Before I arrived in D.C. to take the Democracy and the Arts class, the only connection between democracy and the arts that I thought about was the government supporting the arts. I expected the whole trip to be meeting government officials with the power to make big changes to arts policies. While we did do this, there was so much more.
We began with a topic that I didn’t know much about in general: curation. We learned how curators not only take care of the museum’s artifacts but how they pick and choose the art they want to show and set it up in a specific way to tell a specific story to people who wouldn’t know it otherwise. We got to practice the art of curation at SAAM which helped us think in-depth about what stories the curators at other museums were telling. Another way I saw a connection between the arts and democracy was through the art I saw at the Women’s March. This was the most literal presentation of the relationship between democracy and the arts because the people marching literally had pieces of art to voice their opinion as a part of a democracy. I also saw this connection through all of the murals, especially the ones on U street where we did the Attucks Adams tour. These murals were created to represent the history of that neighborhood and to celebrate their culture. I thought it was interesting though that the reason behind hiring someone to do these murals was to make the area look “nicer” and “more developed” because they covered walls previously covered in graffiti. This came along with the process of gentrifying the area.
Gentrification was a big topic in the class that I personally learned a lot about. This was honestly the first time I had ever thought about gentrification. It has not been brought up in my education until now, or at least not enough for me to fully understand it. Many areas of D.C. have been changing rapidly due to big investments in different areas. This can look like a good thing for some because areas that are impoverished are becoming less so and they are more established, but this can also erase the culture that was there before. And in the case of the area around U street, it can drive people out of the city because of the skyrocketing cost of living there. After this course, I feel like I understand that gentrification can look like renovating an entire area to make it “nicer”; adding murals and performing arts centers and expensive coffee shops, but on the other side, it can look like the erasure of a culture previously thriving.
While I made more connections between the arts and democracy than just funding and policies like I had thought, we did also talk a lot about how arts organizations get their funding and how much power the government has. A lot of the organizations we went to, whether it be a Smithsonian museum, the NEA/NEH, or the Kennedy Center, are federally funded. It is so cool that the federal government is investing in the arts, but this also means the government can influence the decisions that these museums, endowments, and performing arts venues make. Because of this, some of these organizations consider themselves politically “neutral,” or “apolitical,” so that they don’t lose their federal funding. Our class had a discussion about that term and a lot of us decided that being “neutral” doesn’t really exist; if you choose to discuss an issue, it’s political, and if you choose not to discuss or understand an issue, it’s perpetuating the problem. I think it is important to be able to understand the ethical and political dilemmas that underlie in the production and consumption of art because art is often created to convey a message. Artists now more often than not will have political motivation for creating their art; they create art to make a statement about their beliefs, their life, their hardships, and social issues. Even when an artist doesn’t intend for their art to have a message that is seen as “political” it can suggest things about political climates that they didn’t even necessarily intend. This is the cool thing about art; it can mean something different to anyone and there isn’t always a “correct” message to be interpreted.
During one of our last days in D.C., my good friend Anna and I started talking about not just how democracy and the arts interact, but how we can better do our part as artistic citizens. After that conversation and this whole class, I definitely better understand my duty as an artistic citizen. I really think that I understand what art can do, which is inspire others to create change, start conversations, make people uncomfortable, “nourish souls”, grab attention, and open minds. I also understand that I can actually directly advocate for artists and their fields. Meeting with the senators, talking with federal institutions, and writing the policy proposals really helped me realize that I can actually do something to change the way arts are viewed in this country in ways that are different than simply voting for someone else who cares.
With this newfound sense of artistic citizenship, I would like to see the arts be recognized by schools as a core part of the students learning. I don’t think that everyone needs to know the entire history of music, but I do think that learning an instrument and learning how to use art as a tool for learning other things is incredibly important. It teaches discipline and creativity that other subjects simply don’t cover. Because of this, it would be wonderful if the arts could be more accessible to everyone, meaning that people who wouldn’t usually go to performances or art museums could feel welcome and even motivated to participate in and support the arts.
I am very grateful to have taken this course. Before going to Washington D.C. I thought of it solely as the place that holds the White House and the federal government, I didn’t think about people who may live there, non-federal organizations that thrive there, and the arts community that is growing there. I think we learned about what Washington D.C. is inside and out. We did get to see some of those federal buildings, but we also got to see the diversity in the communities around the Federal Triangle. We got to see the differences between the federal workers and the baristas, we learned about the history before areas of D.C. were gentrified, and we got to talk to people who lived in the city and learn how they interpreted the diverse culture of the city. Most importantly though, we got to learn how the city’s thriving arts culture is affected by the likes of Democracy, and how it can change the world.