AN AMERICAN CULTURAL BILL OF RIGHTS
By William Ivey

Bill Ivey, from the NEA website. (Rhoda Baer photo)

About two and a half years ago, a few months after I was sworn in as the seventh chairman of the NEA, I stood behind this podium and spoke of a new beginning for the National Endowment for the Arts and our federal investment in creativity and cultural heritage.

Today, I want to say a few words about how far we have come and talk with you about the foundation - the underpinning - of what I believe can be a more vigorous and broad based commitment to art and art making in America.

When I last spoke to you, I said I wanted the NEA to be "as important to America as the Department of Defense." Every time I use that line, it gets a laugh.

Now, I don't think we've come quite that far. But our Arts Endowment has made real progress during the past three years. We have received our first budget increase since 1992, and that increase was advanced on a bipartisan basis, with strong support in the House, and with Senator Gorton taking the lead by placing an additional $7 million in the Senate version of the Interior Bill. He then defended that increase on the floor of the Senate and in the House/Senate conference.

All of us at the Endowment are grateful to the members of Congress, arts service and advocacy organizations, our state arts agency partners, and many editorial writers who supported a budget increase for the NEA this year.

This year's Congressional support grew in response to a clear series of messages: to the NEA's citizen-oriented strategic plan, and a special initiative, Challenge America. This initiative, developed with the help of many partners, was supported by the Administration and conveyed during hundreds of face-to-face meetings on the Hill.

And phase one of Challenge America - the part funded this year - focuses on access to the arts for underserved communities, and arts services for young people. These are two of the goals we put forward three years ago, and we've made real progress.

In the past two years, the NEA has also deepened its own understanding of the value - the significance - of art and art making to community and family life.

This expanded sense of value has enabled those of us who support an investment of tax dollars in creativity and cultural heritage to seize the high ground in our national conversation about culture.

We've recaptured the dialogue, reasserting the intellectual leadership of arts professionals. Through a solid program, a clear, citizen-oriented message, and building upon the commitment of a supportive Clinton-Gore Administration, the NEA today offers a firm platform on which any future administration - the Bush-Cheney Administration - can build a strong commitment to America's cultural life.

But, despite advances in both the level of funding and the quality of discourse, we're not yet where we should be. Some still oppose the agency's work, and an increase to a budget of $105 million is simply not enough. But, we've seen important signs of progress, and I believe we today have an opportunity to think anew about our nation's commitment to cultural heritage and creativity.

And I believe it is time for a new beginning, a new start, a new, more assertive conversation about the value of federal partnership in the arts.

So, I want to talk to you today about moving ahead: specifically, about putting forward a number of ideas that respond to what we know, and what expert observers think, about the value, the importance, of art and art making in American society.

I've been tinkering with this speech for months, trying to figure out exactly how to frame my observations and assertions today.

A famous historian helped me out.

I was in Pittsburgh about a month ago, at the annual meeting of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. David McCullough spoke to the group, and in support of his argument, he quoted, in its entirety, a portion of a letter from John to Abigail Adams, written in 1780.

Now, a conflated version of these few sentences drawn from Adams' letter is often invoked by speakers advocating support for the arts, but I believe McCullough's full rendering provides the perfect setting for my argument here today.

Here's what Adams wrote (May, 1780):

"I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, Natural History, Naval Architecture, Navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry, and Porcelaine."

What did Adams mean by this assertion that he must study war in order to enable future generations to engage music, painting, and so on?

He was not a frivolous man. Nor did he celebrate frivolity, sloth, laziness, or meaningless work. Nor was he one to advocate mere ease.

His letter was written in Paris, and Adams confesses in this and other letters that he finds the gardens, statuary - the cultural environment of Paris - intoxicating. But, as he concludes his letter to his wife, he shrugs off the allure of music, statuary, and the gardens of Paris, deferring to the pressing demands of politics.

I choose to interpret this "literal man" literally, accepting that in his letter, Adams was not just tossing off a bouquet to the intrinsic value of art, but was envisioning the sequenced evolution of America's egalitarian democracy.

Adams' third stage - placed by practical necessity many decades or even some centuries in the future - would be characterized by intense citizen engagement in art and art making, and by a heightened role for cultural heritage and creativity in the everyday practice of citizenship.

In addition to offering a hopeful forecast, Adams was - again quite literally - valuing and validating art as central to the fabric of America's democracy.

He advanced - no, actually he assumed - the relationship between citizen engagement in art and the achievement of the most evolved incarnation of America's democratic experiment.

I believe everyday and scholarly evidence exists to suggest that:

First, Adams was correct in valuing cultural engagement as the hallmark of an advanced democracy.

And, second, and this brings me to my central point today, that we are presently at the beginning of the era Adams longed for and predicted more than two centuries ago.

Every day, it seems, we learn more about the value of creativity and cultural heritage to our society.

Over the past decade, evidence has accumulated of the importance of art and art making to early childhood education, to the economic strength of America's communities, to the ability of our young citizens to excel in school and to engage a high-tech economy, and art's importance to the work of rescuing young people who struggle to align their behavior with the demands of society. This evidence has come toward us at an ever-increasing pace.

It has arisen in many sectors - in education, juvenile justice, and brain research. So, although the evidence of value is not all in, we are well on the way to validating Adams assumption that a society engaged in art has achieved a special stage in the evolution of America's democratic dream.

During the past year, a remarkable number of scholars and journalists have published new works assessing the state of America's cultural life.

These observers note the uncoupling of culture and social class and suggest: first, that music, drama, dance, and literature exhibit metaphorically many challenges facing our society today, and second, that art itself offers a vehicle for solving problems and advancing toward the kind of democratic society envisioned by Adams.

John Seabrook, in Nobrow: the culture of marketing-the marketing of culture, documents the unbundling of taste and class.

Malcolm Gladwell, in The Tipping Point, describes the process of fashion and cultural shift in a media age.

Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, in How Now Shall We Live?, call upon communities of faith to re-engage the arts. And, in my Harvard University address earlier this year, I spoke of "the border" as the overarching metaphor for America's democracy, and art and art making as the currency of the border.

And signs of increased access to quality art and design are all around us. Michael Graves designs dishware for Target Stores. Martha Stewart crafts designer elements for Kmart. Hard-hatted workers in the Endowment's office building order double lattes.

Each of these observers - and these phenomena - hint at a cultural process that is more fluid than at any time in the past half-century. To be specific, each suggests an era of art, art making, and cultural heritage less burdened by associations of social class. Further, each points toward opportunities for a new, more aggressive engagement between culture and democracy.

I want to explore the work of two university-based scholars in a little more detail.

Many have observed a decline, an emptiness, at the heart of America's civil society. Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, is prominent among scholars identifying a corrosion of the informal linkages connecting citizens in American communities.

The Harvard political scientist labels the glue of community connectedness "social capital," and traces its decline over 35 years. Most of Putnam's analysis documents decreased participation in community organizations, the PTA, men's clubs, bowling leagues - structures that, historically, provided environments in which social capital could be created and sustained.

He also attempts to identify the underlying causes of this loss of connection, and cites, among other forces, the increase in the number of women in the workforce and the pervasive presence of television.

Now, Putnam is not without his detractors, and it is not my task here today to measure the weight of evidence demonstrating isolation or connectedness in civil society.

Rather, I've been struck by Putnam's observation, made in written work and public addresses - that art and art making can be significant factors in re-connecting citizens within community.

Putnam identifies two kinds of social capital: first, bonding capital that connects you with fellow citizens of like backgrounds, and second, what he calls bridging social capital, built during activities that connect citizens with strangers, with individuals unlike themselves.

In a recent address to the National Council on the Arts, Putnam observed: "...There's nothing - literally nothing - better than the arts for building 'bridging' social capital."

In Better Together, the report of Putnam's Saguaro Seminar, a report that will be released to the public here at the Press Club tomorrow, December 19, an article entitled, "The Arts and Social Capital" begins: "The creation and presentation of art...inspires a raft of civically valuable dispositions - trust, openness, honesty, cooperativeness, tolerance, and respect. The arts are a superb means of building social capital."

I will not take the time today to explore the depths of Putnam's argument and his judgment that art, cultural heritage, and art making - especially the participatory arts - are of unique value in rebuilding America's sense of community and connectedness.

I will simply note that for this prominent student of politics and community, and a seminar assembled around issues facing civil society, that theater, dance, and instrumental and vocal music stand as especially valuable responses to a significant societal challenge.

If asked, Putnam and his Saguaro cohorts might see Adams' dream of an egalitarian society deeply engaged in creativity and cultural heritage in jeopardy, just beyond our grasp, more distant than it might have been in the mid-1960s.

Robert William Fogel, the University of Chicago Nobel laureate economist, offers a more affirmative view of the opportunity to advance American society toward a new level of egalitarian engagement.

In The Fourth Great Awakening: the Future of Egalitarianism, Fogel puts forward an argument strikingly compatible with Putnam's. I can only sketch it here.

Employing exhaustive economic analysis and astute social observation, Fogel argues that American society has advanced in stages toward an evermore complete egalitarian democracy.

He characterizes each stage as a "Great Awakening," asserting that extended periods of social and economic progress are triggered by the response of "enthusiastic" religious communities to advances in technology and social organization that outstrip the capacity of law and government.

These responses, initially framed in the language of religious revival, ultimately infuse political philosophy and policy, and ultimately energize secular efforts of government to enhance the lives of citizens.

For Fogel, we are today nearing the end of the Third Great Awakening, the century-long era that produced the Social Gospel and a cluster of economic and social reforms intended to shrink disparities in the material well being of citizens.

Fogel's economic analysis reveals a moment of opportunity, because many basic economic needs of the Third Great Awakening have been met, and Americans today possess a heightened freedom to choose how they work and how they invest their time.

The challenge of the next century is to move beyond material well being to address a spiritual agenda and what Fogel calls the "spiritual divide."

Despite the "new age" tilt of Fogel's terminology - "spiritual resources" and "spiritual divide" - his is, in fact, a fairly "meat-and-potatoes" characterization of the elevated life of the Fourth Great Awakening.

Fogel lists fourteen resources that define the "spiritual divide," things Fogel feels every citizen should - and can - today, possess:

1) A sense of purpose; 2) a vision of opportunity; 3) a sense of the mainstream of work and life; 4) a strong family ethic; 5) a sense of community; 6) a capacity to engage with diverse groups; 7) an ethic of benevolence; 8) a sense of discipline; 9) the capacity to focus and concentrate one's efforts; 10) a capacity to resist the lure of hedonism; 11) a capacity for self-education; 12) a thirst for knowledge; 13) an appreciation for quality; and 14) self esteem.

The economist also identifies four segments of society he sees as especially deprived of these spiritual resources: the chronically poor, the alienated young, defeated midlifers, and the estranged elderly.

For Robert Fogel, erasing the spiritual divide and advancing toward the Fourth Great Awakening demands a sense of community, benevolence, and a comfort with diversity.

For Robert Putnam, the reconstruction of civil society demands this same kind of citizen engagement. And, art and art making are at the center of this new thinking about quality of life and democracy - not always in explicit language, but always at the center.

Consider just one of several themes that surface in the work of both scholars - the challenge of engaging diversity. For Putnam, diversity is about "bridging social capital." For Fogel, it's "a capacity to engage with diverse groups." I've labeled art the "currency of our diverse border society." Harold Levy, New York City school chancellor, says "art auditions diversity" in our schools. As Nobel laureate poet Wole Soyinka remarked during a recent White House conference on culture and diplomacy, "Politics demonizes 'the other.' Culture humanizes 'the other.'"

So, art and art making provide citizens with a critical ability to engage difference, and, of course, much, much more: an ability to focus and a sense of discipline.

Engagement in art requires and builds a capacity for self-education and slakes a thirst for knowledge. With dedication, art can provide a sense of purpose, an appreciation for quality, and a vision of opportunity over an entire lifetime. It can even enhance self-esteem.

So, both Putnam's society rich in social capital and the heightened engagement that characterizes Fogel's Fourth Great Awakening can be advanced through art, cultural heritage, art making, and creativity.

I hope, by now, I've stunned you with erudition - most of it, of course, borrowed.

I've asserted a literal John Adams, envisioning a future democracy engaged in culture and creativity.

I've reported that evidence grows every day linking art and art making to the well-being of communities and young people.

I've observed that many scholars, journalists, and cultural critics today see a range of important reconfigurations of art in society.

And, I've focused on the work of two university-based scholars whose work has pointed toward engagement in cultural heritage and creativity as indicative of the deepest sense of "quality of life" in our complex and diverse democracy.

So, if there exists good evidence that we possess both the capacity and the need to begin to live John Adams' dream, how do we bundle research, expert opinion, and the analysis of cultural critics in order to move ahead?

I believe that, in response to what we know, we must assert, on behalf of our citizens, a moral claim to art, art making, heritage, and creativity.

In other words, we must advance a moral claim to a cultural agenda in order to enhance the lives of young citizens, strengthen communities, and bridge the spiritual divide.

So, today, I put forward a Cultural Bill of Rights, a series of moral claims on the public conscience. They constitute my attempt to distill the thoughts of observers, critics, and scholars, some of whom I've mentioned here today. Each is intended to deepen our national conversation about the value of art and cultural heritage to our democracy.

There are six:

First, heritage. The right of Americans to fully explore America's overarching collective experience as it is embodied in music, literature, theater, painting, and dance. The right to engage those unique artistic traditions that define us as families, communities, ethnicities, nationalities, and regions. And, the right to explore and audition the cultural heritage of others, to observe and accept difference through the expressive lives of those unlike ourselves, including people of other nations.

Second, a creative life. The right of Americans to make art, to become artist-citizens, to absorb, over a lifetime of learning, both the process - the skills - of art making and the wellspring of wisdom and knowledge accumulated within diverse artistic traditions.

Third, artists and their work. The right of Americans to engage a healthy and valued community of creative artists, our artist-citizens who have dedicated their lives to expressive work, including those artists who challenge our imaginations and whose efforts cannot be sustained by the marketplace alone.

Fourth, performances, exhibitions and programs. The right of Americans to choose among a broad range of experiences and services that can only be provided by a strong, well-supported community of cultural organizations.

Fifth, art and diplomacy. The right of Americans to an external representation of our nation's expressive life that accurately conveys the complexity and diversity of America's human and material artistic resources to citizens of the world.

And, sixth, understanding quality. The right of Americans to engage art and art making of the highest aesthetic quality, especially art that embodies universal truths or art of quality that auditions the unique character of diverse nations and communities.

These are six deceptively-simple assertions, but to fully "take on" any of the six will require the commitment of communities, corporations, volunteer associations, school leaders and education reformers, journalists, and all levels of government.

For example, a citizen right to "access to heritage" - to films, recordings, choreography - immediately generates questions of ownership, intellectual property, copyright, as well as connections between heritage and education, the preservation of structures, monuments, intangible heritage, and so on.

We can't connect citizens with a vigorous community of artists without providing multiple mechanisms for supporting artists and their work. Each "right" - each moral claim - opens an equivalent container of public and private obligations.

I will close today with a few observations:

First, our Cultural Bill of Rights is not just about the NEA.

Many agencies and departments in or close to government - our Department of State, the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, Kennedy Center, Humanities Endowment, and state and local cultural agencies - must all play a part.

For, if our nation invests in the value of a new cultural engagement, all agencies will accept new and expanded responsibilities. And, if we do our work well, all boats will rise.

And, our Cultural Bill of Rights is really not just about government. After all, government funding totals just 10 percent of money contributed to non-profit arts organizations each year, and much of our nation's artistic work is carried forward by the for-profit cultural community.

Our Bill of Rights must connect many players, many partners, to assemble the material, legal, spiritual, and moral resources required to bring art and art making, cultural heritage and creativity, in from the margins to the center of community and family life.

Not-for-profit organizations must expand their already substantial commitment to citizen service. The entertainment industries must accept their role as caretakers of heritage and culture. If we are to connect citizens with art and art making, culture and creativity, and observers of society suggest we must, we must begin a new conversation.

What kind of society do we want?

Do we want a deepened understanding of our own creative heritage? A deeper understanding of the heritage of others? A society of artist-citizens, people young and old, steeped in the skills of eye, hand, heart, and voice required by painting, music, dance, and drama?

Do we want to possess a confidence that the rich cultural matrix of our nation is appropriately auditioned for the world? That we're represented, not just by blockbuster movies, but by quality art that might not flourish in a global economy?

Do we want a citizenry engaged by quality, served by a vigorous community of artists and by strong, citizen-oriented museums, orchestras, and theaters?

Or, is it enough to squander our achievements in a careless consumerism, to see the beguiling hedonism of the marketplace as our just reward?

I think not. I hope not.

Today, I believe we've reached the point that John Adams dreamed of more than two centuries ago. A time when all Americans can - and should - be engaged in the arts in their daily lives.

And a Cultural Bill of Rights is the first step toward capturing a greater role for cultural heritage and creativity in our nation.

We must take up the challenge.

For, if we take our American Cultural Bill of Rights seriously, we can begin to live Adams' dream.

We can engage young citizens so they enter society as adults sustained by heritage and fueled by creativity.

We can rebuild America's sense of community, strengthen civil society, and build new social capital.

We can bridge the spiritual divide, and move past consumerism, toward a national vision that truly addresses quality of life for all Americans. Thank you.

These remarks by Bill Ivey, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, were delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on December 18, 2000. Prior to becoming NEA Chairman in 1999, Ivey was Director of the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, Tennessee.