least the arts alone. Indeed, economic development goals for the arts would seem to be in some conflict with community revitalization goals, in that an economic development strategy aimed at wealthy suburbanites and tourists will tend to build on the already-strong assets of the city rather than invest in neighborhoods that have a long way to go.

Though the arts’ value-generating and revitalizing effects have been ably documented in several instances, there does not appear to be a clear formula for capturing the benefits of arts-based community development while leaving the drawbacks behind. Nevertheless, in light of the materials I’ve read and the conversations I’ve had to date, I do have a few concluding thoughts and recommendations:

• More research is needed to place the merits of arts-based development in the context of alternative strategies. It’s nice to know that MASS MoCA adds (theoretically) $14 million to the local economy each year, but how much would the equivalent number be for a sports stadium? Or a subway system? Or an equal investment in biotechnology? While there is undoubtedly research out there on each of these subjects, I haven’t yet found any studies that do this kind of comparative analysis with the arts.
• Out of all of the various measures of community prosperity, the arts seem to have the strongest relationship with real estate values. This, at its core, is a good thing – a clear demonstration of the arts’ power to create economic value for all residents of a community, whether or not they actively participate in arts activities. This argument should be very compelling for advocacy purposes.
• Rising real estate values have differential impacts on property owners and property renters. All of the concerns about gentrification and displacement essentially come down to ownership and self-determination. If community residents have an active role in welcoming artists to a neighborhood and are positioned to benefit financially from rising values, rather than having to pay more for the same space without any input into the process, in theory gentrification should not be an issue. Sadly, such a utopian vision seems to have few, if any, antecedents in real life.
• One way in which artists can help is by taking the initiative to forge more active relationships with longtime community residents. Artists don’t do themselves any favors in the advocacy department by remaining within cocoons of like-minded souls, tempting though that may be. Small steps like communicating with the neighbors in one’s apartment building or getting involved in local politics can go a long way toward combating negative perceptions and stereotypes.

Further reading:

• Anthony Tommasini, Lincoln Center: Mixed Reviews (New York Times, May 8, 2009)
• The Reinvestment Fund, Crane Arts: Financing Artists’ Workspaces
• ERA Architects et al, A Map of Toronto’s Cultural Facilities: A Cultural Facilities Analysis
• Webb Management Services, Demand Analysis for New Small-Scale Cultural Facilities in San José

First, the Brooklyn Philharmonic did not commission or present Currier’s piece. I am not intimately familiar with the details of the arrangement, but the piece was put on by an organization called the Earth Day Network in what appears to have been a fiscal agent relationship, with financing for the project coming from the Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, and (evidently) Currier himself. The piece was Currier’s idea–he wrote it first, then tried to raise money to put it on and hired the performers involved, including the orchestra. (Note: as a member of the volunteer chorus The Canticum Novum Singers, I did not receive payment for my performance.)

I have no idea who said what to whom backstage during the second intermission, so I have nothing to add on that front. I will add, though, that the length of the piece appeared to take both composer and orchestra by complete surprise, given that the written duration in the score was a mere two hours and five minutes. By the time Harold walked off stage to a smattering of tepid applause with a good twenty minutes or so of music still in the can, it was past the 2:45 mark.

The abrupt ending was merely the capper to a truly bizarre experience from start to finish. Currier’s piece, I thought, had some redeeming qualities: the orchestral writing was quite lovely in places, and rich textures and interesting harmonies abounded. But other aspects of the score were ill-considered at best and disastrous at worst. One of the prime offenders was the James Lovelock-inspired libretto, which was every bit as awkward to sing as Kozinn found it to hear. That was nothing, though, compared to the soprano choral part, which boasted literally pages of high As, Bs, Cs, and even Ds (Ds, people!) on text like “The violence of Hutton’s raindrop was equaled, if not surpassed, by the violence contained in a tiny genetic particle.” The piece featured well-performed but completely gratuitous cameos from the Shanghai String Quartet, Anne Akiko Meyers, dancers, and a banjo player. And, oh man, the solo parts….YIKES. All I can say is that Elizabeth Keusch is officially my hero for basically memorizing and then shredding that impossible score. (So impossible, in fact, that the original bass soloist had to drop out and be replaced on less than a week’s notice.)

There’s a reason that none of the people out there commenting on the situation, even Currier’s defenders, seem to have any idea what the actual performance was like. It’s because no one was there. Avery Fisher Hall has 2738 seats; Allan Kozinn’s estimate of 100 attendees, made in the course of a scathing review in the New York Times, was in my opinion rather generous. There were people getting up and leaving throughout, not waiting for intermissions or even breaks in the action. It was a toxic atmosphere in there, with the composer and his entourage occupying the prime seats and a sea of emptiness around them.

Given the work’s purported mission of raising public awareness about climate change, this was a colossal marketing failure on the part of Currier and his people, one that a complete performance would have done nothing to correct. It’s a classic example of what I call the “Great Institution Complex” that hounds many an artist and arts advocate alike. It’s obvious that the composer envisioned a much different scenario than the one that greeted him five years ago today. Perhaps recalling the story of how Philip Glass supposedly rented the Met for the first performance of Einstein on the Beach (he didn’t, but did accumulate an enormous debt from touring the opera in Europe), Currier clearly hoped that presenting his magnum opus at Lincoln Center would be his ticket to new music stardom in similar fashion. He devoted five years of his life and thousands of dollars in personal funds to making this piece happen, investing in the most prestigious halls and names he (thought he) could afford. Surely he thought the names will be huge draws. After all, who wouldn’t want to see Anne Akiko Meyers and the Shanghai Quartet and the Brooklyn Phil live in concert all at once? But see, that’s not how the music world works these days. People don’t go to Avery Fisher to hear some random concert without some sort of extra push. Performing arts organizations’ marketing departments spend hundreds of thousands of dollars providing that push, with press outreach, brochures, postcards, email blasts, and long-term high-touch relationships built up with actual subscribers and advocates. With those kinds of resources at one’s disposal, the actual location of a concert almost doesn’t matter. Without them, though, you have to work much harder to fill a space. Currier didn’t seem to realize that for the Brooklyn Phil, the singers, and all the rest, his magnum opus was just a gig. Handing them some money was not going to motivate them to tell all their friends, pool email lists, leverage their connections, or take any other steps that would have resulted in a better turnout. Inspiring them and building a community around the work was the only realistic path to the goal.

In the next phase of my art and public policy independent study, I’m going to look at the impact of “cultural palaces” like Lincoln Center on community development versus that of more organic, “natural” cultural districts. It’s fair to say that the top-down approach, the Avery Fisher model, has been the norm in city planning for the past several decades. But increasingly, researchers and policymakers are beginning to consider alternative ways of growing arts scenes within their constituencies, strategies that take community needs and existing resources into account. I hope that, if nothing else, the sad legacy of Gaian Variations can provide some helpful insights for cultural planners on the importance of building authentic, deeply felt community support for the fulfillment of grand dreams.