ISLAND VOICES
Why should we support the arts programs in Hawai'i?

By David C. Farmer

What are the arts? Why should public money support them? What is a work of art? And why should we care? These are weighty questions indeed, questions that demand continual and renewed asking.

John Frohnmayer, former National Endowment for the Arts chair from 1989 to 1992, suggested three possible definitions for the arts:

• What we have in our museums and libraries.
• What we buy and sell.
• The best of what society creates, values and believes; the immutable web of our culture.

Responding to the challenge of defending government support of the arts, Frohnmayer offered eight reasons based on the third definition:

• We should seek wisdom from our best artist thinkers and doers, the unknown as well as the famous.
• Because we learn in different ways, the arts offer miraculous effects on the education of our young, including those "throw- away" kids who often flourish through the arts.
• We should seek, honor and support excellence.
• The arts teach us to feel, listen, see and articulate; understanding and tolerance are by-products of the arts.
• The arts teach fairness, self-criticism and truth-telling.
• The arts teach the participatory lessons of true democracy.
• The arts teach history with vivid and engaging strokes.
• The arts teach creativity, the fuel for the 21st century, and what we export to the world most successfully through sound recordings, videos, movies, television, books and software.

As to what constitutes a work of art, dictionary definitions fail to meet the challenge. The State Foundation on Culture and the Arts' Art in Public Places Program collections management policy defines works of art as "all forms of original creations of visual arts objects, including but not limited to ceramics, drawings, fiber, mixed media, murals, mosaics, super-graphics, frescos, painting, photographs, prints and sculpture."

The APP program derives its revenues from the works of art special fund, Hawai'i's 1967 one-percent-for-art law that became a national model across the country. The genius of the law is the nexus between the source of the money — bond-generated capital-improvement funds — and the fact that the program replaces the natural beauty displaced in the construction of public buildings with works of art expressive of the state's cultural, creative and traditional arts of its various ethnic groups.

A conversation has recently begun about what may have been overlooked in the working definition of "works of art": performance art. Any dialogue must begin with a working definition. For this we turn to art history. Modern art historians trace the roots of this art form in the 20th century to the Futurist Manifesto of 1908. Part of its persistent power stems from the fact that it incorporates all the major art disciplines: poetry, visual arts, music, dance and theater. Dada and Surrealism between the World Wars, the Bauhaus in the 1920s, Allan Kaprow's "Happenings" in the 1950s, and more recently the work of Robert Morris, Yves Klein, Joseph Beuys and Yoko Ono into the 1960s.

By the 1970s, artists like Chris Burden and groups such as Mabou Mines and the Wooster Group (all still active) began their work. Hawai'i witnessed the art form in Otto Piene's "Sky Lei" in Kapi'olani Park in 1970 and Tommy Woodruff's sawdust piece at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Works by both artists are included in our state art collection.

The genre continues to flourish through such events as the Burning Man Project and The Cleveland Performance Art Festival, among many others.

Several reasons appear to explain the conspicuous absence of this art form from the works of art special fund. First, the one-percent law has been strictly construed to include almost exclusively traditional Western European visual art forms that possess the requisite 20-year shelf life required of bond fund-supported monies.

Second, while Hawai'i's painters, sculptors, printmakers and ceramic artists have continued to work and exhibit widely, performance artists have been rare.

Third, because the line between performance art and more traditional theater/dance/music performances is at best ill-defined, there has been a long-standing institutional avoidance of anything remotely resembling performance in any guise in order to create a bright line test.

Of these reasons, the 20-year shelf life appears to be the most persuasive if not the definitive reason. But does it survive scrutiny? Besides its ephemeral moment of creation and presentation, performance art generates concrete artifacts: Cleveland's Performance Art Festival Archives has 6,000 photos, 2,000 hours of video, interviews, biographies, news clips, reviews and ephemera.

The conversation about what art is and what is worthy of support never ends. It is for the artists, and for what their contributions mean to society, that those in public service continue to labor with the humility and dedication of servant stewards.

David C. Farmer is former executive director of the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.