Nurturing Artistic Creativity
An Address at the Philadelphia Award
Susan Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation, gave the following address at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on June 23, 1998 at the presentation of the Philadelphia Award. The award is given annually by the City of Philadelphia to a man or woman who has "done the most to advance the best and largest interests of the community." Excerpts from the speech were published by the Philadelphia Inquirer on June 29, 1998.
We are honoring two extraordinary women tonight.
I've known Anne d'Harnoncourt since we were grade-school classmates in New York, a lifetime ago. Anne was the tallest person in our class and I was the shortest. Some things never change. I am especially pleased to help recognize with this award her outstanding leadership of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Anne has made the museum an extraordinary national and international cultural institution. At the same time, she has woven the museum into the fabric of the city's life through outreach efforts such as the collaboration with Jane Golden's Mural Arts Program.
Your award to Jane Golden is also a well-deserved tribute. Jane's vision, enthusiasm, and skill have made Philadelphia the Mural Capital of the United States. She has made the arts a living, breathing part of the city's life. Her work demonstrates her gift for finding talent that abounds in all communities and for bringing formerly disaffected people together. I am proud that when it comes to honoring Jane, the Ford Foundation got there first. Back in 1991, her program, then called the Anti-Graffiti Network, won a Ford Foundation Innovations Award.
Edward Bok, who founded the annual Philadelphia Award in 1921, also deserves our thanks. I am a great believer in the importance of awards and their positive impact. Awards are important because they signal values and reinforce them. Tonight's awards are a public affirmation of the central place of the arts in Philadelphia and in American society generally. The awards' signal is well-timed, because today it seems that many communities devalue the arts.
I'd like to speak about the risks of this devaluation and the importance of arts in contemporary life. Let me start close to home.
At the Ford Foundation, we affirm the crucial role of artistic expression by making the arts an integral part of our grants programs worldwide. In the United States, we make three categories of grants:
- One, we help strengthen the financing, management, and creative programs of a broad range of arts organizations.
- Two, we bring together artists from different nations, cultures, and communities for long-term collaboration to create new performance work.
- Three, we support institutions and artists whose work encourages public dialogue about complex and contentious issues in our society.
We make these grants because we believe artistic expression is a crucial aspect of all healthy, well-functioning societies.
I worry about the devaluation and marginalization of the arts. Apart from artists themselves, too few communities seem concerned about support for artists and their work. We neglect arts education in schools, a practice that became particularly clear after the tax revolts of the 1980s. We fail to provide sustained support for developing artists and arts groups. And, too often, we subsume the arts into a broad, generalized category of entertainment—as just another nonessential, market-driven leisure activity.
These trends are dangerous in at least three respects. First, at the most fundamental level, artistic talent is a core human capacity. We cannot suppress it without high social costs. From the earliest cave drawings to the work of today's computer artists, artistic talent has been present in all human societies. When we neglect this talent, we say to the people who possess it, "You don't matter. We have no place for you." Failing to develop individual artistic skill with the same energy we devote to scientific or other talent can crush the hopes of artistic men and women and waste human potential.
That potential is not trivial and it is not a luxury. Artistic work expresses human identity in the most fundamental ways. People affirm their place in the world through art. Art helps people define who they are, where they come from, and what they think.
History shows the tragic consequences of suppressing this key component of group and individual identity. Look at the experiences of Native Americans, Australian aborigines, and other conquered or colonized peoples. Suppression of their dances, language, songs, stories, and images had powerful negative effects on their ability to grow and prosper. This sort of repression still goes on, as we all know, in such diverse places as Tibet and parts of Eastern Europe. Again, the consequences have been tragic.
So that is my first worry—that we do a poor job of developing the core human attribute of artistic talent, and we thereby snuff out possibilities.
Of course, there are people who agree that artistic expression is a core human attribute worthy of attention. But many still think of artistic work as separate from the main business of society, and that generates my second worry: that the arts are not being recognized as a very practical form of human endeavor.
Even if we restrict our view of the arts to the economic sphere, we must recognize their tremendous practical value. For example, Philadelphia derives important economic benefits from tourism generated by the special exhibits and permanent collections of institutions like this great museum. The practical, economic aspect of artistic works leads thoughtful people to be concerned about the loss of arts education in the public schools. Not long ago, I talked with the head of a major design school in New York City. He said he believes that cuts in New York's arts education programs in the public schools will ultimately undermine New York's role as an international center for fashion and design.
The powerful connection between the arts and the economy was also made clear to me three weeks ago, when I visited the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. That handsome new structure offers a superb venue for performing artists and their audiences. On my visit there, I was lucky to be among several thousand people who heard Jessye Norman sing a program of German, French, and Spanish songs to one of the most ethnically diverse audiences I have ever been in. But the Performing Arts Center is more than a showcase for the arts. It is also spurring revival of a deteriorated section of downtown Newark. Developers are now taking a second look and investing and building in an area many had written off for decades. So when we devalue the arts, we not only undercut a core aspect of humanity, we discard a powerful development tool.
Finally, I worry about marginalizing the arts because they have transformative power. They convey feelings, ideas, and thoughts that can change people and societies. As we walk through the city's neighborhoods, who can remain indifferent to the messages of the murals created by local artists? They reveal a wonderful zest as well as beauty; they prompt reflection on the economic, ethnic, and social concepts they portray; and they demand our attention. Whether it is a Cezanne or a Brancusi at the Philadelphia Museum of Art or a wall mural depicting black family trees at 20th Street and Watkins, art has the power to transform us by making us question and think. That power of art to make us think is especially important in today's fast-changing world. The dizzying speed of change and the uncertainty it produces lead many people to look for simple solutions to complex problems. But simple solutions are not always right, in fact they are often dangerous and misleading. Art, on the other hand, offers symbolic elements prompting exploration of complex meanings and relationships. Thinking and reflection can help foster a deeper understanding of the dilemmas we face.
Art's ability to peel away layers and expose public issues in new light is one of its most important contributions to the democratic process. The drama, music, and painting created during South Africa's resistance to apartheid made this point powerfully. In South Africa, artistic expression exposed coded messages, underground lives and hideous cruelty. It also helped generate worldwide support for the liberation struggle. This is just one of the ways, as Jane Golden says, that art saves lives.
Another contemporary example of art's ability to stimulate thinking about social issues is seen in the work of theater artist Anna Deavere Smith. She recently concluded a stay at the Ford Foundation as our first Artist in Residence. Some of you may have attended her performances. Two explore the tensions behind the riots in Los Angeles and the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Smith went to the neighborhoods involved in these disturbances, interviewed people on all sides of the controversies that generated the riots, and then wrote plays that incorporated the speech, thoughts, and feelings of members of the community. In her one-woman performances, she becomes each of the characters, symbolically reminding us that we are all one—one human race—though differentiated by our gestures, manner of speech, color, or situation. These highly nuanced theater works enabled audiences to see the complexity of the issues and the concerns of the people involved in the riots and their aftermath.
Works like Smith's challenge us to think more deeply about issues that are too often oversimplified, politicized, and reduced to single dimensions. In fact, we seem to give artists like her a special license to explore troubling problems, and over the long term that can help people become more open to their resolution.
In summary, my message tonight is that:
- Artistic creativity is a core human capacity that must be nurtured as other talents are.
- Artistic activity brings practical economic and other benefits to society.
- Finally, art is powerfully—and positively—transformative.
We should, therefore, see the arts as a resource to cultivate and support. The Philadelphia Awards given tonight help us move in that direction. They remind us of the varying roles the arts play in our lives and how important people and institutions are to the support of the arts. I applaud the Trustees of the Philadelphia Award for their decision to honor Ann d'Haroncourt and Jane Golden. And to them, I offer my congratulations and thanks for the superb work they do.