NEA chair links art to community
Date: July 24, 2007
Author: Kauffman Center
Dana Gioia began his after-dinner presentation on Tuesday, July 17 by telling the small group of Kauffman Center supporters that he was going to talk about “mystery and magic” and “ways to feel emotions never felt before.”
But he also brought hard empirical data to bear on his belief that the effort to bring a new performing arts center to Kansas City is directly aligned with improving community health.
Gioia is current chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation’s largest annual funder of the arts. Gioia is largely credited with rebuilding the NEA’s reputation, credibility and reach during his tenure. In remarks at several Kansas City stops this week, he demonstrated why he has been successful in reaffirming the role of government funding for the arts.
“The latest NEA study, The Arts and Civic Engagement: Involved in Arts, Involved in Life, demonstrates -- with statistically reliable data -- that there is a clear link between arts participation and community health. Put simply, Americans who read books, attend theater, and engage in other arts are more active in community life than those who do not,” Gioia emphasized.
With the Kauffman Center audience at Webster House he took a philosophical approach, examining the meaning—and import—of the arts. Quoting a Robert Frost poem, he said, “Poetry is a way to remember what it would impoverish us to forget.” Entities like the Kauffman Center, he extrapolated, are there to enrich us. “They delight, instruct, inspire, console and cause is to remember,” he emphasized. “And take us away from lives that are sometimes too focused on the latest, new thing.”
Gioia did not disparage other aspects of modern life, but emphasized that we need the balance that the arts provide—and that we now know are so critical to our community. “The arts help us to know the world in ways we can’t approach through science, or math or technology. The fact that something is mysterious does argue against its existence,” and we need all these channels “to know the world.”
Gioia closed his remarks with compliments to Kauffman Center supporters for “volunteering to elect themselves to make a difference in the lives of countless young people,” referring to those who will benefit for many years to come from the arts offered there. And he challenged the group with some lines from As You Like It, “to find good in everything.”
About the NEA
The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment, brings great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases. Renominated by President George W. Bush in November 2006 for a second term and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Dana Gioia is the ninth Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
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