Monday, September 26, 2011
As I opened up The New York Times on Sept. 16, I knew I must have been mistaken; there is a performing arts center opening up in downtown Kansas City?
It’s true. Kansas City, Mo. has recently opened up the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, highlighting performances in ballet, opera, symphonies, and theater shows. All of a sudden, we have the opportunity to alter the normal arts rhetoric we have become accustomed to using the past several months.
This opening has more than just a mild affect on our culture, especially with the constant renewal of talks stemming from budget cutting on both the federal and state levels.
Arts programs have been easy targets for the government to cut spending. After all, what’s so important about art, anyway? Many of us undervalue how essential they are to our culture. But with this opening, we have a refreshing source of optimism. In the face of cuts and scrutiny, an exclusively artistic endeavor is poised to hopefully flourish.
Before getting too excited, I should establish some ground facts: the Kauffman Center was privately funded using absolutely no taxpayer funds (somewhere around $413 million). Construction began nearly five years ago, in October of 2006.
Obviously, the Kauffman Center is unique in how it came into being, but it still has the opportunity in my eyes to incite new excitement in those struggling to move forward from lowered states arts budgets scares and irresponsible leadership, most notably from our own governor, Sam Brownback.
Can we call this renewed hope? While the Kauffman Center is in Missouri, its proximity to Kansas raises notice. Five years ago, I doubt anyone really knew that Kansas budget pitfalls would be put to the test as they were, and who knew it would result in such attempts to drastically cut arts funds? At the same time, there are a lot of people who clearly care deeply about the arts and will stop at nothing to continue bringing its issues to light. Those supporters will always be there.
And the Kauffman Center is living proof of those people’s existence.
What Gov. Brownback and his supporters need to realize is that no matter how hard they may try, they will not quell the arts. Music, performance, literature, traditional art, education for all of it and everything in between will always have a place in our culture and in our hearts and minds. Why are some so convinced that all of the arts are attached to some ideologically liberal name tag that must be squashed before they impose some risk, detriment or weakness to our society?
The arts enrich our culture. The arts give people jobs. The arts attract businesses and tourists and generate revenue. The arts give our future generations something to remember us by. Their importance should be common sense.
And why not? They aren’t some dangerous venture that must be repressed. This is the time to prove to everyone that the arts belong with us, always. They shouldn’t be thrown aside as a sure threat to one day become extinct.
Just ask the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.
— Salsbury is a senior in English, History of Art, and Global & International Studies from Chapman. Follow him on Twitter @brettermichael
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Salsbury: Hope for arts
You know, as horrid as Brownback's cutting of the Arts Commission was... I don't think anybody was under the impression that would kill all art of any kind in the Sunflower State. Or, you know, across the state lines.
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