IN PERSPECTIVE #23: The artist as shareholder

The meeting room in the attic of the building on Brouwersgracht began to fill. Prior to the meeting, Director Geert Dales of the Fonds Beeldende Kunst, Vormgeving en Bouwkunst (BKVB) retreated with the chairman of the Fund Council. He wanted clarity on the role of that Fund Council by now. Where did the representatives of the artists' organisations keep a finger on the pulse? Where was their substantive meddling to stop?

Even this meeting, nearly 15 organisations around the table with a board member, the director and an employee of the Fund, brought no final conclusion. I chaired that Fund board for a couple of consecutive years in the mid-1990s. Reading through the minutes now, it seems that this body was created to talk about its own function.

The many-headed supervisor

The predecessor of today's Mondrian Fund, the BKVB Fund, came into being in 1987 in the wake of the dissolution of the BKR visual artist scheme. Perhaps the words "In the aftermath" better replaced by "for". For that had become the compromise: the Minister of Social Affairs lifted the 'counterperformance' - as the scheme was also called - but siphoned off 80 million guilders from his budget to set up a visual arts fund.¹ The motto was: 'From artists' policy to arts policy'.

And then there was a little make up for the protesting visual artists' organisations². They were allowed to share responsibility for the new fund in a Fund Council to be set up³. Which functioned In the first few years under the leadership of Mr Piet Cleveringa, former top official and major art collector⁴. The organisations - from interior designers to ceramists, illustrators to spatial designers - nominated members, the Fund Council appointed. The minister appointed the chairman.

Was the Fund Council just a sweetener or a useful tool after all? As a prop from a previous play, was it perhaps ballast rather than tool? In any case, when Geert Dales took office as chief executive, he quickly tied this beast to the bell. Benno Premsela, then president, gave him a free hand in this.

Advocacy

Formally, there was little cause for protracted discussion. The Royal Decree establishing the fund was clear: "There shall be a fund council whose task is to advise the board on the main lines of policy".⁵. And if you read the various annual reports, you see: that was what the Fund Council did. The council advised on various subjects, such as: the existing objection procedures (they were considered sufficient), the threat of government cutbacks (the Fund had to defend itself), the selection procedure for the composition of committees (this could be improved and could be done without the current involvement of the Fund Council), the professional expenses scheme (it had been improved), the multi-annual policy plan (too much expansionism), starting artists (give more attention). And so on.

But instead of an advisory body, Dales wanted a formal consultative framework between the organised profession and the Fund. With him, it was actually about advocacy. He had no need for functions such as quality control or monitoring the impartiality of award committees. And: if Fund board members became advocates, then they should also no longer receive an attendance fee. Besides: meeting once a year should be sufficient.

The Fund Council (as well as myself) preferred to speak of 'advocacy plus': i.e. "That the members speak from their constituency, but are able and willing to look beyond, more broadly in the interests of the fund."⁶ Moreover, while the Fund Council gave sufficient substantive advice, the board and agency did not sufficiently pick up on it, was the experience.

In the end, not much changed. There were only some practical working arrangements that would improve contact with the board.

A few years later, the Fund Council and with it 'artist supervision' disappeared after all. The Mondriaan Fund and also the other funds can apparently do without it. The statutes of Mondriaan Fund, Literary Fund or Fund for the Performing Arts do not stipulate anything about consultation with the artists' field.

'This is about us!'

What role do artists actually have in oversight and governance within the arts system? Always a topic of discussion, with a whole history. On one, extreme, side of the line are the artists who believe that art belongs to them and with it everything that can be directed in art matters. For eighty years, there have been cynical interjections from artists at conferences about all the well-paid executives discussing the topic of the day during working hours, while independent artists, considerably less well-paid, are doing this in their own precious time. And that while it is about their domain.

Completely on the other side are the officials who want to speak exclusively in terms of art policy and not artists' policy, but who do want to 'take on board' the views and experiences of the profession when it suits. Between these extremes, there is a substantial middle and it still sometimes shifts back and forth.

The Federation of Artists' Associations, which grew out of the artists' resistance, had ambitious ideals: professional recognition, its own knowledge centre for policy and documentation, and a Council for the Arts with major artist input⁷. Professional recognition proved unfeasible. The documentation and research centre - the Boekman Foundation - gradually grew into an autonomous institution, outside the board of artists. The Arts Council evolved into the Council for Culture. Not without artists, but without formal lines to constituencies. Present artists were embedded in a wider regiment of experts.

Who do the arts belong to?

Question: who owns the art? Copyright is usually not a problem: the art belongs to the person who made it. But when the artist hands over his work - the book is in the shop, the painting hangs in the exhibition, the play is seen - it also belongs to the person who enjoys it and certainly to the buyer. The book I bought is mine, the artwork I saved for is mine. The piece of music or theatre does not belong to me, but the stage does a bit: we all contribute to the subsidy.

Art policy is not only in the interest of artists, but perhaps most of all of us as the public, as citizens. In agricultural policy, farmers are essential stakeholders, but the policy is not theirs, not first and foremost for them. For the Ministry of Economic Affairs, entrepreneurs are essential stakeholders, but - although you wouldn't always say so - the entrepreneurs are not in charge there.

A new governance?

The question is how to best do justice to the artist/stakeholder, taking into account 'ownership'. In the answer, you have to distinguish between influencing policy, concrete financial allocations and the functioning of funds and other institutions. And there is also the difference between advocacy (that's what we have the unions for), the organised lobby (Arts92; Federation of Culture, Federation of Creative Industries) and co-managing from a broad artist's point of view.

Within cultural policy, there are many other stakeholders besides artists. Think of employers, industry associations and others. For them too, the subsidised system does not belong to them, although they often think it does. For them, too, you have to distinguish between representing interests and well-considered co-management. I do have the impression that over the years, governments have taken the second group much more seriously and given it more concrete influence than the artists' segment.

Actually, after the formation of the first Arts Council, this aspect of 'governance' of the entire cultural system has never been much of an explicit topic. Hardly anything appears to be recorded about it.

Delineation

I thought back to the loft on Brouwersgracht and the discussions with Geert Dales, long before he became an alderman and mayor. Back then there was still something laid down by law. And it occurred to me that it would be good to regulate that 'governance' after all. Not necessarily by law, but by fixed agreements. Fixed times for consultation on interest representation and lobbying. Agreements on input on policy. A defined influence on the ins and outs of the relevant institutions. And all this not just to prevent reversed flags flying in the (arts) field.

Nuts

1 Fransje Kuyvenhoven, A Monument to the BKR, Amersfoort, 2020

2 Who remarkably - according to a letter from the BBK dated 18 January 1995- would have preferred a departmental department rather than an independent foundation at the time.

3 Royal Decree 2 July 1987, establishment of Fund for visual arts, design and architecture,

4 Michiel Morel, At First Sight, the art of Piet Cleveringa (1917- 2013), internet.

5 Royal Decree 2 July 1987 establishing a Fund for visual arts, design and architecture, Article 6

6 Note from chairman Fund Council, November 1994

7 Fenna van den Burg and Jan Kassies, Artists of the Netherlands! For Unity and Control, Amsterdam 1987 and: Jan Kassies, In search of culture, Nijmegen, 1980