I've been thinking about the people who decide which works of art you and I get to see. I'm talking about films books music art video dance sculpture performance TV. Who are these people? And how do they decide which art gets exposed and which art stays hidden?
Although these decision makers come in all forms such as producers directors managers owners financial partners (as well as the "significant others" of all those above), I shall use the term Curator to represent the person, usually a white male over 40, who in effect acts as the gatekeeper for the art of our culture.
You might think the marketplace rules, and the most commercially successful endeavors will survive and thrive, constituting a collective "good," while the remaining "bad" works founder and cease to exist. The very "best" become masterpieces, revered for generations, taught in the classrooms to young children and entering the cultural landscape as popular mythology.
Or maybe you cynically assume that all these artistic decisions are driven by market research, designed to uncover the works of art which represent our hidden dreams, goals and collective aspirations. As I was taught in marketing school, if we ask enough of the right questions to a large enough sample of a representative group, we can create artistic programs which relate to a mass audience.
Possibly you have it in your head that these curators are simply geniuses, that they went to the right schools, drank the right wine, and hobnobbed with the right folks so they can't help but have what Elvis Costello has called "a tight grip on the short hairs of the public imagination."
Well, I might suggest that its probably a little bit of each, involving some romantically artistic soul-searching by our Curator (often inspired by a third vodka on the rocks), with some cursory market research thrown in (usually constructed to justify the Curator's opinion rather than to really ask people what they want), and tempered, of course, with full acknowledgement of the market feasibility of the project in question. But eventually, the Curator gets his way, and that's what we get to look at. Or hear. Or read. Or dance to.
But I would suggest that the days of the Curator are numbered. Audiences are too used to getting what they want. And as they learn to intelligently select from more and more choices in music television art dance theatre books, they are deciding on their own definitions of "quality." Rather than pay the going rate, they are developing their own notions of value, waiting for a $40 million dollar movie to become a rentable $1.50 video, or insisting on pyrotechnics and visible production values when they do splurge on overpriced tickets.
Funders, too, are getting quite specific about what types of returns they expect on their investments in art. The "angels" who used to back theatrical productions for the love of the craft have given way to market driven professionals in all art fields who insist on an art industry based on good business decisions. Bankable talent are matched up with an entire industry of editors, producers, marketers and artistic directors who know how to hone good art into art that will sell. The financier is rarely interested in renaissance women or men who wish to present their work free of the commercially successful formulas that guarantee market acceptance.
Artists, unfortunately, are left to their own devices and inevitably feel they must conform to industry standards if they have any hope of earning a living at their art. They should realize that a majority of living, working artists do not earn a living at it, and maybe they shouldn't try to turn their talents into dollars. It seems to me that once that starts to happen, not only do the artists begin doing work that they are not passionate about, but they still don't end up making much money. You know, if you're going to sell out, at least get paid for it.
For all these reasons, the era of the Curator is over. The days of the white, middle class male wracking his college-educated brain to gather the best and brightest of all time to collect in a temple of art for display on a pedastal, and expecting media audiences funders supporters and artists to come crawling to his self -created artistic mecca are soon to be discredited for good. Each person will demand a value of art as seen from their own perspective. And if the art form hopes to retain the support of these constituencies, it must take the opinions of all their supporters into account.
Although art-by-committee may have a bad reputation, the successful artistic movement will have as its artistic director a body of decision makers who represent the constituencies that support the endeavor. This body would include the audiences who ultimately purchase or consume the art, the funders who make financial decisions about which projects go thru and which fail, the media, critics, educators and interpretors who bring a wider dialogue and attention to the art, artists who are involved in creating the art form, and arts professionals who can advise on logistics and technical considerations. Only this type of an enlightened policy team will have the moral and economic strength to make decisions that are educated, economically sound, and artistically inspiring. This band of passionate, involved individuals are committed to the long term success of the movement, and the constituencies they represent will tend to support their decisions, since they will be invested in the process.
The Curator is dead. The band is about to begin.
Thomas Mulready
Festival Director, Cleveland Performance Art Festival
Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, September 1993
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