David Hoppe

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:: Arts in crisis

Yes, it can get worse

By David Hoppe

When Mark Ruschman stunned the local cultural scene with the news that, after 20 years in business, he was closing his art gallery, he said recent cuts in arts funding had no bearing on the decision. Ruschman's gallery was a for-profit enterprise and therefore not eligible for grants from the Arts Council or the Cultural Development Commission. Part of what made Ruschman's announcement such a shocker was the assumption, shared by many people in town, that his business model for selling art would enable him to weather tough times.

It turned out this assumption was wrong. Not even Mark Ruschman, whose approach to creative enterprise combined common sense, generosity and class, could overcome the current economic undertow.

But in talking about his decision to close (see this week's interview in News), Ruschman added an important postscript. He said that if he was looking to start a new gallery, he wasn't sure he would choose to put it in Indianapolis. That's because the recent cuts to arts funding send a troubling signal about the larger community's support for the arts.

The use of public funds for the arts in Indianapolis has been an unqualified success. According to a recent study by Americans for the Arts, Indianapolis's modest annual investment of $2.5 million in 2007 reaped almost a half billion dollars in revenue for the city.

But this hasn't been enough to keep these funds from being cut over the past few months as the city has been forced to deal with a combination of fiscal problems. Although the cuts have had little more than a symbolic impact on the fiscal problems, their impact on the arts community is dire.

Cuts to the arts line of the Parks and Recreation Budget and the expected elimination of arts funding from the Capital Improvement Board budget will reduce local arts funding to less than a million dollars, effectively erasing hard won gains made during the Peterson administration.

Informed sources speculate that more cuts could be in store. The City-County Council, with the tacit approval of Mayor Ballard, appears dangerously eager to make political points by cutting what remains of the Arts Council budget.

In any event, a decade's worth of trying to persuade the city's leadership class that arts and culture are key to whether or not Indianapolis reaches the next level as an urban destination are being dismantled with breathtaking speed. The arguments that have shown that the arts contribute to economic vitality, neighborhood development, improved education and safer streets have been brushed aside. When Mayor Ballard addressed a rally of arts advocates on the Circle, all he could say was that the creative community needed to do a better job of promoting itself. Incredibly, no one in attendance so much as booed.

Looming now is the grim prospect of the city's arts organizations engaging in dog-eat-dog fund raising, a zero-sum game that will favor large institutions over fledgling start-ups to an even greater extent than is already the case. If this happens, Indianapolis will be the big loser. Such a competition will amount to a clear-cutting of the city's cultural eco-system; landmark institutions will become increasingly isolated as young and independent creatives move to more hospitable environments.

The need to overhaul how the city's cultural sector raises money, disperses funds and communicates has never been more imperative. This isn't merely a matter of saving the Arts Council, useful as that office has been to the community. For while the Arts Council has played a crucial administrative role, facilitating and channeling opportunities like the Lilly Endowment's Creative Renewal Fellowship program and the Cultural Development Commission's public sculpture initiative, it has also found itself in an awkward political spot, having to grin and bear the clueless nonsense that passes for cultural policy for fear of reprisals from the city's leadership.

Over the past few years, the arts community has managed to rally for causes like relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and HIV/AIDS. The time has come for this community to coalesce around its own survival. This won't be easy. It will fly in the face of long and habitual practice that has understandably defined self-interest in the most one-sided terms: my building, my budget, my audience. But if the arts here are to amount to anything more than discrete attractions the city uses to sweeten its pitch to conventioneers, this kind of thinking must be overcome in favor of a more wholistic vision. There needs to be less emphasis on community and more on the idea of alliance.

To be powerless in an environment where power is the defining force is a terrible thing. This, sadly, is where the Indianapolis arts scene finds itself. Politicians have been able to treat cultural policy here with cavalier indifference, believing they can do so without danger of losing support. It is now up to our creative class to organize and find ways to resist this foreclosure on the city's future.