Follow the Money?: Location, Community, and Artist Funding

Last year I had a discussion with a colleague administrating an independent arts funding organization, one which funds artists "based" in the New York City metropolitan area. I wasn't being considered for a grant, but the question of whether I am a "New York-based artist" nagged at me, picking at the many layers of my identity. In our peripatetic times, when many of us are forced to relocate for paying work, this policy, which is hardly unique, raises some questions.

Yet before asking them, we might wonder about arts funding policies in general. Should "policies" even exist? Should an arts funder have a philosophy, an agenda, beyond that of funding an artist's already proven vision? Are policies concrete supports, or barriers erected out of discomfort with the abstractions of an "artist's vision?" Who, or what, should be doing the envisioning? Any artist who lived through the early 1990s in the U.S. recalls that the National Endowment for the Arts had thrust upon it (by politicians) the responsibility to nudge certain kinds of work along, often with the stipulation that projects funded carry the "community" modifier; "and could you please make sure it appeals to the kids, their parents, their senators, their pastors, and their community?" These policies promoted art that was to be anti-elitist, "responsive," and proactive (yet "responsible," i.e., not too active). Ideally, the policies foisted upon the art and culture agencies would also take some of the heat off of them. Artists were assigned those messy issues so carefully avoided by our society and its institutions, and were expected to address the small communities that would, in all other ways, continue to be underfunded and ignored. Artists themselves were not considered a community deserving of funding; they had to join hands with an officially legitimized (and politically demanding) "Community" if they wanted respect and money. The artist was expected to be the amplification system for particular concerns and constituents, no longer indulging in the excesses allowed the individual voice. Thus, in 1995, the NEA eliminated almost all of its fellowships.

Just what is community, and is responding to it always a good thing? Is the fact that something is viewed as "community-based" inherently virtuous? Is accurately reflecting one's society or "giving back" to the community necessarily good? What happens if the values of that community are bigoted or murderous? Hugh Culick, in "What Happened to Cultural Critique?" uses Leni Riefenstahl as a particularly extreme case (2005). Extreme, yes, but he's got a point. What should matter is the actual work emerging from a community base, and that work's affects and effects.

Are funders responding to the needs of creators, or to the visions of the funder? And where are the needs of this difficult-to-pin-down entity, "the community," located? Can the community's artistic needs be met only by one who lives among them? Should "the community" (defined by the fun-der) always decide who shall come among them? Or is that iconic figure, the itinerant preacher, more effective because he (and now she) is, in fact, impermanent, shifting, soon to move on to another gig? The Urban Institute's "Investing in Creativity" study of arts funding begun in 2000 suggests that the common perception among artists is that the funders are driving the bus, but in fact 60 percent of funds are "unrestricted"; they can be used as the recipient determines (2002:49). Still, that leaves 40 percent restricted to the goals that the funder has set.

I don't advocate ending regionally based projects and institutional support for the arts. All arts funding should be increased. A recent national study indicated that many artists prefer locally based funding schemes, as they usually have a smaller pool of applicants:

Such programs are perceived as less competitive and more accessible, as artists are more likely to have connections to their local and state arts agencies or other organizations administering local awards than to organizations working at the national level or in places that are far away. The number of locally focused...