Page 23 - APAP Inside Arts - Spring 2020

Kyoung H. Park, Megan Pagado Wells, Mario Garcia Durham, Alicia Anstead and Allen Moon
AM: Was there anything you hoped to accomplish but didn’t?
MGD: When I first started, I was hoping presenting organizations would be able to use their organizations as a bully pulpit. What was disheartening for me from the NEA days was the fact that and also at APAP, whenever attacks would be made on funding for arts organizations, often the audiences sitting in the house would have zero idea of the connection between the funding that had to be cut off and the health of the organization. I feel like organizations don’t share that. We have a lot of folks who are sitting
in halls and who are voting for politicians who want to
cut funding for the arts and arts education. And yet our organizations will put on a show with their last two dimes and make sure everyone has a fantastic time, but there’s never ever any mention of: Hey, actually we need your help on this. I was hoping we would be able to message that a bit more. That’s something I didn’t accomplish at APAP.
“I think it’s important for other leaders to know about the value of vulnerability. It’s not: When you reach a position, vulnerability goes away. Vulnerability doesn’t go away. It can get harder, but we all can have it
in common.”
— Mario Garcia Durham
KP: How do we work within the field to acknowledge that the arts are part of public service and that the value of the arts should be a public concern?
MGD: I’m a structural kind of guy. What happened a couple of years ago in this exact room is that right after Trump was elected in November, we had APAP in January, and the question was raised of whether President Trump wants to eliminate the endowment. Some of my national colleagues who run the other service organizations said that will never happen. It’s never happened in the history of this country. Some of us believed we had to have a discussion about it regardless. So we met and talked about what would happen if he did eliminate the endowment – and sure enough he did. As soon as that happened, we were ready with our organizations to spread the word. Not on the artist level but on the level of large groups and organizations and individual level. Last year, the National Endowment for the first time in 10 years got an increase even though the administration keeps trying to eliminate it. I work best in that kind of structural system.
SPRING 2020 INSIDE ARTS 21