The Kojo Nnamdi Show

Thank you so much for doing this show, as it brought up a number of significant issues about arts funding. But there was a glaring omission throughout this conversation: at no point did anyone mention that artists are business people. They are self-employed when producing their work, although most of us must also seek employment outside the studio in order to make ends meet. Most working artists work incredibly long hours for little monetary gain, and few have benefits, such as health insurance, because until the ACA comes fully online in 2014, they cannot afford to purchase individual policies. Most working artists must spend at least half of their time growing their business: marketing, developing a network, accounting, and dealing with all the logistics necessary to keep a business afloat. The time they get to spend painting, dancing, throwing pots, chipping stone, fitting wood, weaving, writing, illustrating, designing, etc. usually falls to the minority of their hours. They work long days, and often seven-day weeks, particularly if their creative work is snatched from the few hours leftover from other employment. The work ethic of this population is amazing, and they are sure not in it for the money. Many must step back from their work for at least part of their lives in order to earn higher wages outside their vocation, but rarely do they give up on their creative work.

Every small business owner knows that being one's own employer means an enormous commitment of time, energy, and brains. Working in the arts is a small business enterprise, and the idea that this is seldom considered in discussion of small business makes me furious. Government arts funding at all levels [local, state, and federal] could be a vital source of assistance much as it is for other kinds of small businesses, but somehow this never enters the equation. In this way the arts, which generate benefits both fiduciary and cultural far in excess of the dollars granted, is much like funding of basic [i.e. purely knowledge-seeking without immediate application] scientific research. America has a miserable history of funding that, too, yet basic research has contributed enormously to our technical, medical, and general science stature in the world.

I long to hear the arts-funding debate recast as a discussion of small business incubation and even infrastructure investment [architects would certainly feel that their work falls in that latter category]. We seem to be stuck on the idea that the arts are somehow different from, apart from, any other kind of business and they are not. I work in the sector of the market called Fine Craft as a designer and maker of one-of-a-kind jewelry. The Craft Organization Directors Association conducted a survey and determined that craft is a $13.8 BILLION dollar industry [this was pre-2008; I don't know where it is now], which is half of the $29 billion dollar toy industry, just slightly smaller than the $16 billion dollar florist industry, and three times more than the $4 billion dollar organic food industry. Please note that this survey does not include the music, theater, film, dance, or "fine arts" [painting, sculpture] - it looked at those who work in media traditionally used to make functional objects, [e.g. spoons, gates, dinnerware, quilts] such as precious metals, textiles, glass, ceramics, wood, etc.

The recession has taken a terrible toll on small businesses, and the arts are no different. Galleries have closed all over the country, museums have hiked admission fees, curtailed hours, or both. Those of us who sell directly to our customers via the web, direct mailing, studio tours, and craft shows have seen our customer base vanish. We are in serious economic trouble.

The "culture wars" rocked the NEA in 1987 when Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" offended so many that the endowment changed its policy of providing grants to individual artists and restricted its support to institutions. One piece out of billions created, and an entire source of potential funding for individual artists is shut down. No one has ever stepped back from the "our tax dollars paid for THAT!?" to look at all the good the NEA had done for small businesses that created art, paid taxes, and contributed to the economy. In a perfect world, the WPA would be revived, but hell will freeze over first. Yet the fact remains that there is no stimulus funding aimed at this business sector, and no consideration of a healthy arts presence as part of our cultural infrastructure.

n.b. I agree with the other statements here that Mr. Boaz did not sound as if he had actually had any arts education - either in the studio, art history, or art's role in any culture.