Why is culture valued so much more abroad?
When it comes to protecting the arts, other nations have put us to shame, says Ivan Hewett
The Covid-19 virus has been a great leveller. It has rampaged through the arts worldwide, ignoring national and ideological boundaries. Everywhere you look, cultural institutions have had to close their doors to the public, shutting off their main source of income. The damage has been immense.
But if the initial destructive effect has been remarkably consistent, the response of different countries, both from governments and from the grassroots, has not.
Readers may already feel overfamiliar with the current crisis engulfing the arts in this country, which has most recently culminated in Britain’s most powerful theatre producer, Cameron Mackintosh, announcing the long-term hiatus of his productions of three of the biggest musicals in the world, Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera and Hamilton. Currently the only financial rescue package offered for the arts here is Arts Council England’s (ACE) £160million emergency fund and although there’s been a great deal of lip service from the Government about task forces and plans, this is of little apparent use without hard cash.
In Europe, on the other hand, culture is regarded as part of the national identity, and something the state should support. In Germany the reverence for art goes especially deep. When the pandemic hit the country Monika Grütters, the culture minister, described the arts as essential “lebensmittel”, meaning “that which sustains life”. Her department has funded two emergency support packages for freelancers including arts workers, and city and provincial governments have pledged to support arts institutions.
In France, the government has responded with a typical grand projet: a generous fund to create a “grand programme of public commissions” for young artists under 30 and a rescue package for 100,000 freelance artists, theatre workers and musicians. Some institutions are so well funded by the state they could survive a pandemic forever.
There is a similar privileged set of cultural workers in Italy. Here, opera is the national art form, and the 15 so-called “theatres of the tradition”, such as Rome and Naples’s opera houses, have been told all their salaries and expenses will be met until the end of 2021 by the state. The middle tier of theatres – that extraordinarily includes the most famous opera house in the world, La Scala – which charge higher prices and earn a bigger proportion of their income from tickets, may suffer more from the lockdown, and those that are entirely private, such as the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, are really suffering.
Europe is not only benefiting from more generosity from the top than is currently available in Britain, but an earlier lifting of lockdown, and greater entrepreneurship on the part of cultural institutions.
In Italy, cultural life is already emerging cautiously. As in Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, Denmark and other countries, Italian museums started reopening in May, and this month the performing arts are coming back to life. “From the beginning of June a new law allows concerts of 200 people indoors or 1,000 out of doors,” says Gianluigi Mattietti, an academic and journalist, “and some institutions have really seized this opportunity. Rome opera will do Rigoletto in the garden of the Villa Borghese and La Fenice opera house in Venice will do an interesting project in September, where the performers will be in the stalls and on stage and the audience will only be in the boxes.”
Everywhere you look in Europe – and beyond – you find a determination to bring the arts back to life. Concert halls in Iceland, Denmark, Norway and numerous other countries have already opened for business with socially distanced and masked audiences. Theatres are experimenting with Plexiglass shields to separate audience members, and fans to disperse possibly dangerous air. The Berliner Ensemble, the famous theatre founded by Helene Weigel and Bertolt Brecht, has 75 per cent of its running costs met by the city, which has allowed it to find a creative way to deal with the lockdown. “Our normal programme is suspended until September,” says Oliver Reese, the artistic director, “so over the summer we are presenting short programmes, a little free gift to our public. And we have also demolished the rows of seats in the theatre and arranged them in groups. We did this to abide by the 1.5-metre distance rule but also it seems to us more meaningful and moving to have these seats in little ‘islands’ rather than in rows.” Only in Germany could a theatre director turn a financially ruinous social distance policy into an aesthetic experience.
It would be hard to capture all the government responses around the world, but it is telling that the famously hostile-to-culture Brazilian government approved an emergency £460million package – though it’s not law yet. This eclipses the ACE grant here. Although ACE is offering a lot better than Japan, where a limited lockdown that nevertheless kiboshed the performing arts has generated the lowest governmental support of all: 50billion Yen – around £376,000.
It is worth contrasting the European experience with the American. The constitutional ban on state involvement in artistic expression has always had a huge dampening effect on federal funding to the arts, and that hasn’t lessened during the pandemic. A recent stimulus package worth two trillion dollars to provide support to company employees offered relatively tiny amounts to the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington and the National Endowment for the Arts, but nevertheless a few Republican senators complained. When it comes to reopening to the public, most institutions are being ultra-cautious, though there are tentative moves in the museum sector. You can now visit the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, provided you agree to wear a mask, submit to a temperature check and leave the moment you feel ill.
In the performing arts the rule of thumb seems to be that January is the earliest possible date for reopening. Joseph Haj, artistic director of one of America’s biggest and most adventurous theatres, the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, says that for his theatre it will be even later than that, in March. “We are fortunate, we entered the crisis in a relatively good state,” says Haj. “We gave an endowment, which we’re drawing on heavily, and we have reserves, and our donors who contribute around 28 per cent of our costs are still with us. Even so around half of our income come from ticket sales, so for us to open with social distancing is just not financially viable.” However, Haj admits there are other factors that are inhibiting American companies like his from opening sooner. “Everything depends on the state governor’s decision, and here he’s very cautious and rightly so.”
A pattern is starting to emerge. When you look at the arts in the US there are plenty of creative ideas, but the instant you mention the idea of reopening soon, fear and caution take over. It’s the same in the UK. The precautionary principle has become the ruling principle in the arts, as it has in every other area of public life. Add to that the financial stringencies that made reopening to small audiences a sure loss-maker, and you have a recipe for paralysis.
Compare this with Europe. The incentives to be cautious exist there too, yet the feeling is totally different, and the reason surely is that people actually believe the fine words uttered about the arts and culture being essential for the good of the soul and society. The proof is right there, in the way governments and arts institutions have strained every nerve to get the arts back into action again. It’s a model that looks like the preferable one for the UK to follow.