The Revolution Will be Locally Funded

Wed, Jan 13th, 2010

By: Lamar Clarkson

Over the past decade, as the public has increasingly embraced the idea that food is best grown locally and sustainably, we’ve made the opposite assumption about our cultural institutions. Witness the “Bilbao effect,” recently declared all but dead in the New York Times. Smitten with the success of the Guggenheim’s outpost in Bilbao, Spain, we’ve come to believe that any city dissatisfied with its growth and tourist traffic need only follow a simple formula: Commission a big-name architect to design a bigger, flashier museum building, then wait for the tourists and tax dollars to come pouring in. And so we set to work turning culture into a cash crop, sowing boldface names and marble bricks like soybeans and corn.

But now groups of artist-entrepreneurs around the country have begun extending the locavore idea to the realm of culture. “Could we take the tactics from sustainable food production and apply that to art production?” asks Jeff Hnilicka, cofounder of the Brooklyn organization FEAST, short for Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics. FEAST, which celebrates its first anniversary next month, applies the logic of community-supported agriculture to grant-making: Locals pay admission to a volunteer-cooked dinner in exchange for the chance to vote on a set of artist proposals. The winning artist takes home the proceeds and presents the resulting work at the next dinner. Funded projects have included an underground library that circulates local artists’ work and a telegraph connecting the banks of the Gowanus Canal, inviting passersby to try tweeting in Morse code. This new incubator for art gives rise to an alternative economy that circumvents the usual gatekeepers and sets up a direct relationship between artist and audience. From Portland, Oregon, to Minneapolis, from Chicago to Buffalo, these groups are harnessing the principles of microfunding to strengthen their local arts communities—and, by extension, the cities that host them.

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