This past month has opened my eyes to so many new ideas and perspectives, helped me grow in self confidence and understanding, and allowed me to catch a glimpse of the impact art can have when used democratically and when supported by our democratic government.
In the beginning, this course was hard to pin down. Democracy and the arts? What’s that supposed to mean? Is it arts management or a branch of political science or art history? One of the really cool things about studying at a liberal arts school is the lack of clear-cut lines in what we study because it reflects the messiness of the real world. Life isn’t neat and tidy and easily fit into a textbook or table. The liberal arts reflects this reality by allowing us to have courses like “Democracy and the Arts” where you can’t specify exactly what the course is about until you have experienced it for a few weeks. Now, after three and a half weeks, I’m starting to understand.
This course set out to find answers for a few big questions. These questions include: What do we mean by democracy? How does our democratic government further the goals of democracy through the arts? How can we reflect democratic goals more effectively or less so?
U.S. Capitol building Photo Credit: USA Today
For the purpose of our course, democracy means striving (imperfectly) for equal representation and equal opportunity. We found that the arts, when leveraged in certain ways, can further the goal of democracy in representing the underrepresented. At the Studio Theater in the Logan Circle neighborhood, we got to witness a performance of “Pipeline.” This play tells the story of a African American family, where the mom is a school teacher who sends her teenage son to boarding school in hopes of giving him a brighter future. There is much turmoil after the son gets in a fight at school and the mother suffers from a panic disorder. The disorder is suggested to be linked to the high-stress life she lives as a black woman, with a young son who could at any moment be arrested or hurt due to the color of his skin. This play–by employing excellent actors and showcasing complex relationships, heated arguments, and poignant auditory and visual displays in scene transitions– described the many layers of modern-day racism in education in a way that reading a newspaper article or seeing a news story never could.
In turn, democratic governments can leverage their resources to support these democratic arts.Through this support, they further the cause of equal representation and opportunity in our nation. The National Endowment for the Arts and its sister organization, The National Endowment for the Humanities, are funded by the federal government. With this funding they can support arts and humanities projects that can create a stronger voice for underserved communities. We visited the Washington Performing Arts Organization which has a variety of programs that support DC performers and promotes music and international education in DC schools. The government also funds the entire Smithsonian Institute which executes a myriad of projects to give voice to a variety of USAmerican groups. They fund the National Museum of the American Indian which provides much needed education to our citizens on the realities of the history and culture of indigenous people in the Americas. The NMAI employs all kinds of art, from the provocative architecture of their building to Lakota cloth paintings of post-Little Big Horn to Incan basket weaving to contemporary indigenous art, in order to create a voice for indigenous Americans of the past and present who have long been oppressed and silenced in our government and society.
NMAI – Photo Credit: Lonely Planet
Over the course of this off-campus study, my eyes were further opened to the complexities of oppression and representation in our society. I had heard before of the fact that people who aren’t white and able in our Nation experience acute difficulties compared to white, able people. However, I began to understand many more aspects of their difficulties as our class discussed the need for art to be more accessible to these people, as well as representative of their experiences. For example, even though I learned about slavery many times in school, I understood so much more about the African American experience and community after going to the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) where the exhibits described the long and complicated history and society of a people who have played just as large a role as white Americans in the development of what has become the United States. I had also learned about some major Native American history –the Trail of Tears and epidemics and Alaskan native tribes – in high school. However, before I walked into the NMAI, it had never fully sunk in how 500 years ago, the majority of the Americas was inhabited by an almost entirely different people than it is today. I had never realized the gravity for modern indigenous people of being a survivor of a sort of bi-continental, multi-century genocide. In addition, I hadn’t really considered the plight of people with disabilities in society and how we need the arts to be available to this population as well. Besides the need for equal access to the arts, there are even multiple economic arguments for making the arts accessible to those with disabilities.
A portion of the African American music exhibit in NMAAHC – Photo Credit: boxycolonialontheroad.com
One of the reasons that I’m most grateful to have taken this course is that it opened my eyes to a wide-range of organizations where I could, in the future, increase the public good by applying my artistic studies as a music and liberal arts student at St. Olaf. We learned about jobs in managing arts organizations, coordinating funding, managing performance venues, and more. One excursion that really stood out to me was our visit to the offices of Americans for the Arts, one of the largest arts lobbying organizations in our country. I really connected with their focus on using concrete evidence like datum and anecdotes to get a very concrete result: arts funding and support. Sometimes in the course of studying liberal arts, I struggle with what feels like too much focus on the abstract. I learn about the disparities in arts funding and I want to do something substantial and proactive to solve the problem. AftA focuses on this aspect of the arts world in their work as a lobbying organization, where they strive to increase commitment to arts appropriations and support in our federal and state governments. It is essential to have government support for the arts in order to fund such projects as the NMAAHC and Folklife festival and public school art programs. I was intrigued by the international cultural research that goes on within the Smithsonian Institute in programs such as the Folklife Festival and the Folkways Record Label that works to preserve cultures all around the world and connect people across international borders. Besides careers in D.C., our experiences with different arts organizations that employ artists in non-performance positions has made me interested in looking for such jobs in other regions of the country closer to home (Alaska). I plan to explore similar career paths in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest.
I also gained great insight into my own civic identity over the course of this month. After getting to tour the Capitol and talking with staffers and congresswoman Tina Smith, it began to dawn on me how truly accessible and human the government is. For much of my life, and I assume for many Americans’ lives, the government seemed to be a god-like entity that was untouchable and inaccessible to little people like me. However, after meeting with Congressman Don Young and more staffers, as well as visiting the Senate during the impeachment trial, it became clear that the mighty federal government is really just more little people like me with bigger titles. And like any normal human, politicians have motives and minds that can be changed. This gives me hope for what I can do as a citizen to speak up for what I think needs to be spoken up for. People like me can make a difference strategically by raising our voices in the right place at the right time to the right people.
I’ve also realized how easy it can be to feel paralyzed by the overwhelming evils of our world. I felt this most acutely after visiting the Holocaust Museum. As I walked out of the museum, I realized that the motivation behind the atrocities committed almost a century ago are still alive and well today and new, yet essentially similar, genocides are going on as we speak. In thinking on this reality, making change seems impossible and paralysis is tempting. However, in seeing the power of art and community through our experiences in DC, I can maintain the belief that as long as I use my privilege as a U.S. citizen and speak out with my actions against injustice, there is hope for change. I am still trying to understand how I can put these lofty words into concrete actions, but I have a few ideas on small things to start with, such as participating in Arts Advocacy Day in Minneapolis this spring.
An Arts Advocacy day poster – Photo Credit: Americans for the Arts
After all we’ve experienced and learned about in this course, I think the first thing our nation needs to do to better support such greatly needed community arts is to better educate people. Voters and politicians, on every level of government, need to know about the concrete benefits of funding the arts. There are a lot of pressing, scary-looking issues in our country that seem to demand all the attention. I argue, however, that if we sanction a meaningful portion of our time, money, and energy to focusing on what the arts can do to better our societies, be it through building connections, expressing ourselves or healing our souls, then we will really start to make progress in mediating some of the brokenness of our nation and the world.
“Statue of Liberty” painting by Georgia resident, Steve Penley (USA)