Since the budget cuts from 2011, policymakers have been setting the so-called 'creative industries' as a model for the arts. Industrial design, architecture, graphic design and the gaming industry: creatives have been nuked as a 'top sector'. This, I believe, is the deeper cause of the unease expressed in this newspaper's Cultural Supplement: the increasing instrumentalisation of art by policymakers.
The piece 'Why Studio Drift's magic is hypocritical' agitates against designers 'intruding' into the art domain. Hans den Hartog Jager's criticism focuses mainly on the designer duo Studio Drift and the fact that the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum has acquired a work by them (two smaller works Drift donated to the museum). The author accuses these designers of "eroding art" by cleverly using concepts from autonomous visual art and translating them into "consumer kitsch". According to him, the national museum of contemporary art legitimises 'bite-sized humbug' by this purchase.
Charlatans?
In my view, the problem is not that cultural disciplines are overlapping and hybrid forms are making their appearance. Of course, you can take the view that Studio Drift's "starry sky" created with illuminated drones is nothing more than "simple sensation". A similar debate also played out around designer Marcel Wanders' exhibition at the Stedelijk and that of visual artist Jeff Koons, who calls himself 'partly an imposter'.
Charlatans yes or no: art history has been debating it since time immemorial. It is precisely the task of contemporary presentation institutions to conduct and feed that debate. (Incidentally, Studio Drift's work was purchased by the Stedelijk's industrial design curator , so not funded from the art budget).
Alzheimer's
The real problem is that art is increasingly being steered via grants - including by wealth funds - towards projects with 'social impact'. One example is special programmes in museums for Alzheimer's patients.
Such engagement has merit, but there is a risk of attaching particular importance to the derived value of art: it then acts as a means of providing issues in society with a creative - and sometimes cheap - 'solution'. An additional problem is, that for such functional applications of creativity, it is not primarily autonomous artists who are suitable, but designers. They are trained to use techniques for commissioned work. As a result, it is they who increasingly win commissions for art in public spaces, for instance - traditionally an important livelihood for sculptors.
Afsluitdijk
Where artistic freedom used to be central, the emphasis is now on applicability. A well-known example is the sustainable yet beautiful lighting that architect-trained Daan Roosegaarde designed for the Afsluitdijk. Especially at the local level, you see this shift. Municipalities are the biggest distributors of cultural subsidies, but arts funding is not a legal obligation for them. Because the decentralisation of state tasks to lower authorities was accompanied by a simultaneous cutback, municipalities are cutting back heavily on culture. So they can fulfil their mandatory (youth) care tasks. By deploying art budgets in Care, they kill two birds with one stone.
Artists or designers who give workshops to mentally disabled people are usually cheaper than specially trained social workers who work with these people all the time. It is also significant that more and more municipalities no longer have a separate alderman for culture: art is then shoved into Care or Education. With this, the dossier knowledge and involvement in art of the most important art financier: the local government, disappears.
Earning power
That the creative industries should now act as role models has a clear message: can't art also develop into a for profit-sector?
It is efficiency thinking implemented in its extreme form: the pursuit seems to be art that no longer needs subsidies. This policy trend sends the wrong signal to politicians and the public. After all, the so-called 'earning power' of autonomous art is substantially different from that of creative industry.
Nowadays, even within the art world itself, people refer to 'the cultural and creative sector' in the same breath, recently in the opinion Arts2030 From lobby organisation Arts 92 to the minister.
With this docility to this instrumental subsidy policy, the sector is shooting itself in its own foot. The art world in particular must continue to bring to the fore that the arts are in itself have value for viewers and listeners. That value lies precisely in the fact that a painting or symphony is not always easy to understand, but rather seeks to offer a different experience or perspective than we already know.
False comparison
It is not the 'entertaining' forms of art - or kitsch - that pose the biggest threat. The danger lies in the assumption that artists are quite capable of 'holding their own' if they are entrepreneurial enough, and a bit flexible. The comparison with the creative industries is a false one that seems mainly motivated by thrift and a lack of knowledge.
Nothing against the creative industries, but let's beware of subsectors being played off against each other - with possible cuts as a result.
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