My complaint about the Performing Arts Center, and it is a long-standing one, is that the $500 million investment in bricks and mortar sucked the oxygen from any investments necessary to cultivate local audiences for the performing arts. Perhaps the investment by the Knight Foundation and by prominent donors will address that concern. Perhaps the Performing Arsht Center and planned arts museum will not stick out like sore thumbs no one can get to.
Twenty years ago, as South Beach was reviving, Miami needed a discussion about what kind of city for arts it wanted to be. That discussion never happened for a variety of reasons; parochialism, narrow-mindedness, and a tendency for the Miami wealthy to fly to New York or Paris for culture.
Then, ten years ago, the city was overwhelmed by the bubble in housing, construction and development. At some level of the city's patriarchy, it was decided to build the Carniverous Performing Arts Center to support all the expectations of a new city branding itself as internationally significant.
In neglecting the need to develop audiences for the arts, organically, from the ground up, Miami's leaders made a bad mistake. Assuming that buildings can also build audiences is wrong.
The best instance of failure is the Coconut Grove Playhouse: an historic theater that was a sham at its heart--serving the purposes of an arrogant producer who managed to bamboozle his entire board of directors. (Who can ever forget--or remember-- that the most cutting edge play of its era, "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett, had its 1956 US premier at the playhouse; audiences grumbled and walked away in droves.)
Building audiences for the arts is a painstaking process that has to start at the level of public education. So the $10 million grant by the Knight Foundation to the Miami Art Museum to bring every fifth-grade student in the county's public school system to the museum each year is the best news in a long time.
It is dismaying, though, that the Knight Foundation commitment of $20 million to fund local arts projects requires matching funds. Perhaps other donors and foundations will jump at the chance to invest in the growth of the arts in Miami, but the thresholds governing such contributions are often too high for small organizations or start-ups.
We need investment in local arts content; no amount of bricks and mortar will achieve that.
Buildings for the arts can be pretty or ugly, and designed for programming that mirrors tradition or Broadway road shows. But local content, the work itself, is the only part of the equation that can energize a whole community.
2 comments:
i feel like I am waiting for Godot...someone to lead Miami Dade County to greatness...but Godot never comes..we all wait and wait and wait.
We really need responsible leaders. What kind of leaders vote for massive poorly planned construction projects only to invaribly see those same projects go 200% to 600% over budget and of course, years behind schedule?
Now we are witnessing Miami Art Museum, with little or, no money of its own and Miami Science Museum, with little or, no money of its own attempting to bankrupt the taxpayers yet again with massive projects. Where are the private funds these two "museums" promised to raise prior to taking the taxpayer money? Where is the $130 mil from MAM? Where is the $200 mil needed by Miami Science? When will the insanity end?
Every dollar taken from taxpayers to build some monument to someone else's ego is a dollar that taxpayer cannot use to pay his or her mortgage or pay his or her windstorm insurance premium or pay tuition for his or her child. Maybe the massive taxes cause residents to leave Miami? Why are elected officials so desperate to give away the taxpayers money? To give away their future?
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