Trying to convince us that art has a public value

Panelists at a discussion on “The Public Benefit of Art” at the recent Neighborhood Expo in North Adams recounted various experiences they think show its value.

Mark Smith, of Boston and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, who has been working on projects in Northern Berkshire for several years, moderated the discussion.

“As really a context for the conversation, and sort of the reason that we even need this conversation — ‘what’s the public value of the arts’ — there’s not a session today on what’s the public value of hospitals. There’s not a session today on what is the public value of the police department or the fire department,” Smith said. “But there is a conversation about what is the public value of the arts. And I would say that that’s because there are a lot of folks who have a notion that’s similar to one that was expressed to me once by someone who said…’I don’t understand why it is you’re looking for public support of the arts. The arts as an industry is the only place where you the artist, or the arts institution…expect me to pay you so that you can do what you do, and it’s my job to figure out what you do and if it has any relevance to me.’

” ‘But…it’s really all about the artist and the institution. That’s where the value is. It’s not a public benefit,’ ” Smith remembered. “Obviously, nobody that was invited into this conversation has that assumption, and yet the reason that this conversation even has to exist is [because] that assumption exists.”

Smith asked those present to speak of an experience they have had that demonstrates to them the public value of art.

Caroline Scully, an arts advocate and patron from Adams, spoke of the May Day parade in Minneapolis, Minn.

It “is the most joyful community-based event I think of and is not a traditional representation of art, but it’s a group of adults, kids, schools, lots of community groups that come together and create this beautiful puppet parade with floats, and signs centered on the theme,” she said. “It just is joyful, wonderful. And I think that sort of sums up for me what the public, I would like to think, gets from art, which is a certain sense of joy and freedom and kind of opening of their perspective on the world that they can’t get from their daily ordinary lives.”

Evadne Giannini is a writer and participant in the arts from Lanesborough.

“I would have to say that art is really the only public record we have of civilization. It is the record of civilization,” she said. “And what is the public benefit of art is a very personal thing for me to say that I believe that people become personally empowered when they realize they’re a part of that record. And the only way they become a part of that record is either to be an artist themselves or to see in themselves art, whether it’s baking bread or raising a family or whatever and then to go outside of that realm and look at how other people have recorded their existence here.”

Charlie Toomajian, associate dean for student services and registrar at Williams College spoke of his wonder as a boy of a monument in Troy, N.Y. of an angel on top a huge pillar blowing a horn.

“I remember as a kid wondering what it would be like to be up on top looking down, and then I wondered why the angel was looking up and blowing the horn, and why didn’t the person who did it make her look down, and blow the horn,” he said. “I also couldn’t figure out as a little kid how do you ever do anything like that, how do you make this huge pillar with an angel on top and why.”

A couple of summers ago, he went to the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Toomajian’s then 10-year-old son had the same kind of wonderment at the surrealist paintings.

“He probably spent about 10 minutes, which for a 10-year-old kid is a long time to be concentrating on anything…in front of the Hallucinogenic Toreador, finding all those pictures within the pictures,” he said. “And then he spent another 20 minutes explaining it to me. I mean this really had an impact upon him.

“And this is the sort of thing I think that art can do for us. It can open our minds, force us to think, to dream, to wonder. And art isn’t just in statues or museums. It’s all over,” Toomajian said. “And when [local author] Joe Manning takes kids around in North Adams, and shows them all the little things in the buildings and the gargoyles and so forth, that’s art, too. And those kids come away wondering and thinking.”

Greg Scheckler, a painter and assistant professor of art at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, spoke of taking a bus trip with 35 students to New York City the week before. Most of the students are very enthusiastic, but one student has been very quiet in class for three years.

“Well, when we were at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, he was grinning. He was just stunningly happy, and I was just totally shocked by this,” he said. “He’s the kind of student who would always say things like, ‘well, you know, it’s just art. I don’t really have a culture, I’m just an American.’ “

But at the museum the student said he is a mixture of cultures, Scheckler said.

“He figured out by looking at a variety of different styles and types of artworks that he didn’t have to limit himself. He has an Italian background, and we had just been looking at some works by Leonardo DaVinci,” he said. “So he’s grinning. He’s real happy about that. He said, ‘I’m a little bit Italian. I’m a little bit Leonardo.’

“And then we went to the American wing of the museum, which has all these fabulous realistic landscape paintings from the American frontier. And he said, ‘I’m a little bit American, too,’ ” Scheckler said. “And so he’s getting very very excited about this as he looks at it, and he figures out that this public record that’s there of the artwork is a little bit his — that their inventiveness, that their imagination is something that is part of his background. And so he could identify with that once he realized that it was something that actually really does relate to him no matter how strange it looks.”

In considering what Scheckler described to him as “this really weird artwork, this stuff that we don’t quite understand,” the student said in reply that someone once said that imagination is more important than knowledge.

“And he said, ‘But I think in my case, a little bit of knowledge goes further than imagination. I’ve been trying to imagine this art for a long time,’ ” Scheckler recalled. “As he was looking at this other work, that little bit of knowledge that art [is] made by a person, for other people, for somebody else, so that they can learn a little bit about what other people, maybe in another time or another era were thinking: that was his connection.

“I was just stunned, because he realized that he didn’t have to categorize it, and that there’s many, many cultures,” Scheckler said. “And I think art supports that idea of diversity quite naturally, because it’s such an individual thing when you make it that you can’t help but end up with a lot of diversity in it.”

Erica Varieur is a junior at Drury High School has been involved in a number of public art projects including the Welcome to North Adams mural and the Ashuwillticook Bike Path sculpture project.

“The one thing that made me realize that a lot of people in the community actually liked art and that they’re interested in it, was when we had the opening for everyone to come view the sculptures for the bike path,” she said. “All of the kids that are in it…felt that only a few people would show up like our parents…and all of a sudden we had all these people coming in and taking pictures of all the sculptures. We were giving them tours, and there was…like 50 billion group pictures of all of us together, all these cameras snapping.

“They’re all really interested and they’re going around and comment[ing] on how they like your sculpture and how they thought it was really good. They like how you did this, and they’re really paying attention to it,” Varieur said. “And even some other teenagers are there too, and they were really interested, which surprised me. The impression I get when I’m at school is that a lot of teenagers don’t really care about art.”

Emily Banner is a writer and artistic director for Inkberry, a literary arts organization based in North Adams which holds frequent workshops and literary events.

“We get a lot of students in our workshops who say, ‘Well, you know, when I was younger I really wanted to be a writer, but I had some teacher who told me I was no good, so I haven’t written anything for 20 years,” she said. “And every so often these people are fantastic writers, and everybody has a story to tell, and everybody can benefit from hearing other people’s stories.”

“If literature has a job, it is that it helps us to understand the world we live in, like any other art,” Banner said. “But because words are what we use, it’s a way of articulating our experience and kind of make sense out of it.

“And we see students in our workshops, often people who either have never written before or who have been writing but it never really occurred to them that they could take it seriously…and these people just blossom, and then turn out beautiful work and really gain a lot of confidence in their own voice and the validity of what they have to say.”

Laura Christensen, an artist and educational coordinator at MASS MoCA, gave an example how good art in general can be a part of who we are and include more people than just the artist. She used the example of Robert Wilson’s massive 14 Stations, now on exhibition at the museum. Though based on the story of the crucifixion of Christ, the work departs wildly from the traditional imagery and is influenced by many strands of art and thought.

“Well, there was this group this spring of people from area churches who knew that there was a reference to their story and so they wanted to see if they could use the artwork as a part of their religious practices around Lent,” she said. “And so I was part of the group because I was there to answer questions about the artwork if they had any. And so I watched them sort of try it out in the artwork, and then what was really interesting was this discussion they had afterwards.”

Some people said the artwork was too far removed from the story they are familiar with, some said it was too distracting, others said it was too disturbing.

“But then somebody brought up, ‘Well, isn’t this story that we’re all talking about kind of sad and terrifying and painful anyway?’ ” Christensen said. “And they seemed to kind of agree that actually this artwork brought this one particular story to life in a way that their traditional religious practices had not…in a more direct and emotional way, perhaps.

“So they found something in this artwork that talks to their beliefs and their stories,” she said. “Other people find many other different things in this artwork.”