If there's been a focus of media attention on any one federal cabinet minister it's been on Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and with, I think, good justification. Flaherty has been criss-crossing the country meeting with this group and that as he prepares to deliver a budget which will send the country deep into deficit but, everyone hopes, have the benefit of preventing the worst ravages of a recession from being visited upon Canada.
But another minister has also had a very busy 2009 so far. Heritage Minister James Moore has been very active trying to prove that, contrary to some popularly held beliefs, the federal Conservatives really do like art and culture and are ready to back up that love with some federal funds.
Since Jan. 1, Minister Moore has made six announcements handing out a total of $286,074 to arts and cultural groups. Today, it was Nova Scotia's turn to benefit with $62,500 for the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, $100,000 for the Jazz East Rising Association, and $61,000 to the Scotia Chamber Players.
Moore has also made a point of visiting some cultural institutions that were at the epicentre of the Tories political troubles in the last election with the cultural sector. Since the Minister Moore, last week, visited the National Theatre School and the Musée d'art contemporain in Montreal and then touched down in Toronto to visit the Ontario Art Gallery, and the Wychwood Barns project of Toronto Artscape, a non-profit group artists find space to work. Moore immediately set about improving the Conservatives' visibility in key arts communities as soon as he became minister. There was this interview, for example, with Montreal's La Presse almost as soon as he took office.
Moore did not announce any new funding for Toronto Artscape when he toured Wychwood Barns but the press release accompanying that event certainly pointed out that Ottawa had kicked in $2.25 million towards that project. And when he visted the Musée d'art Contemporain last week, the release, while it did not tally up federal financial support for that institution, there was this not insignificant line in the release: “The Government of Canada has been a financial partner of Montreal's Musée d'art contemporain for several years, recognizing that the arts and culture are essential to our society, our identity, and our economy.”
The Tories troubles with the arts community first flared up back in August when we were the first to report that the feds were cancelling a relatively small program called PromArt which helped send Canadian arts and cultural workers overseas to promote their work. Part of the reason for the cancellation, as we reported, was because “the program's grant recipients included “a general radical,” “a left-wing and anti-globalization think-tank” and a rock band that uses an expletive as part of its name.”
That rock band, incidentally, was Toronto's Holy Fuck, who went on to become finalists for the Polaris Prize and have generally won substantial critical claim.
Now, while at the Montreal musée, Moore took in an exhibition called Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967, an exhibition which curators says brings together more than 100 works that highlight the close ties between avant-garde art and rock music over the past 40 years.
“Once again, the Musee d'art contemporain is on the cutting edge with Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967, an exhibit that blends innovative art and rock and roll,” Moore said in the release.
So, just to be clear if you want to get funding from the feds: Rolling Stones good, Holy Fuck bad 🙂
It's a common myth that Conservatives don't appreciate the arts, which is completely untrue. Conservatives generally have a great appreciation for the arts. If their tastes lean a little more towards the more traditional and tradition preserving types, well, they can hardly be faulted for that. Art is art afterall right? Just because one chooses to fund and support some areas and not others, doesn't make them art haters right?
It's things like this that I have trouble, if you will…..swallowing.
Granted, this artist is “international” but come on…Also, Grace Thrasher, arts promotion co-ordinator for the Canada Council for the Arts, claims that all the funding is peer reviewed before approval, but one really does need to ask the quality and merit of some of these “peers” and how easily they may be “art fleeced” by those seeking funding.
I myself have a great appreciation of the arts. Yes, they are more traditional and classical in nature, but I certainly do appreciate Canadian art and artists. What I can't appreciate is when I feel that someone has pulled a fast-one on people who are perhaps a little too eager to promote Canadians in the arts.
Anyone clever enough can whip some grand philosophy together, tie it to some “thing” they make, wax poetic about it and with enough fast talk, can live off of government funding for the rest of their lives under the title “Artist”. The faster they talk and the more people they convince to grant them exposure, the easier it is to “art fleece” others.
As a former art student, I can tell you this: no truly great advancement in the arts has ever been achieved through pleasing the 'conservatives' of the time. From Mozart to Van Gogh to Stravinsky to Pollack, artists are almost always derided before they are praised, and even then often not until long after their deaths.
In the past, artists were supported by wealthy patrons. Those patrons generously subsidized their artists' creative impulses in return for the occasional conventional family portrait or musical homage.
Today, wealthy patrons are few and far between, and the masses are far more demanding. But do we really want all visual and performing arts to go the way of Hollywood and the free market? Or does the public benefit more from the free and open flowering of creativity which, while inevitably unpalatable to the majority, may well be the only hope of breeding the next Da Vinci or Mozart?