Living an artistic life in America means dealing with a near-inescapable issue: an awful lot of people consider artistic professions a sort of second-class occupation, something too nebulous and unseemly to be a part of the ascendant world of business and commerce. Unless, that is, you "make it," at which point you will be welcomed into polite society, even admired for your talents. It's a maddening duplicity.
It comes as little surprise, then, that when times are tough, those holding the financial saw tend to see artistic organizations as a sidecar to be cut loose. UMass-Amherst, in just such a move, recently announced that New World Theater, in its 30th year of "produc[ing] and present[ing] innovative, contemporary theater by artists of color," will no longer receive support or space from the university. The move will save UMass $116,000, Fine Arts Center Director Willie Hill told the Daily Hampshire Gazette. (A large portion of New World Theater's operating costs, however, come from sources such as grants.)
The announcement has been followed by the kind of responses one would expect in the Valley, primarily outrage and organizing (there's even a Facebook group following the effort of members of the community to reverse UMass' decision).
New World Theater Artistic Director Andrea Assaf, however, is not a part of that effort. She has been told not to be. "I have a directive not to participate in any campaign to reverse the decision from the Fine Arts Center," Assaf said in a recent interview.
"There are no concrete plans [for the future] yet. There's a conversation in progress," says Assaf. "Dr. Hill's original announcement included the intention to have a 'period of planning' about how New World Theater can re-emerge. Community members are asking, 'When does this planning begin?' That's one conversation, and another is, if it becomes clear that it's financially impossible for the Fine Arts Center to be the institutional host, is there another department or the Five-College Consortium that can?"
The theater has, like many organizations artistic and otherwise, not fared well recently, falling victim to a campus-wide hiring freeze that left vacancies unfilled. A campus-wide freeze, clearly, doesn't discriminate against the arts. But UMass' recent decision regarding the theater points to the larger phenomenon: the arts are still relegated to second-class pursuit in America, something to get done when we can afford it.
"It's a question of cultural and political priority. As a nation, in the U.S., we're not very good at understanding the true impact and value of the arts," says Assaf. "Decisionmakers don't always prioritize it because there isn't that broader view of what the arts actually do in terms of education and learning, in terms of community building, and even in terms of the economy."
The good news is that our region does recognize the "creative economy" to a greater extent than most places, as evidenced by efforts like the New England Foundation for the Arts' Culture Count, a database of the impact of arts organizations in concrete financial terms.
Assaf puts a finer point on New World Theater's version of that economy: "The [UMass-Amherst] chancellor says that he really values research—that implies scientific research. New World Theater does research—developing and supporting the emerging aesthetics of U.S. cultural production. … We research and develop new methodologies in culture and communications. We work in very, very interdisciplinary ways."
There is no easy answer to an ingrained cultural response that comes from outside the artistic community. There is hope for change, even in the midst of a battered economy, but it's a tough slog. Assaf points to current national efforts like the National Performing Arts Convention, a gathering of arts professionals (and others) which recently articulated recommendations to the Obama administration regarding "cultural policy."
"The Obama administration, to their credit, has really listened," says Assaf. "It's the first one in my lifetime—if not ever—to host actual conversations at the White House with arts leaders from across the country. That there were recovery funds directly targeted for the arts is really significant. I think Obama is sending a message that this administration really gets why the arts are important."
Obama may not be everything a civil libertarian could hope for with his repeated embrace of odious Bush policies regarding detention and secrecy, but if he gets the arts, well, that's some consolation.
You can join the effort to keep New World Theater alive online at the Facebook group "Save New World Theater."
