The Arts of Democracy: Art, Public Culture, and the State (review)

What is the role of the arts in promoting a democratic culture? The Arts of Democracy, which originated in a conference at the Woodrow Wilson Center, attempts to answer that question in a dozen essays on subjects relating to the competing claims of "the public" and the free expression of individuals and communities. Editor Blake would like to see the volume affirming "on balance … the notion of a democratic public sphere as a regulative ideal and a resource for political criticism," (3) but the collection itself demonstrates the real contradictions and tensions in the practice of public art, which emerges, inevitably, as a contested zone. The term itself—"the public"—is anything but simple, and what is in one instance idealized as the shared democracy of the "public sphere" can also, in other circumstances, be seen as a beast fed and nurtured by the media and the state, as when considerations of public interest (e.g., the preservation of aesthetic integrity) are used to repress freedom of speech in places such as the Washington Mall (see Leslie Prosterman's essay).

The concept of "public art" is equally complex. Thus, Michele Bogart reads Norman Rockwell as a great "public artist," by reason of his giving the public what it wanted. That point is implicitly countered by Casey Blake's examination of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which celebrates the liberal-modernist project (from 1969 to 1989) of giving the public, not what it wanted but what it needed—namely, great works of sculpture in public spaces. The dismantling of Serra's Tilted Arc signaled the turn away from that policy, and Blake decries the current popularity of neo-patriotic public sculpture (NEA running as far away from Mapplethorpe and Serrano as it can go). More controversially he argues that the "community arts movement" achieves local participation, but "at the cost of any aspiration to a cosmopolitan, democratic culture for the nation as a whole." (214)

The history of the NEA is also central to Michael Kammen's essay, "Culture and the State," which compares it to the National Endowment for the Humanities, with its increasingly emphasized state-based dissemination programs. Kammen argues importantly for what he calls "cultural federalism," government support for the arts and humanities based on collaboration rather than the earlier New Deal model, with its top-down supply of the arts to the passively consuming public.

Standing somewhat apart from these historical studies is the more theoretical argument of Kenneth Cmiel, who holds that we must not confuse the whimsy of postmodernist art with the everyday need to create order and coherence in our lives; instead, we must separate the public sphere from the aesthetic, for otherwise we perpetuate the disconnect between politics and people. Other chapters can only be noted: Neil Harris (on music festivals), Vera L. Zolberg (comparing France and America), Laura A. Belmonte (art as Cold War propaganda), Penny M. Von Eschen (on Duke Ellington as cultural ambassador) Donna M. Binkiewicz (on the NEA), Paul DiMaggio and Bethany Bryson (on public attitudes toward the arts), and Sally M. Promey (on public display of religion). Covering the period from the late nineteenth century to the recent past, The Arts of Democracy is illustrated (basic B & W) and would be a valuable resource for interdisciplinary courses in Public Art, Public Space, and Public History.