Does Art Get the Respect it Deserves?
All Hail Ellen Walker
I’ve spent almost half a century interviewing artists and arts administrators, chronicling Seattle’s amazing arts organizations and a once-thriving arts scene. Essentially, trying to explain why art matters.
I realize there are tangible reasons I could cite, thanks to organizations like 4Culture, the Seattle Arts Commission and Arts Fund, who have studied the data and come up with some mind-blowing statistics. And I have used those data in my reporting, but I’ve also spent years looking for ways to put the spiritual, emotional or community-building pieces into context. I haven’t been particularly successful at convincing a broad, mainstream audience of the critical role artists and arts organizations play, but I’m compelled to keep trying.
Some people say it’s only the economic impacts that matter. And if that’s your major criteria, check out some of the most recent studies from the City of Seattle or Arts Fund. If I recall correctly, pre-pandemic, the cultural sector including creative industries like video games or other software development, contributed to ¼ of our regional economy behind players like Boeing or the strictly tech portions of the huge tech sector.
These same arts advocates can pull out reams of data that show how kids involved in the arts learn different problem-solving skills, or develop more open-ended, creative ways to think. Or that participation in the arts helps people with Parkinson’s Disease, even with certain types of cancer. I think it’s mind boggling, but I know there are so many things that art gives us that haven’t been documented so rigorously.
In addition to running Pacific Northwest Ballet, ( an all-consuming day job) PNB executive director Ellen Walker has been an arts advocate for many years. I recently had an opportunity to talk with her about her company’s new production of The Sleeping Beauty, specifically about whether an investment of several million dollars would pay off at a time when arts organizations are still trying to recover from the pandemic’s financial blows.
I was talking specifically about money, but Walker wanted to make sure I understood the connections between dollars and cents and the more personal connections people feel to the ballet, or any other arts institution they patronize.
“I feel like we’re sort of shouting into the wind sometimes,” she says, trying to get her mind around the lack of local civic and political support for arts’ intrinsic community value. “We’re really trying to figure out the key to our sustainability.”
Walker notes that many people, including our politicians, believe the new local cultural access tax, Doors Open, will be the answer to the sector’s woes. A couple years back, the King County Council unanimously authorized the small sales tax to provide unrestricted operating funds to arts, heritage and other cultural institutions, something Walker calls “awesome.” But, she says, “there’s this persistent perception that Doors Open is the solution, that it solves everything,” she says. “But for many of us, it just replaces funding we lost over the years.”
And with the exception of Microsoft, Walker says arts organizations don’t get significant support from other big tech companies here.
She was preaching to the choir.
I know the impact the cultural sector can make, but I also know that big philanthropies like to measure their investments with data. That’s sometimes possible, for example with a charity that buys instruments for low-income school kids, or provides tickets to the Seattle Children’s Theater, or in the case of PNB, helps underwrite the cost of ballet lessons for kids who might not otherwise have access. Each of these organizations can measure the number of kids served with instruments or lessons or performance tickets.
But how do you measure the emotional effect on a family that attends PNB’s new production of The Sleeping Beauty? I attended a recent rehearsal of the big wedding scene, where Princess Aurora and Prince Desire (dehsiray, not deezire), dance a beautiful duet of their love, amidst a crowd of fairies with wands, magic animals and other party guests. They weren’t even wearing the stunning costumes designed by Paul Tazewell or performing in artist Preston Singletary’s Tlingit-culture inspired set, but I was almost in tears. I can’t wait to see that powerful combination of dance and supporting design.
I am most definitely NOT a general audience observer, or even a mildly involved outsider. I’m 100% convinced that each show I attend adds to my well-being. The older I get, the more I realize the psychic value of even a fairy tale, let alone the visual stunner that this one will be.
PNB’s Ellen Walker is convinced that sitting in that audience, receiving the gift of that beauty, from the dancers to the craftspeople that sew the costumes and paint the sets, is something you can’t measure, but equally it’s something that contributes to the perception of Seattle as a world class city, a place where people create everything from Coast Salish-inspired costumes to innovative software. Here in the far corner of the country, Seattle has always fostered creative dreams, from those of Bill Boeing to Kurt Cobain to Preston Singletary.
“I just think there’s a psychic need that’s fulfilled sitting in a theater,” Walker asserts. “That kind of spiritual nourishment of our brain and our imaginations is really good for us,” she says. Amen!
I once called Walker “relentlessly cheerful,” which she is. But she’s also relentlessly passionate, about PNB specifically, and Seattle’s arts community more generally.
Walker is trying to sell ballet tickets at this moment in time; she’s also trying to prove, once again, the value of Seattle’s arts scene as it limps its way forward from the pandemic.
“We’re trying to say something important about art in this city,” Walker stresses. “And we’re trying to do it with less buy in, and less acknowledgment of the importance of this sector than ever before.”
You can buy in with a big donation, if you can swing that. But you can also buy in with a ticket purchase. Pacific Northwest Ballet’s new production of The Sleeping Beauty runs January 31-February 9 at Seattle Center’s McCaw Hall.