Translation: Art is now only art is we say so - and we're the communists with the guns to stop any art we don't approve of. So now, artists, ask yourselves: "what do we want your art to say"?
Posted on 06/16/2011 3:01:05 PM PDT by Steve Peacock
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has plans to develop a "logic model and measurement framework" that supposedly will help it weigh the impact of art on society and, presumably, when, why, and how that impact affects governmental funding of the arts.
Here's an excerpt from the Statement of Work governing the project, which NEA intends to outsource to a "capable" contractor.
"SECTION B
SUPPLIES/SERVICES AND PRICES
B.1 GENERAL
Historically, generations of artists, philosophers, and social science researchers have struggled to define the role and impact of art in terms of public value. They have asked questions as fundamental as: What is art? What is the nature of an artistic experience? What factors and conditions contribute to that experience, and how do they manifest in individuals and societies? What benefits do the arts confer, how, and to whom, and how might those effects be better known?
Such inquiries often end in a stalemate, and for good reason. As an area of human endeavor, “the arts” represent a highly evolved and complex system—a plurality of agents, activities, and relationships involving diverse pathways to achieve outcomes that have evaded typical measurement strategies. And yet, at the outset of the 21st century, an accurate picture of how the arts function in the lives of individuals and communities is needed more than ever. This knowledge is vital to understanding the arts’ relationships to domains of growing importance to all Americans: creativity and innovation; health and wellness; education and lifelong learning; livability and sustainable communities; global competitiveness; and economic prosperity.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) seeks to develop a logic model and measurement framework that would chart the dynamic, interrelated components of the arts ecosystem and how they act alone, together, or in league with external factors, to transform lives and communities. For this project, definitions are paramount. The NEA will engage a Contractor to recruit and work with some of the nation’s leading thinkers in academia, government, and the nonprofit and commercial sectors to propose and validate key terms and concepts for a logic model of the arts. The model will express a hypothesis for understanding the impact of the arts on American life, and it will include potential measurement strategies built around outcomes generated by the model. For this project to succeed, nothing less than a conceptual breakthrough is required. The NEA seeks leading-edge expertise in the design of models to illustrate new concepts and to pioneer innovative metrics. The Contractor will facilitate a creative process that results in outcomes and potential measures; it will also yield fresh insights about the applicability of new and existing tools, technologies, and data sources to obtain those measurements. The final product—a logic model and measurement framework for the arts—will serve as the bedrock for future data collection and evidence-sharing about the public value of the arts."
The selected contractor will be tasked with the following:
"C.2 SCOPE OF WORK
To ensure rigorous, comprehensive, and dynamic thinking about the questions posed above, the Contractor will assemble a working group of 10-15 individuals who are demographically and geographically diverse and who collectively have wide-ranging areas of expertise in the academic, government, for-profit, and not-for-profit sectors. These individuals will convene three times in the course of the project period (one year) to discuss and review iterations of the logic model.
"Prior to these meetings, the Contractor will perform a gap-analysis of representational and measurement models in the arts. To assist with this analysis, and to acquire recommendations, the Contractor will conduct interviews with up to 20 experts in specific domains, both arts- and non-arts-related. The choice of working-group members and interview subjects will be critical to the project’s success. The challenge of defining the arts and its relation to social good is at least as old as Plato; therefore, an innovative leap forward will be required."
Ultimately, the contractor and its group of thinkers will be responsible for producing:
"a final draft logic model, clearly differentiating the inputs, outputs, outcomes, pathways, and processes by which the arts transform individuals and communities. In narrative and pictorial terms, the model will fully define each element, the complex relationships among elements, the role of each element in contributing toward impact on American life, the precise nature and variety of impacts, and factors that improve or impede each element’s ability to contribute toward impact. In brief, the model will express hypotheses for understanding and exploring a cause-effect relationship between the arts and various areas of improvement in American life."
From the communist goals of 63
22) Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all form of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings,” substitute shapeless, awkward, and meaningless forms.
23) Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24) Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25) Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography, and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.
26) Present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as “normal, natural, and healthy.”
Translation: Art is now only art is we say so - and we're the communists with the guns to stop any art we don't approve of. So now, artists, ask yourselves: "what do we want your art to say"?
Taxpayer funded mental masturbation...
As an art major in college and a professional designer for over 30 years, I can think of no logical argument for government sponsored art. This is separate from monuments, museums, etc, though I can also see the argument for those all being private as well. However, the Feds paying for painting, videos, poetry, sculpture, etc. for no other reason than an artistic expression is on its face a bad idea.
I don’t make a lot of money off my photography and artwork but what I do make is all me.
“Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.” -Frank Zappa
I am an art lover and widower of an art teacher. Government funded art is an oxymoron and has little chance of being of value. It generally is the lowest common denominator.
The greatest of artists generally are not known to their time (exceptions may be in Renaissance Italy with Michelangelo and Raphael). Generally the most highly rewarded artists are mediocrities such as Salieri.
No more federal funding of art other than symphony orchestras, chamber music ensembles.
Well, you’d better get with the new Socialist Realism school of art if you don’t want to wind up in a re-education camp.
Crazy? Extreme? Over the top? Oh, a tad.
But it’s been done. And worse. Repeatedly.
Why should those be funded by government?
“To ensure rigorous, comprehensive, and dynamic thinking about the questions posed above, the Contractor will assemble a working group of 10-15 individuals who are demographically and geographically diverse and who collectively have wide-ranging areas of expertise in the academic, government, for-profit, and not-for-profit sectors. These individuals will convene three times in the course of the project period (one year) to discuss and review iterations of the logic model.”
10-15 academic “experts” at art. Guaranteed epic fail.
Marketing models can quickly determine the worthiness of art.
The NEA Logic Model only works with union members and no one else.
What’s the point?
I mean, seriously, does anyone think they will come back and say “We at the National Endowment of Arts have developed this model. It shows clearly that the Arts do not add anything to society. Thank you and have a good day.”
SCAM.
And would such a logic model ever come back and say that showing a crucifix in urine should not be funded, due to the sacreligious and offensive nature of same?????
Here is my painting that I submitted to the NEA for reimbursement:
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I call it WHITE CAT DRINKING MILK IN A SNOWSTORM. I truly suffer for my art.
I sincerely saw something like that at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. About 20 years ago I visited MoMA, including the contemporary wing, where one piece literally was a black square placed on top of a slightly larger white square. That’s it.
Then again, it was more compelling than the dozen or so silver-colored jars on the other side of the room, each of which was respectively marked with the name of body fluid: PISS, VOMIT... etc. Sorry for the gross specifics, but for the sake of speaking the facts I had to offer a small dose of reality.
I sincerely saw something like that at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. About 20 years ago I visited MoMA, including the contemporary wing, where one piece literally was a black square placed on top of a slightly larger white square. That’s it.
Then again, it was more compelling than the dozen or so silver-colored jars on the other side of the room, each of which was respectively marked with the name of body fluid: PISS, VOMIT... etc. Sorry for the gross specifics, but for the sake of speaking the facts I had to offer a small dose of reality.
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