Government-Funded Arts: Good for Busine$$ and the $oul

Michael Feinstein -- urbane pianist, vocalist and music archivist -- had only to walk onstage Thursday night to bring hundreds of cheering fans to their feet. He had come to the National Building Museum to accept a leadership award from the United States Conference of Mayors and Americans for the Arts, an advocacy group.

Feinstein's achievements go beyond a career of performing, promoting and preserving popular American music and lyrics written between the 1920s and the 1940s by such giants as Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin and Hoagy Carmichael, or more obscure composers like Herman Hupfeld, who, God love him, gave the world "As Time Goes By."

What the charming Feinstein also did to earn mayoral and art-activist gratitude (not to mention a lovely red blown glass vessel), was to bring his considerable talents and treasures to the heartland. Last fall, he signed on as the artistic director of a $160 million, not-yet-finished Regional Performing Arts Center in Carmel, Ind., just outside Indianapolis. For his labors, to be carried out when he's not traversing the world doing 150 annual performances, or at his homes in New York and L.A., Feinstein will earn $500,000 a year.

\Carmel mayor James Brainard, who acknowledges hearing a few complaints about that half a mil salary, insists the city got itself a good deal: Feinstein himself, of course, plus his eponymous Foundation for the Education and Preservation of the Great American Songbook, which includes an extensive collection of original music scores, movie posters and playbills.

"Professional football players are paid millions and millions," Brainard said. For far less money, his city of 80,000 gets a superstar, a foundation, and "museum quality" materials to be used by scholars and students, and exhibited for public enjoyment.

Other top entertainers have been similarly honored at previous winter meetings of the mayors in Washington --Tony Bennett, Wynton Marsalis, Rita Moreno -- but they did not perform. Feinstein gave the crowd a rich, if too-brief medley that opened with Berlin's ragtime classic "I Love The Piano," and ended with a dreamy rendition of "As Time Goes By." He riffed a bit about his own valuable exposure to music as a child in Columbus, Ohio, and hailed the Carmel project -- set to open next year -- as "the seed that can happen in any community."

Well, not exactly any community, just the ones that can find public or private money to turn derelict downtown buildings or vacant acreage into cultural havens and arts and design districts.

Mayors and arts advocates know that the way to finance such ventures, especially in this economy, is to pitch them as moneymaking tourist magnets, not necessarily as what they really are: local quality-of-life enhancers, especially for children.

"Art is a destination. When people come to the theater, they also spend money in restaurants and shops and hotels," said Elizabeth Kautz, mayor of Burnsville, Minn., and president of the Conference of Mayors. "It's the driver for economic development. But at the same time, it feeds the human soul."

Brava!

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Meanwhile, for those whose taste in art tilts toward cinema, the founders of Washington's own Politics On Film Festival have launched a cyber-survey to rank viewers' favorite political flicks of last year. From now through Jan. 29, click on this link and rank 10 movies: Avatar, District 9, Food Inc., Inglorious Basterds; Invictus, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Outrage, State of Play and The Response. This last picture, a drama based on a Guantanamo military tribunal that decided the fate of a Middle Eastern detainee, may yet snag an Oscar nomination for live action short films. (That announcement comes from Hollywood on Feb. 2). Or you can add your own worthy movie, and a few words about why it's hot.

It's not as if Washington had too few niche flick-fests when the co-founders put Politics On Film together last year. It's just that none of the events specifically featured politics in the broadest sense, thought Republicans Gayle Osterberg and Lee Johnson, founders of consulting firms here, and Democrat Philip Dufour, owner of an event planning and production company. They convened the first festival last May to encourage debate without rancor.

"Only in Washington could you pack a theater with films highlighting serious topics like the International Criminal Court in The Hague, or immigration policy, and then have people stay for for a 30-minute panel discussion," said Dufour.
"The filmmakers loved it," added Osterberg in a conference call. "They were not getting asked about their budgets, or how they got into countries where they were shooting. They were being asked about issues."






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