June 5, 1988-San Antonio Express-News

Another conference

There have been questios to this columnist about "Why don't you criticize the museum and the symphony?" in response to criticism leveled at local Hispano arts centers.

It has been a primary concern to focus on programs that arose from a certain community's hopes and aspirations; i.e., the Chicano call for funding and programming directly bearing on the barrio and its needs.

Museums, symphonies and ballet have become the bailiwick of the rich and powerful and might never reach out to the barrio.

The, centers, though, were conceived and developed with the idea of serving a community lacking any aesthetic outlet for its talents and dreams.

The thrust of protest that resulted in the funding of cultural centers was spearheaded by activist artists.

The same scenario evolved in other "peoples-of-color" communities, and black, Asian American and Native American artists demanded arts programs for their respective communities.

Disdain cited

All peoples deserve the means to reflect themselves and their cultural values in ways that inspire young people. No sane person could question that.

What is in question however, is the disdain that program directors hold for artists, especially for those artists who are either too forceful in their expressivity or have yet to attain commercial stature.

Whatever the case, another "national" conference on the arts will take place this coming weekend in Washington, D.C. Billed as Open Dialogue III, the conference will play host to program directors, administrators and funding figures with numerous workshops, discussion groups and keynote addresses.

Ways to garner even more funding will be explored, because programs, once instituted, must be overfed so that their budgets can grow even more.

The question of paying individual artists for their work will be debated, and then perhaps tabled again as too impractical.

It will be done out of beign neglect or some such phenomenon, but not out of spite. as many administrators will readily assert that "I used to be an artist until I got the call to become an arts administrator!"

Shades of televangelism, but it seems that a new zealous religiosity has hit us.

Not so now

It is the kind that will ask a poet. writer or artist to share expertise freely with administrators who have failed to do much with their resources, and who now need to acquire knowledge gratis.

This not-so-new approach to artists needs to be looked at critically by artists and taxpayers; it is merely an extension of the "artists must starve and be underpaid for their work"syndrome.

The Association of American Cultures (TAAC) is host of Open Dialogue III. I was told by its chairman - Jean Paul Batiste, who heads the Texas Commission for the Arts - that I had been nominated as a presenter on the literature panel.

Louis LeRoy. treasurer of TAAC, would later tell me that it was important to make my reservations, etc, for the event.

When told that I expected a fee for my services, LeRoy resounded that not all the artists would be paid. In essence, payment for services rendered would go only to certain "unique" presenters, but not to all panelists or presenters.

When I called Batiste - whose job title might include equal rights for working artists and poets he right away let me know that he was sorry I would not be attending the conference.

So much for rhetoric

So much for the rhetoric of there existing a forthright dialogue between artists and administrators.

If it is difficult for artists and writers who have a track record to make a living from their work, how much more difficult is it for those new, talented voices who have not developed a following?

Why, do we need conferences that speak to greater amounts of funding. when that funding will end up as administrative overhead, with a pittance thrown to the artists?

Sweatshops are supposed to be an aberration from the pre-indusuial era, not a state of normalcy for the evolving information society that will rely heavily upon the arts!

Maybe those conferences are needed so that would-be administrators can learn how to attract audiences. It is possible that a "real" dialogue might ensue, and that the programs might just be turned around to the extent that the disparate and disenfranchised barrios and ghettos might be served.

It is even probable that J. Alfred Prufrock could be enticed to eat a peach, that treasurer LeRoy might be helped to resurrect the Arts Council that was defunded under his tenure, or that the creators and makers of arts might be acknowledged as worthy of having the right to live from their work.

'Artists have rights'

Who knows? Maybe during cocktails and much palaver, the bureaucrats and functionaries might run amok screaming that "artists have rights" while artfully declaring passage of a bill of rights for directors allowing for the further disenfranchisement of artists.

In the egoistic and power-mad environs of the Potomac, another Parnassus might just take place to placidly proclaim business as usual with the artists and poets getting an extreme short shrift again when it comes to payment for services rendered.

The pending "exclusive monologue" will probably have as much impact on the barrio, reservation and ghetto as the museum, symphony and local ballet do: inaccessible and beyond the econonmic means of working and marginalized poor people.

The artists? Well they might get a bit of exposure - with some of their names misspelled - and the privilege of being taken for granted by the new arts-landed gentry.

The Open Dialogue might just be an open season on taxpayer wallets under the guise of serving a community in dire need of positive and enriching cultural images and nuances.

(Follow this link to see the next related column, June 19, 1988)