In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

225 Purpose 11. To examine the policies of governmental agencies, corporations, foundations, and other relevant groups with regard to the arts and to lend or withhold the support of the Association wherever its basic interests are involved. How does a professional organization with a politically diverse, geographically diffuse, and temperamentally challenging membership actively work to address the concerns of competing constituencies? Certainly, institutional labyrinths are part of the maneuverings of all such organizations , where Robert’s Rules of Order heroically push the proceedings beyond posturing and protecting territory. With the College Art Association it is that middle word in its name that has provided the colorful fireworks in its history of advocacy. The organization has repeatedly soul-searched regarding its mission and whom it serves, has considered a name change numerous times, and has mediated countless disagreements between artists, art teachers, art historians, university administrators, and arts administrators. But throughout its political life as an advocacy organization there have been certain basic principles at play in the association’s deliberations and actions: the protection of the sites and objects of cultural significance, the importance of rigorous, high-quality arts education , the centrality of safeguarding intellectual and creative freedom, and the need to take a progressive stance on any issue where civil rights are at stake. The result is a history of navigating the murky waters between art and politics , sometimes timidly testing them, other times plunging into the deep end. The history of CAA is a microcosm of the century’s upheavals, its genocides and 12 CAA Advocacy The Nexus of Art and Politics karen j. leader 226 ∏ Karen J. Leader cataclysms, its triumphs and social transformations. The story is not told in successes or failures, but in negotiations, resolutions, actions. This chapter, through select case studies, will examine how a learned society like CAA advocates for the rights, needs, and demands of its membership, and for the greater goals for which the humanities exist. The most controversial are the most revealing, and demonstrate how hard it is, even with the best intentions, to make the world an even slightly better place. From its founding, the organization’s primary focus has been to promote quality arts education, and to increase awareness and appreciation for art in the United States. Its earliest interventions into politics promoted this purpose above all, and its most successful programs have stemmed from the principle that art, and the humanities more generally, play a fundamental role in the functioning of a democratic society. Two examples from the organization’s early years show which directions into the political realm such a core standard might lead. The first, covered in more depth elsewhere in this volume, indicates the role that art was to play in the Depression-era programs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt ’s New Deal. An early transcription of CAA’s board of directors activity, dated 1933 (there are no substantive minutes before 1930), records a local initiative undertaken with New York’s Emergency Relief Bureau to provide work for artists restoring church decorations and painting murals.1 This type of project would be codified in the Federal Art Project beginning in 1935, but the early date of CAA’s involvement demonstrates a response that put artists to work and offered more art to the public. It seems, though, that the board of directors was split over the need for social action. An interview of Mildred Constantine about the development of New Deal arts projects reveals details about the internal battles that she describes as including “overtones of class objection, overtones of political objection, overtones of religious objection.” The energies of Executive Secretary Audrey McMahon were the driving force for moving the organization toward action.2 The second, appearing in the early years of World War II, shows the potential for the participation of the arts in the war effort. CAA, in conjunction with the American Federation of Arts, organized art exhibitions and provided participatory resources, such as studios, supplies, and darkrooms to the army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to raise the morale of soldiers. A report to the U.S. Office of Education, Wartime Commission stated: “The arts, indeed, can demonstrate to soldiers and workers the essential values of all culture—of what they are fighting and working to preserve.”3 Whether the program was a success is unclear, and exactly how that could be determined is an open question. The underlying premise of the quote, though, would be an appropriate...

Share