Arts
arts marilyn cristofori Can we imagine Hawai‘i without the arts? We would be living in a nonsensical , internally gray environment, with sounds of cars and jackhammers. Yet we are constantly challenged to make a case for keeping the arts at the core of our society. Yes, we are blessed with an extraordinary natural environment that deserves honor and protection, but the arts are a necessary part of healthy surroundings in our future. There are many wise kumu and küpuna who speak eloquently about Hawaiian culture—how it is integral to life in Hawai‘i, central to its history, and essential for the survival of this place. Here I will focus on the arts in Hawai‘i since statehood: how we have mirrored and moved in parallel with national developments, and how the state has been a recognized arts leader. The arts refer to music, dance, theater, sculpture, painting, literature, film, poetry, and other aesthetic disciplines that spring from our human imagination and creativity. These disciplines emerge from the life forces of movement, sound, smell, sight (observation), insight, and intuition. As humans, we arrange these elements in ways that appeal to our senses and emotions. We have all experienced that some truths can only be communicated through songs, stories, images, and movement. The arts are born from the cultures of people and their surrounding environment . As many new populations came to Hawai‘i for a variety of economic and other reasons, they brought with them arts from their civilizations . These unique arts have been treasured and integrated into our lives so that we enjoy a rich vein of diverse arts, rare within other states. This unusual, well-defined diversity is among the distinctions that make Hawai‘i a prime national example. During the 1950s, there were serious conversations about the establishment of a national arts agency. Many of our state leaders were in close touch with those on the national scene, and in 1965 both the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and our own Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts (HSFCA) were established. President John F. Kennedy was the 150 The Value of Hawai‘i inspirational voice who spoke for the creation of the NEA and a national arts center. He often stated that the arts “are a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.” After his 1963 assassination, both the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and our own Kennedy Theatre at the University of Hawai‘i at Mänoa (UHM) were named in his honor. National policies greatly influence our state, so it is important to note what the NEA’s founding language asserts: The practice of arts . . . requires constant dedication and devotion. . . . [W]hile no government can call a great artist . . . into existence, it is necessary and appropriate to help create and sustain . . . a climate encouraging freedom of thought . . . imagination, and . . . the material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent.1 A central function of the NEA is the Federal State Partnership, which allocates 40 percent of its funding to the states. HSFCA received one of the first eleven NEA grants. Since initially these funds were distributed equally, Hawai‘i received the same amount as other states—in 1968, $39,383 to California , and $39,383 to Hawai‘i—remarkable considering Hawai‘i’s much smaller population. In 1967, Hawai‘i passed the first law in the nation to designate one percent of construction costs of new State buildings for the acquisition of works of art. This Art in Public Places (APP) program has greatly strengthened the HSFCA’s influence upon the field of visual arts, and subsequently, many other states have passed similar laws. The NEA has helped transform the cultural landscape of the nation, with the number of artists tripling over the last four decades. By 2000, there were a total of 1.9 million artists in the nation. Even though most (27 percent) lived in California or New York, Hawai‘i still ranked fourth in artists as a share of its workforce behind only Washington, D.C, New York, and California. This is another example of Hawai‘i leadership in the arts. The arts are critical to our economy through public programs and private nonprofits—corporations formed to help meet critical needs that cannot be supported by the commercial marketplace. Nonprofit corporations receive income from public (government) funds as well as private donations. Hawai‘i has several hundred nonprofit arts organizations, all depending on...
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