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This week’s issue offers our sixth annual “State of the Arts” report, featuring our popular ranking of the most influential people in the local arts. We also preview fall programming in theater, dance, film, music, vocal arts and visual arts.
The state of the arts? In short, better than the state of things in the rest of Cincinnati. The full story, like everything else around here, is a bit more complicated.
The arts this summer have seen lower attendance numbers than usual — possibly due to the lagging economy, the heat or the city’s general malaise. With the economy struggling, sponsorship dollars are harder to come by as well.
Still, Cincinnati is experiencing a surge in high-profile capital arts and cultural projects. The exciting new Contemporary Arts Center rises downtown. The Carnegie Center has reopened in Covington.
The Cincinnati Art Museum and Taft Museum of Art will open major renovations next year. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center follows in 2004. The Art Academy of Cincinnati and School for Creative and Performing Arts continue to plan new homes in Over-the-Rhine.
The artistic triumphs keep adding up — Cincinnati Opera’s edgy productions of Dead Man Walking and Elektra; Paavo Järvi’s first season conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; the depth and breadth of our thriving theater scene; the emergence of underground artists showing at SSNOVA; puppeteer Mark Fox’s growing national acclaim; and many, many more.
Several unusual collaborations highlight the coming months, from the Cincinnati Art Museum’s and Cincinnati Ballet’s joint retrospective of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo to Playhouse Producing Artistic Director Ed Stern directing a play at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati to the Fine Arts Fund’s foray into event marketing with the Festival of the New, which will mark the CAC’s opening in 2003.
Last year’s big disappointment in the arts community — the demise of the Regional Cultural Alliance, which would have served as the region’s arts council — has spawned several less sprawling efforts to support and promote the arts. The most public effort comes via Cincinnati City Council’s new Arts & Culture Committee, which Chair Jim Tarbell promises will make a real difference.
Other organizations currently working on arts advocacy issues include the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, which next month is expected to decide whether to provide funding for a significant arts marketing proposal; the Arts Advocacy Initiative, which next month will present ideas from its “vision” committee; the Charter Committee, which is hosting a discussion of ways to foster links between the arts and local government; and the Cincinnatus Association, which is considering organizing a summit meeting of all such advocacy groups in order to find common ground and focused direction.
It’s not all rosy for the arts these days, though, and it’s not just about the money. The Regional Cultural Alliance (RCA) debacle proves there’s a real disconnection between how Cincinnatians support the arts and the fairly insignificant role the arts play in Cincinnati’s civic debate.
The RCA process produced tons of research showing strong support for the arts throughout the eight-county Tristate region. In terms of economic benefit, local arts easily generated more attendance and more revenue than the Reds and the Bengals combined.
But when Hamilton County Commissioner Tom Neyer Jr. stuck out his neck to secure taxpayer funds for the RCA, he got his head (and his political future) handed to him. He declined to run for reelection this fall.
Many of us at CityBeat, and others elsewhere, would like to see local arts organizations and artists asserting themselves on broader issues that matter to Cincinnati. We wanted to see the CAC celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Mapplethorpe controversy, the Broadway Series bring Angels in America to the Aronoff Center, the arts community rally around Thomas Condon, the Cincinnati Arts Association embrace the boycotters instead of sue them and arts leaders endorse and campaign for political candidates.
That unfulfilled wish list, however, doesn’t mean the arts aren’t serving a valuable purpose. For artists, they provide a creative outlet in a city that frowns on anyone considered different. For patrons, they offer glimpses into worlds we’d never know otherwise.
The arts are the window into our past, present and future, individually and collectively. We simply couldn’t live without them.
This article appears in Aug 28 – Sep 3, 2002.