Seniors in Art Project Are Not the ‘Abandoned Elderly’

My art project funded by the Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts had the dubious honor of topping Christopher Knight’s list in an article criticizing the city for funding what he characterizes as “hobbies, social services and recreational activities” (Calendar, Sept. 4).

In all fairness, it might be easy to assume that an artist who is holding workshops and who has chosen non-hardening clay as a material to use, such as myself, is leading hobby classes, though certainly other possibilities might come to a more fertile or investigative mind. But I am especially surprised to find that Knight views the members of the senior citizens center, whom I see as collaborators in my project on earliest memories, as a group of “abandoned” people leading “difficult lives” who need help to “make life less trying.”

It’s clear to me that he doesn’t know these people who seem at least as healthy, happy and active as most people half their ages. I had imagined Knight to be someone who is particularly sensitive to such brazen stereotyping. But in his article, he not only mischaracterizes an entire age group and the collaborative nature of the project but he also misinforms his readers as to the nature of the work that can and cannot be funded through the City of Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts and its Cultural Affairs Department.

The Cultural Affairs Department stipulates that the projects it funds must be publicly accessible within Los Angeles and it makes clear its goal to serve traditionally underserved populations. In other words, the city wants to broaden the context within which art is typically offered.

The city does not control content. It does not ask what the subject matter or the meaning of the work will be. It does not base its decisions upon which issues are or are not apparent in the art work.

Knight seems unclear on this matter. He seems to be confusing issues of content and audience. City projects funded are designed to be made available to a variety of audiences, not, as Knight supposes, to “address issues of the working poor, the abandoned elderly, inadequacies of public schooling, the homeless and so on.” The audience does not dictate the content of the work. That is up to the artist.

The city simply wants to ensure that a broad population of its residents will be able to experience the projects it funds: a reasonable goal for a public-funded program.

Knight claims that “fellowship support is not available to artists who make work for contemplation.” This is a curious interpretation, for the city in no way limits an artist from producing such works, as long as they are publicly accessible.

He worries in his article that “serious working artists aren’t the principal concern” of the L.A. Endowment for the Arts and that “instead, the focus is on arts consumers and amateurs.” Perhaps it is the expanded art audience that makes Knight nervous, and the city’s efforts to decenter the locus of power among the L.A. arts community by placing work outside the rarefied atmosphere of galleries, museums and, even, nonprofit institutions.

In another article by Christopher Knight from the same week, he champions “the rise of art as the fulcrum for an open dialogue with a spectator.” Here, it would appear, is the place where the Cultural Affairs Department and Knight agree.

The point of debate, then, is over who that spectator should be: the city’s broad-based public or Christopher Knight’s selective list that excludes anyone who can be easily stereotyped as underprivileged.