WE MUST MAKE LOCAL PUBLIC ART MUCH MORE RELEVANT

If we consider public art funding a marketplace, then governmental and philanthropic entities are investors. Unfortunately, some investments in public art are primarily placed in perceived “blue-chip stock” organizations as old and antiquated as Kodak or Pan Am. San Diego supports communities of color and local artists like an investor might fund a penny stock. Relevant cultural and community artists are essentially underfunded and ignored. We cheaply and halfheartedly support them with limited resources and expect low-yield returns. Decades of underfunding has created a capacity issue for local artists, making it difficult to compete in an uneven marketplace for grant funding. This peculiar and unfair system is layered with biased assumptions regarding whose art is valuable.

Art and culture in San Diego have never achieved their full potential because of the lack of investment in artists and organizations that represent its diversity. We are decades behind the cities that embrace their cultural heritage, such as New Orleans, partly because we have embraced the idea that publicly funded art should be predicated on the ability to attract tourism to the region. “Heads in beds” or other esoteric justifications for publicly funding projects have been used to the detriment of local community artists. This has created a deficit of local artists competing for funding primarily due to their lack of capacity. It has also negatively impacted our region’s cultural reputation because of our lack of depth in artistic representation. Ironically, potential visitors to our city who want authentic cultural experiences could decide that our limited scope of cultural attractions is a contributing factor to not choose San Diego as a destination to visit.

Artists from culturally diverse communities in San Diego have been marginalized with Byzantine-like application processes that are nearly impossible to navigate without an expensive, experienced proposal writer. They are restricted by proposal requests that are culturally inept with limited scope and imagination. Some benefactors consider past funding as an indicator of suitability or require the artist to deliver services before being reimbursed. Talented artists are often too frustrated to apply for funding because of their experiences of being denied by a system that clearly views their work as minimal in value. The impact on artists’ development has been devastating. We should all demand that future requests for art proposals deliberately target diverse cultural artists and remove barriers that suspiciously appear to be designed to limit their participation.

The funding that could support a more diverse and comprehensive art community is being diverted away from small local artists. The current system is designed to provide supplemental support to institutions that can privately fund through wealthy, individual patrons. This is inherently unfair and biased, and is the best example of inequitable distribution of funds that this city has to offer. We can’t credibly advocate for fairness when our most public displays of who we are as a city contradict the very notion. The reliance on publicly funded art for entities that also receive generous individual donors should be curtailed to allow for investment in grass-root efforts. There exists an unbalanced cycle of the powerful and influential funding their own special projects that do not reflect the vast cultural richness of our city. This is not an argument to not support important civic projects San Diego is known for. It is a call for funders to balance the scales for equity.

Fortunately, our city is changing. Many are striving to leverage our diversity of talent. Indeed, new leaders in the art and philanthropic communities are working to change the old, stodgy approach to funding art and culture by recognizing the need to change the dynamics. They have proposed some exciting ways to build the capacity of local artists who will in turn lead the way toward a city where our cultural beauty is on full display. All of us should support these new visionaries who are attempting to create policies and practices that deconstruct the old ways of funding art and cultural projects.

We should fully embrace the beautiful cultural elements in our city. The best way to do that would be to allow our painters, spoken word artists, playwrights and musicians flourish with our support. We are so much more than what we have presented in the past. It’s time to turn the page toward a true representation of art and culture in San Diego. We might surprise ourselves and discover that by changing how we invest in our artists, we will reap an abundance in return.