Bill Ivey
Info 312-855-3105, artsalliance.org
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According to Ivey’s paper, “America Needs a New System for Supporting the Arts,” which appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that rotten feeling in his gut was brought on by the “disconnect” between the NEA, which concentrated on moneygrubbing for nonprofits, and the reality of the larger arts world, which was being transformed by the influence of big business on government policies. While broadcast stations were being consolidated and copyright terms were being extended by 20 years, Ivey says, the cultural community fiddled as Rome burned, narrowly focusing on nonprofits and overlooking the “interventions that were really shifting our cultural landscape.” He’s come to the conclusion that the system by which we’ve promoted the arts in this country for the last half century–the very system that was once his charge–has run its course. Illinois’ nonprofit leaders are showing up for a meeting at which they’ll likely be told their game is obsolete.
Ivey, an ethnomusicologist, teacher, and writer, ran the nonprofit Country Music Foundation for 25 years before his appointment to the NEA, but his discomfort with the nonprofit sector (which he characterizes as isolated and arrogant) isn’t surprising. During his years at the CMF he was immersed in the business end of the music industry, working closely with professional songwriters and musicians. His stint with the NEA came after a decade of conservative assaults had successfully tamed and nearly destroyed the once cutting-edge agency. The days of funding Serrano’s Piss Christ, Mapplethorpe’s erotic nudes, or the work of any individual artist, for that matter, were over.
When Ivey tries to suggest what might come next, however, it reads a little like a page from the old playbook. We need to “draw a bigger, more-inclusive map of America’s arts system, redefine the public interest in relation to the arts,” and partner nonprofits with funders, government, and industry. He also foresees a future in which for-profit arts entities would compete with nonprofits for foundation money–a scenario in which it’s hard to imagine nonprofits prevailing. On the other hand, in a more recent Chronicle paper, “Cultural Renaissance or Cultural Divide?” (published in May), Ivey and coauthor Steven J. Tepper suggest that after a century of professionalization, the arts are poised to return to a do-it-yourself model. Then, they say, art will once again be something the public (at least the privileged public) practices rather than merely supports. If Ivey’s right in either case, there’s radical change ahead for the IAA and most of its members.
