Joanne Kozberg : Can the Arts Really Unite an Increasingly Diverse City?

Question: In a time of shrinking government budgets, how does one justify spending public money on the arts, when so many other needs are unmet?

Answer: I recognize there are serious choices and a number of very important programs are being adversely affected by the economic situation we find ourselves in. But I believe the arts are part of the solution to our problems; they are not part of the problem. If we utilize the arts properly, we can help the state deal with a number of the problems it’s facing today. For example, communication of our cultural diversity. I think the arts are a tremendous tool in communicating the positive nature of the tremendous diversity that we have in our state.

It’s also a very important economic development tool. If you think of the arts in terms of tourism worldwide, there is a link between tourism and the arts, between the arts and revitalization. Look at Venice Beach. That was an area totally forsaken by the commercial sector. But the artists went in and revitalized that area, so much so that the real-estate values there have just skyrocketed. A similar thing happened in New York, in Soho. Artists are economic loss-leaders.

Q: But in both these cases, it was independent artists, working primarily Steve Proffitt is a producer for Fox News and a contributor to National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”

without government funds, who made things happen. What about a case where government money for the arts actually spurred economic development?

A: The Music Center is a perfect example of government enabling a situation. We find that government can often do that--and it doesn’t take enormous amounts of dollars. It’s government helping make an opportunity happen. What you saw in the Music Center, just like in New York’s Lincoln Center, is government land utilized, but the dollars that built those buildings were private dollars. That partnership between the public and private sectors, the collaboration, made some real redevelopment happen--in one case, the Bunker Hill area of downtown L.A., in the other, the Upper Westside of New York. Those redevelopments drove enormous tax dollars into the public coffers.

Now, tourism. Think of what you do when you go to New York, or Paris, or Milan. You really utilize the arts. You are multiplying dollars that go into the public coffers there. The public money we spend on the arts in California are catalytic dollars. We can provide an imprimatur for the private funders--they know we have a peer review of all arts projects, and that there is an accountability to our process. Last year, our $13 million dollars in state arts funds catalyzed another $23 million in private support.

Q: The creation of the Music Center succeeded in bringing together the downtown community and the Hollywood community. How do you do something like that today, when you have a far more diverse cultural climate in Los Angeles? Is there a similar sort of arts structure that could bring together cultural groups kept apart in the city?

A: I think you found after the riots that the arts went in as a tremendous tool for rebuilding communication and self-esteem in a community that was very badly devastated. The arts are a very viable tool for bridging the differences between ourselves. One thing that I’ve seen are a number of interesting collaborations. Because there is no fat in our arts organizations now, we’ve broken down turf.

People are willing to try things they never thought of trying before. The lean times have led to innovation. The arts are well-suited to that, because what is our capital? It’s creativity.

Q: Are there any specific arts programs you can point to which really seemed to work--which helped heal the community after the riots?

A: The California Arts Council took a program that was already in existence, our artists-in-residence program, and we quickly put 30 artists in 30 community locations. It was very successful--so successful that we are trying every way we can to keep it going. As these artists went into the different sites, working with people, you could actually see the building of self-esteem, of communication. I remember one project--it was a mural--and you could just actually see the flowering in the children. We want to continue this, going into the housing projects like Jordan Downs and Nickerson Gardens. We may have cut back our funds, but we have strengthened our commitment. We are trying to make our dollars work harder and smarter for an increasingly diverse population.

Q: Funding for the California Arts Council is just under $13 million a year--how does that compare with other states?

A: California is 50th out of 56 states and territories--it works out to about 42 cents per person. We’ve seen a total eradication of arts education in this state since 1978. Very valid, very tough choices were made. But for a number of young people, art may be the only thing that keeps them in school--art touching them somewhere.

Q: But California is a state identified with creativity--entertainment, which is art-related, whole schools of painting, architects, designers. Why are we so stingy with our public dollars when it comes to the arts?

A: There are a number of serious and critical issues we are facing, but I think what would benefit the citizens is that when they look at the arts, see that it is a major industry. We have 250,000 artists in California, more than any other state in the Union. We have the entertainment industry--and there is a strong nexus between art and entertainment. Architecture, publishing, graphic and industrial design--all these are California’s franchise. We really are a state of the arts. It would be very shortsighted of us not to realize that the not-for-profit arts really do fuel the for-profit arts. The musician who plays with the symphony at night works in the daytime as a studio musician. The animator is an artist first.

When I first took this job, there was a man named Jeff Berg, who is the head of the talent agency ICM, who told me how important he thought the not-for-profit arts were. He explained to me about how important it is to create the correct environment, how every state in the Union is trying to woo the entertainment industry, and how critical maintaining our talent pool is to making California remain the home of that industry.

Q: What do you say to someone who asks why Los Angeles needs a symphony orchestra when that money could be used for affordable housing or job training?

A: You have to ask what are the arts really about, and the answer is that they are the legacy of our society. Music is a very civilizing and elevating influence on our lives.

Q: But there is a large sector of the city for whom the symphony is irrelevant. It’s no secret that if you go to the symphony, the audience is in no way reflective of the population of Los Angeles. Is it an anachronism in the Los Angeles of the ‘90s?

A: I think the symphony in our minds may not have relevance to someone else, but why are we assuming that? We once presented a piece by the composer John Adams in a symphony program for children, and these children sat through this John Adams piece, which the adults were really struggling with. The kids were an incredible audience. They didn’t move. They loved it. And then they went out onto the plaza at the Music Center and danced to this music that to an adult may not have a rhythm. But the kids were doing beautifully. So it’s like--let’s stop telling children what is appropriate. Let’s let them enjoy it.

The symphony and the opera are both very aware that to build audiences they have to educate and go into new communities and build their future audiences. I think they have been very flexible and responsive to a diverse need. They are bridging exceedingly well into the various communities within the city.

Arts organizations are all struggling to find audiences. They are highly sensitive to the fact that the young people are a majority of minorities. They have got to expand their base in order to have a future in Los Angeles.

Q: There is a lot of talk in both business and government about a change in the way organizations are run. There is a feeling that the old, top-down style of management is no longer effective, and new leaders must be consensus-builders. For years, the art world has been run in the old way, by a group of powerful people who pretty much decided what would happen. Is that also beginning to change?

A: Absolutely. No one has the resources any more to be isolated. We must, out of necessity, collaborate. It is definitely through consensus that the arts in this state and this city have evolved. And it’s hard, because you are asking a number of established organizations to share limited resources and, at the same time, make room for others. We are in a period of palpable change. Look at our political institutions, our cultural institutions. I don’t know what the future will bring, but it will not be what we are living with today.

Q: This brings us to one of the buzzwords of art in the ‘90s: multiculturalism. What does that term mean to you, and what are you doing to broaden the base of what is considered art?

A: To me, multiculturalism means total inclusion. It means cultural equity, and it is at the very core of what we are about. We have an entry program for arts organizations that are just establishing themselves. We have a multicultural advancement program, which works with young arts organizations to help them advance their administrative and artistic capacity so that they can move to the next level. Many of these groups are very fragile, because they are so thinly staffed. They need to get either more staff, or more highly developed staff, to help them compete for grants, and for audiences.

Once I appeared at a budget subcommittee hearing, and Maxine Waters was the chair. She was expressing her impatience with the dearth of dollars that actually reached into the smaller, community-based arts organization. And she said, “We don’t want large institutions bringing their art into the community; we can create our own art.” For me, that was something I internalized and thought a lot about. She really taught me a lot, and she helped us position the arts council to deal with the future.

There is no state like California. Nothing compares to our demographics. We are so far ahead of the rest of the United States in terms of building a future of multiculturalism. I think the arts organizations are in the forefront of responding to and celebrating the change. That’s what art is about.