Cultural Democracy: The Arts, Community, and the Public Purpose

Appreciation

Appreciation This book reflects the prolonged engagement of hundreds of artists, community activists, nonprofit administrators, foundation directors, and scholars in an ongoing experiment in making culture meaningful for ordinary citizens. Any lesson that I’ve presented in these pages was gained through the work that I have shared with all of these collaborators. My energetic and thoughtful partners have taken a handful of ideas cooked-up over a couple cups of coffee, and through their commitment, spirit, and artistry turned them into reality. Their partnerships have provided the most continually surprising and satisfying moments of my career in public culture, and their contributions to this text are manifest. To all of you, thank you! And I look forward with pleasure to continuing the conversation. The Center for Cultural Exchange has been my employer for nineteen years, during which all of the ideas presented here were tested. I am indebted to the Center and its Board of Directors for their experimental approach to the fulfillment of our mission, a pervasive attitude that has allowed staff to pursue many projects that must have occasionally raised eyebrows. This book could not have been written without an extended Audience at a gospel performance. Photo by Tonee Harbert. x / Appreciation leave of absence that the board granted to me in the winter and spring of 2002, and for which I remain extremely grateful. Portions of this book are extracted and modified from several previous publications, and I thank all of the original publishers. Several quotations in the text are drawn from interviews that I conducted with cultural leaders or from our recollected discussions. For their candid comments and permission to use this material, I thank Guy Bouchard, fiddler extraordinaire; Robert Browning, executive director of the World Music Institute; Hal Cannon, founding director of the Western Folklife Center; Dudley Cocke, artistic director of Roadside Theater at Appalshop; Burt Feintuch, director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of New Hampshire; Dan Sheehy, former director of the Traditional Arts Program at the National Endowment for the Arts and currently director of Smithsonian Folkways ; Nick Spitzer, former producer of the Folk Masters Series at Wolf Trap and Carnegie Hall and current host of American Routes on Public Radio International; Juan Tejeda, former Xicano music director at the Guadeloupe Cultural Arts Center; Jeff Titon, director of the Ethnomusicology Program at Brown University; and Joe Wilson, executive director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts. Photographers whose work appears in these pages include Tonee Harbert , Phyllis O’Neill, Jim Daniels, and Rosemary Siciliano. I deeply appreciate their permission to use their work in this book. Thank you to James Clifford, and to the Rand Corporation of Santa Monica, California, for permitting use of their figures. Several colleagues have taken the time to reflect on portions of this manuscript during its long gestation. I especially thank Holly Sidford, Adrienne Southgate, Tom Borrup, and Erica Quinn-Easter for their penetrating suggestions, corrections, and encouragement. David Locke at Tufts University offered a careful critique of early drafts of several chapters. Judy McCulloh, my editor at the University of Illinois Press, was enormously helpful, both in her critique of the work and in her steady guidance of my passage through the system of publication. The contributions of copy editor Angela Burton and designer Dennis Roberts are present on every page. I owe them an enormous debt of gratitude: thank you! For twenty years, Phyllis O’Neill has been my professional partner. Our journey of discovery in the field of community culture has been, from the outset, a joint endeavor. Our work has been so densely collaborative that it is impossible to lay personal claim to any part of it. Phyllis’s insights and intelligence have shaped every aspect of the Center for Cultural Ex- Appreciation / xi change’s programs; indeed, the Center owes its existence to her vision and persistence. If there is some wisdom in these pages, she deserves the lioness ’s share of the credit; the errors and omissions are all mine. Phyllis O’Neill is also an incisive and insightful editor. Her many thoughtful questions have shaped virtually every page of this manuscript, and I am grateful for her willingness to risk confrontations with a crabby author. Phyllis is also my spouse, and I thank her, and our children, Hannah and Guthrie, for their forbearance during the writing of this book. Their patience in dealing with...