The Kennedy Connection

I grew up in Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy was my Senator for about half my life. When I was in the Boy Scouts, my troop had its picture taken with him on the steps of the Senate office building. On that same trip, sometime in the mid-1970s, we visited the grave site of his brothers, John and Robert, at Arlington National Cemetery.

In June of this year, my family and I visited Arlington. My maternal grandparents are now buried a stone's throw from the Kennedy grave site, where Edward M. Kennedy is being interred as I write this. On the same trip, we went to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. On the sides of the building are carved excerpts from speeches about the arts made by John Kennedy, one of which he gave at Amherst College, where I went to school. Although he was killed before I was born, I can't help tracing a lineage and feeling a connection today between him, his recently deceased brother, my hometown in Massachusetts, my college, my vocation as an artist, and now, as a teacher at another small liberal arts college.

Ted Kennedy's voice was distinct in American politics, as were the kin voices of his brothers before him. I cannot think of anyone living today who combines passion, eloquence and a belief in the best hopes of democracy as they did--not even the current president.

In late October of 1963, John F. Kennedy, then President, gave a speech at the dedication of Robert Frost Library on the Amherst College campus. In his dedication, he spoke about the centrality of the role of the artist to American democracy. JFK shaped the American conversation about art. Had his voice not been silenced, perhaps the changes he promoted would have been even more pronounced or lasting. His vision led his successor to create the National Endowment for the Arts, but the NEA has not lived up to its potential, nor have we as a people lived up to supporting JFK's vision of the artist in a democratic society. We throw a pittance at "the arts" but no longer talk about supporting artists. Maybe this is why the health care debate is going nowhere: it's all about health care, but not about doctors and patients. We fail as a society whenever our public rhetoric is more obfuscatory than enlightening.

For a generation now, non-commercial artists in America have been under pressure to justify public and private money given to them to make art, despite being granted much less money than in any other industrialized democracy (and less than in the past). Proponents of "the arts" have desperately argued that the arts are good for education, good for the economy, good for the community: good for all of us, like vegetables and vitamins. Occasionally, someone will get a bitter closer to the heart of things by declaring that "art is for art's sake." The NEA brands its effort to survive with the bland and imperial sounding "a great nation deserves great art." The intention is indicated, but a passionate connection is missing.

By way of contrast, when support for a strong military is heralded, one nearly always hears about our "brave men and women in uniform." And they are brave, no doubt about it. The rhetoric sounds authentic because it evokes real people in our midst. None of the tropes used to try to make art sound virtuous have led to especially powerful arguments for arts funding, probably because such enconia ring hollow. For what is art if it's not a vision of reality created by the artist himself or herself? The typical rallying cries for "the arts" feel fake because the rallyers rarely talk about real people making art.

The lack of authentic rhetoric supporting arts funding has had a deleterious effect on our relationship to artists. In our theaters, museums and concert calls, we are no longer simply viewers or listeners, but we must be donors, subscribers, members, supporters and ticket-buyers. We are bombarded with curtain speeches and solicitations. Commercial entertainment always feels more authentic: it has fans and music-lovers and movie-goers and audience. And artists themselves escape "the arts" when they become stars. Our non-profit institutions are headed by managers and executives rather than being led by artists. Corporate sponsorship rarely happens without a marketing quid pro quo: gone are the days of corporate responsibility to a democratic society that includes a vital role for artists as part of its survival.

Is it any wonder that as the failed rhetoric has prevailed, both corporate and public arts funding has decreased, and the very idea of putting the needs of the artist at the center of the conversation is now almost unthinkable? Arts administrators, marketers, board members and the NEA itself are the ones who've made these hollow arguments, though perhaps without realizing how off-the-mark they've been. I can't blame managers for trying to hold on to alwalys-imperiled jobs that they love in a field to which they are committed in the way that seems most likely to gain support. They are truly not at fault; but their rhetoric is misplaced, and too often this is because artists and artistic visions don't motivate institutions. But how could it be otherwise, in a culture where having money has been deemed more virtuous than making art, and in which artistic institutions are always lacking money? And so arts bureaucracies assert that "art is good for..." ... the economy, the kiddies' test scores, the community (a.k.a., conventional wisdom). But how vital is the art that flows from those bureaucracies?

Furthermore, artists are at the periphery of institutional decision-making. Since the funding controversies of the '80s and '90s, the NEA no longer funds individual grants, but has retreated into marketable forays into arts education or preservation of the arts of the past, called "heritage." Renewal of even the most conservative programs is subject to evaluations based on impersonal points systems, rather than sustainable visions or peer review, which is now being eliminated. Corporate sponsors want to see marketing surveys, and boards are most interested in numbers and branding. Caution reigns. The system serves its own survival, but not the artists or audiences in as vital a way as it should.

Ariane Mnouchkine, the acclaimed French director of Theatre du Soleil, was recently asked in New York what advice she would give to young actors to ensure their success. She said she had nothing special to say to young American actors--they are no different from young French ones--except perhaps that as Americans, we should fight harder for public funding from our own government. I couldn't help thinking that the "shot heard 'round the world" had come back to haunt us.

How refreshing might it be to read a defense of the artist in a democracy as an example of not only what the nation deserves from its art, but what artists deserve in a democratic society if that society is to live up to its highest potential as a democracy? I won't try to write such a defense, since a Kennedy once did, and I can't improve on his words.

So I offer an excerpt from that speech of JFK, made just a year after Ted Kennedy began his Senate career. With the death of Ted, an inspiring vision of democracy and culture has now lost its most direct connection with the present.

President John F. Kennedy: Remarks at Amherst College, October 26, 1963

"Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost. He brought an unsparing instinct for reality to bear on the platitudes and pieties of society. His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation. "I have been" he wrote, "one acquainted with the night." And because he knew the midnight as well as the high noon, because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit, he gave his age strength with which to overcome despair. At bottom, he held a deep faith in the spirit of man, and it is hardly an accident that Robert Frost coupled poetry and power, for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.

The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fibre of our national life.

If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society--in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope."

I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.

I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction."