Presidential Arts

Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker, has posted a link to an article about Pres. Obama's attendance at a recent Kennedy Center performance. Ross describes the article as "a promising piece," implying that Obama's action represents a positive act. The article reports similar responses in other art scene players:

If outings to arts venues become a habit with the first family, “it would be a huge boon to the arts community in Washington and for the United States and the world,” says David Andrew Snider, president of the League of Washington Theatres. “There’s a widespread feeling that he ‘gets it.’ He gets the importance of the arts” (Boehm, M. and Jones, C. 2009).

Two things manifest here. First, a "rhetoric of survival" (McClary, S. 1989) runs throughout the responses quoted in the article. Above, Snider connects Obama's faithful participation (expressed with the colloquialism "he gets it") with the potential for increasing the public profile and attendance in art events. Snider suggests that some don't "get" the importance of the arts and that that is bad.

Second, patronage and its devices shape the economy of prestige practiced by artistic cultures. Snider expresses this with the word "boon." President Obama's presence acts as an endorsment, blessing "the arts community" with enormous symbolic capital.