Arts organizations across the country are facing a genuine crisis, one that has been growing for decades. Attendance has declined while costs have risen. At the same time, shifts in politics and in philanthropy now threaten to deprive organizations of essential revenue. One of us was a board member and donor turned museum director, and the other leads a longtime funder of performing artists and presenting institutions. We came to the arts in different ways and have very different perspectives on the sector. While we are both passionately committed to the power of the arts and recognize the importance of arts funders, we have begun to wonder whether they have failed to keep up with a changing world.
While it’s clear that approaches to cultural production, audience tastes and methods of engagement are in the throes of ongoing evolution, the reality is that most of us continue to support and present arts and culture in ways that have remained largely static for over a century. For visual art and other museums, the dominant approach to presentation has been a large and ever-growing “box.” Inside this box is typically a significant and ongoing investment in the acquisition, storage and maintenance of a permanent collection as well as a set of business and curatorial practices that are sometimes more focused on objects than on the public.
In the performing arts, the story is largely the same. A big “box”—this one with a stage—is focused on filling out a season, often according to dated standards and under the guidance of an artistic director who, like a visual arts curator, wields almost exclusive authority over what counts as worthy art and as worthwhile artistic interpretation.
Too many who fund the arts—including us—have supported these practices, helping organizations enlarge those boxes, endow those positions and fill those basements with objects and stages with shows. The results are often sublime. But the net effect is to reinforce the primacy of practices and norms that now threaten the survival of the very organizations we love, as well as the powerful social mission of the arts.
You can’t change programs without changing practice
Some foundations and donors have recognized the need for something different. They have embraced new visions of artistic production and presentation and invested in the people and institutions willing to adopt them. But they often fail to ensure that those shared ideas—for a more socially or place-conscious art, to take two examples—will persist when their funding runs out.
This is a classic innovation gap. New ideas, even good ones, require sustained support to thrive. This is because cultural barriers are more durable and insidious than barriers to conception. In other words, having a good idea is only half the battle. To keep that idea alive requires a sustained effort and a distinct skillset.
Supporting innovation has to mean supporting innovators
Other funders have supported innovative leaders and institutions seeking to fulfill their missions in exciting new ways, whether with avant-garde programming or mission-related goals like workforce development and off-site community engagement. But when the worm turns and the work is criticized or resisted by traditionalists, other funders and the press, innovators have few places to turn for support.
Like entrepreneurs in legacy industries, innovators in the arts often find themselves attacked, not praised. Existing audiences often don’t want to lose the narrowly defined experience they cherish. Most trustees and donors signed on to preserve and protect the institutional identity they know. Colleagues may fear change. Even the arts press frequently adopts the limiting standards of the fields they cover and review. And leaders who were hired and funded to do exactly this kind of work find themselves isolated, and sometimes without a job.
What can funders do to better support durable innovation?
First, we can assign a higher initial priority to innovation itself (we define innovation as new ideas for serving the public while driving the sustainability of the organization itself). Comparing (and critiquing) new ideas to the status quo imposes an immediate hurdle that most leaders cannot overcome. This is why almost every sector of the nonprofit world has attracted philanthropic support for innovative leaders through award-and-accelerator programs, including Echoing Green, Ashoka and the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation (which supports Remuseum). It’s a model that has rarely, if ever, been applied to the arts.
Second, foundations can give cover to innovators through recognition and acclaim. Even stakeholders who don’t resist change may be hesitant to endorse new, sometimes controversial, approaches for fear of censure. But foundations have the resources and prestige to confer status on the leaders asking the best questions. In a field where status relies, to a great extent, on social approval (and can be lost with one negative headline), foundations can use their own resources to identify the leaders who may shape the future and then give them the resources to try. To take one example, consider how the MacArthur Fellowship (labeled a “Genius Grant” by the public, not by the foundation) provides not just recognition but also validation—and some degree of deserved insulation from critique—to its winners, forever.
Third, foundations and funders can address both the isolation and cost of innovation by enabling individuals and organizations trying new approaches to work together. Mellon Foundation’s “Future of American Theatre Cohort” is a perfect example of this approach. Mellon made grants to five small, regionally based theatre companies to experiment with new programmatic approaches. Along with grants, Mellon supported the organizations in coming together to share resources and insights in a spirit of collaboration with both moral and bottom-line benefits.
This month, we’re launching something intended to apply all three of these insights and examples. The Vanguard combines an award, risk capital, expertise and a community. The program will recognize up to 10 chief executives of cultural institutions each year who have new ideas that center the public in their work. The program will provide $100,000 to each awardee, intended to act as a “carrot” and cover, helping persuade their boards, colleagues and the public that they have a leader worth supporting. Members will also participate in a yearlong accelerator, applying evidence-based practices of disciplined entrepreneurship to help them refine, implement, evaluate and share their ideas.
A premise of this work is that, while institutions are best suited to determine their own missions, they may need support to work in ways as novel, creative and path-breaking as the artists whose work they present. This includes external investment and support to help bring their own stakeholders along. The Vanguard is also meant to grapple with the key paradox of innovation—that while individual ideas may not last, they won’t arise without giving leaders the time, space and resources to think differently.
The power of the arts is the dynamism that comes from an uneasy relationship between past and future. Great arts institutions steward perennial goods not through freezing the status quo but by challenging themselves to be relevant in unconventional ways. This is especially true during times of great public, philanthropic and political transitions, where uncertainty elicits fear and defensiveness but also creates opportunity. It’s time to celebrate and support bold leaders with new ideas for engaging the public with art and ensure that their organizations can outlive us all.
