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University Daily Kansan Tuesday. March 27. 1962
Financial Aid Is a Factor in Contemporary Arts
By Richard Bonett
(This is the second in a three-part series of articles dealing with the financial troubles confronting the performing arts in the United States.)
Under present economic conditions, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra can play to a near sell-out audience at top prices of $7.50 a seat and produce only 62 per cent of the performance's costs.
This is symptomatic of the paradoxical plight of the performing arts in the U.S., that while popular acceptance of the arts is increasing, their financial basis is rapidly deteriorating.
THE PROBLEM RELATES to a fundamental fact: the performing arts in Western cultures have never fared well under the laws of economic competition—laws which are proving excessively rigorous in the present technological age.
The performing arts as they have developed in Western culture were historically an aristocratic pastime, wholly dependent for survival on princely patronage.
King Gustav III decreed the existence of the Stockholm Opera in 1773, and Frederick the Great gave Berlin its first opera house in 1740. West Germany today supports 60 state and local opera companies.
With the spread of industrialization, centralization and democracy in Western countries, governments took over where the vanishing courts left off.
FATHER C. J. McNASPY, associate editor of "America," the National Catholic Review, has written . . . while each of the countries of the West has found some way to subsidize music and other performing arts, the U.S. alone has pursued a hit or miss policy."
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"I don't think most Americans realize," says JFK, "the way the situation has changed." In this week's Post, in an authoritative article based on talks with the President and his chief advisers, StewartAlspo tells how Kennedy has revamped U.S. strategy. What was behind his struggle with the Pentagon. And how the new plans are working out.
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For decades the burden of making up the financial deficits of the major symphony and opera companies, and many of the lesser ones, has been carried by wealth "angels." This support was drastically eroded after the economic crash of 1929, when the survival of many of the country's artistic institutions was threatened.
In the United States, state and local government units were spared concern for the financial support of artistic institutions by the American counterpart to European princes, the millionaire philanthropists.
arts through government subsidy.
Today, numerous artists, including George London, concert and opera singer, credit the federal Works Progress Administration of the 1930's with having helped prevent the collapse of the performing
THE INFLATIONARY trend of the economy since World War II is rapidly out-pacing the resources of the Met and other companies. Figures cited earlier show that it is the musician and other performers who have been most seriously hurt in the economic squeeze.
It is largely this deteriorated basis of financial support, coupled with the frustration expressed by Fr. McNaspy of those who are trying to shore up that support through public solicitations, that has led to increasing concern about the future of the arts in America.
The U.S. came closer perhaps than is generally realized to suffering national disgrace last summer when a wage dispute between the Met and
Students Erect Whatzit
Engineering students directed by Willard Strode, assistant professor of architectural engineering, are building a hyperbolic paraboloid in the area between Lindley Hall and Marvin Hall.
The structure, which consists of a roof resting on three supports, has been named a "triboloid." It is an equilateral triangle with 30-foot sides that enclose about 400 square feet. It will be about 24 feet high.
The purpose of the structure will be to weather-test and weight-test a plastic wood called "hardboard." The project is being sponsored by the Masonite Corporation.
pletion by April 21, when the two-day engineering exposition will be held here. It will remain standing for about a year.
The last structure erected by students on that lot was a flat grid roof system built by mechanical engineering students last year.
The project is scheduled for com-
'Prestige Car Planned
NEW YORK — (UPI) — Studebaker-Packard Corp. plans to introduce this summer a new "prestige car" with a glass fiber body, it was disclosed in the annual report today. No details of the new car were given.
STARTS THURS.
DOUBLE FEATURE
Yul Brynner In "THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN"
| its musicians threatened to cancel |
| the season. |
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Gregory Peck in "THE BIG COUNTRY"
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"BLAST OF SILENCE"
IN AN ARTICLE in the November, 1961, issue of International Musician, the official publication of the American Federation of Musicians. Bliss remarks that when it was announced the Met could not meet the musicians' demands and would be forced to abandon its season, invitations came from Japan, Austria, and the Philippines.
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Bliss gives no indication that the invitations to move the Met were seriously considered. The emergency was resolved when Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg intervened to arbitrate a settlement. If the Met had accepted one of these invitations, U.S. claims of cultural leadership would have received a serious blow.
Because of the dramatic effect such an event might have had on the American public, Fr. McNaspy was moved to speculate if "it might not have been better if the Met had closed.
"HOWEYER ADROITLY Secretary Goldberg may work out the
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Met's immediate crisis," he said, "he can only offer one more makeshift remedy and not a real cure. The illness lies deep. . . I am inclined to agree with Herman Kenin (president of the American Federation of Musicians) . . . that the 'musical performing arts can't survive in today's market place."
There is some indication that Sec. Goldberg fosters the same feeling. In his report on the Met dispute, he observed:
"... as we become more and more a cultural democracy, it becomes less and less appropriate for our major cultural institutions to depend on the generosity of a very few of the very wealthy. ... The answer is evident enough. We must come to accept the arts as a new community responsibility"
Ends Tonight William Holden - Clifton Webb in "Satan Never Sleeps"
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Tennessee Williams'
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Nominated for 5
Academy Awards
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