WAMC Commentary March 23, 2009
Mary Schmidt Campbell
Chair, New York State Council on the Arts
Dean, Tisch School of the Arts
On March 9, Governor David Paterson and the New York State Department of Transportation Commissioner, Astrid Glynn, announced the state’s new plan for the overhaul of New York State’s freight and passenger rail system. Their announcement is good news, not just for the citizens of New York State and for the thousands of tourists who visit New York every year, but for the state’s cultural organizations and artists as well. Geographically, the state of New York is vast, roughly the size of France. Unlike France, however, which is part of a sprawling network of high speed trains that connects cities all over Europe, New York State has a rail system that is limited, to say the least. As a result, some of the state’s cultural gems are not easily accessible via train, a low cost, energy efficient means of travel, if ever there was one.
Though the overhaul of the state’s rail system was most certainly not motivated by the needs of the state’s cultural community, the improvements could potentially have a substantial impact on the vitality of the state’s cultural life. This fact hit home for me as I toured the senior exhibition of graduating seniors in the department of photography and imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts. I was struck by the number of images that were taken in far away places. When I asked the students how they traveled, all of those who lived and worked in western and eastern Europe immediately identified the cheap, fast and safe travel made possible with a Eurail pass. They could wake up in London in the morning and be in Paris for lunch. Mostly what my students conveyed was the idea that travel in Europe was simple to access and affordable and like the social networking of the internet, made mobility and making connections fun and easy. So they used the rail system, over and over again. No doubt what was good for my students was also very good for the cultural market place as well, encouraging and facilitating a constant flow of people - residents, tourists, young and old. The gems in our cultural marketplace in New York State would reap those same benefits with the kind of changes envisioned in the passenger rail system.
Like the overhaul of the rail system, there are any number of infrastructure issues, which on the face of them, would seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with the New York State cultural community: housing, energy, telecommunications, and transportation to name a few. On closer examination, however, they have everything to do with the health of our cultural community. For example, the availability of affordable housing is a critical issue not only for working artists, but also for the employees and staffs of cultural institutions all over the state. The cost of energy is a fundamental part of any organization’s balance sheet and Proctor’s Theater in downtown Schenectady discovered that finding a creative means of lowering the cost of energy not only lowered their operating costs but, in a partnership with the corporate sector, became a source of earned income. Widely available high speed internet service would make New York State a more attractive place to do business, especially when that fact is coupled with an attractive inventory of cultural institutions.
Last year NYSCA held a series of cultural blueprints conversations. These conversations, conducted in partnership with the Empire State Development Corporation, were held in nine of the state’s economic development regions. The goal was to identify those economic opportunities in which culture, as it often has been, might be a catalyst for economic renewal. Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of those conversations was the enthusiastic participation of a host of other state agencies, the department of transportation among them. Looking ahead, I can hardly wait for the time, when my students can travel as easily around the state of New York as they do the continent of Europe.
