[vanisleflamesfan]

Reading the discussion of Harper’s cuts to the arts in the debate thread has really got my blood boiling over this issue. Please forgive me if you don’t think that this deserves a separate thread, and please forgive the length of this post, but this is something that I feel very strongly about.

This is a truly difficult topic. First of all, there is a real issue here that tends to get muddled up in people’s personal opinions of art. Just because you don’t like the work that an artist is creating, does not mean that it does not have value. If you have a difficult time in appreciating or understanding contemporary art, perhaps you should ask yourself a question: have you ever really tried. Perhaps you don’t have the knowledge to understand what you are looking at from an artistic perspective. Art tends to be one of those things where the more you know about where it is coming from, where it has been and what it meant in the past, the more you can appreciate where it is now and what it is trying to say now. You have to think about art, you have to make an effort to engage with it. I mean seriously, I am not saying that you have to like all art; in fact, the point of some art is that you will hate it. Art is meant to challenge you, to make you think, to make you react on an emotional level. Any emotional response is fine, just have one. Go and look at some contemporary art. The point here is that you cannot dispel the value of the cultural industry in this country just because you don’t happen to like a particular piece of art.

First off, let me give you my personal reasons for having an interest in this issue. I work in a museum. I spent many years paying tuition to gain the education that is required to work in this field. I do not work in the art section of this museum but rather I am focused on the material culture of indigenous peoples. I spent years in school learning how to care for, conserve, catalogue, interpret, research and exhibit the material culture of aboriginal societies. Am I an artist? No. Is the food on my table paid for largely by the Canadian tax payer? For the most part, yes.

I could have spent my years in school learning how to do something else; I could have been an engineer, or an oil and gas marketer. And I assure you, had I made that choice, I would have a lot more money in my pocket than I do now. I am not some rich snob standing around at a fancy gala complaining that the government does not give me enough money. I don’t want more; I just want to be paid fairly for what I do and I don’t think that this is unreasonable. Don’t think for a second that Harper’s cuts to arts funding don’t threaten that. The museum I work at, like most museums, is a not for profit agency. We require government funding to keep the lights on, to conserve the collections that we hold in trust for all Albertans, to continue to do the work that we do. There are legitimate social and ethical reasons why museums need to be run in a not for profit way. You can’t privatize culture, you can’t turn over the collections of the province to a private company. You can’t let a corporation dictate to you, and editorialize the content that you put on the walls. We are academics, we research and study collections and then we present the findings of that research to the public in the form of exhibitions. We are in the business of representing truth and facts; that cannot be compromised.

Every day I work with a collection of cultural artifacts that belong to the people of Alberta. That’s right. The people of Alberta own a massive collection of artistic, historical and cultural objects that would, on the open auction market, have a fair market value of millions upon millions of dollars. My job is to care for those objects, to see that they last for the next ten generations of Albertans to learn from. And I am not alone, my museum employs nearly two hundred people like me who feel that there is a value in education, who feel that giving Albertans access to the collections that they own is important. At the end of the day that is what my museum, and museums all across this country do; we educate. Some may educate people about art, be it historical, contemporary, visual, film or otherwise. Some may educate people about their history, or in my particular case, about the cultures of the indigenous people in this area and all around the world. And we do this every day because we know that there is value in teaching people about these things. There is value in learning about other ways of seeing the world, other ways of structuring a social system, other ways of looking at art or history or music or dance. Another poster, in the debate thread, mentioned that he had no idea about the social conditions on some Canadian reserves. There are museums all around the country working with First Nations communities to make these issues known, to give the issues facing contemporary Aboriginal cultures a wider scope. We provide time and space to showcase the work of contemporary artists who are screaming this message to Canadians through their work. Don’t try to tell me that this work has no value just because you don’t happen to like a piece of contemporary art.

The actual nuts and bolts of arts funding in Canada has to do with bringing the work that I, and others like me, do to all Canadians. It has to do with allowing people in Swan Hills or Brooks or Grande Prairie to see the artistic, historical, and cultural objects that they own. It is about allowing these people to learn from these collections in the same way that people in Calgary or Edmonton can. There are so many misconceptions regarding arts funding in Canada that I can’t even really begin to try and dispel them here. However, I will say this; the largest misconception seems to be that arts funding means paying a salary to an individual artist. That is not correct. The bulk of arts funding in Canada goes to support larger structures that make artistic, historical, and cultural materials available to all Canadians. Harper can sell the idea of cutting arts funding to Canadians by making them believe that his government no longer wants to pay to support artists who are making difficult, controversial, even silly art. But the real heart of this matter is that his cuts make it harder for museums to do their work. It makes it harder for the Calgarian violin virtuoso to get a job with the Calgary Philharmonic. It makes it harder for a small town historical society to prevent a valuable historical object from falling into the hands of a private collector, never to be seen or learned from by all Alberta citizens. These things are important and they have nothing to do with propping up an individual artist with a government grant. Harper’s cuts mean deeply affecting the ability of cultural organizations to continue to educate all Canadians.

So the next time you think you are fine with Mr. Harper cutting funding to the arts, go to a museum. Go to learn something about the history of the place you live in. Go to learn something about another culture that you may have an incorrect assumption about. Go to get enraged or inspired by a piece of challenging contemporary art. Or just go for the sheer aesthetic pleasure of looking at something beautiful. After that, you can begin to rethink whether or not that has any value to you as a Canadian.