[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 12 (Monday, January 22, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S821-S824]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          MICHAEL KAISER ON CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT AND EXCHANGE

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I am pleased to share with my colleagues 
a recent speech by Michael Kaiser, the president of the Kennedy Center. 
Mr. Kaiser is an impressive and highly respected national leader in 
arts policy and advocacy. Last month, he addressed the National Press 
Club and spoke about the importance of cultural development and 
exchange.
  In addition to his role as the president of our national performing 
arts center, Mr. Kaiser serves as a cultural ambassador for the 
administration. He has traveled around the globe to assist cultural 
organizations in many countries--including Latin America, the Middle 
East, and Asia. Cultural diplomacy is an effective part of our Nation's 
outreach to other countries and cultures, and Mr. Kaiser's role is an 
impressive part of that effort.
  He is an articulate and visionary leader for the Kennedy Center and a

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major national resource. I believe his address to the National Press 
Club last month will be of interest to all of us, and I ask unanimous 
consent that it be printed at this point in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the National Press Club, Dec. 7, 2006]

                   Cultural Development and Exchange

                      (Remarks by Michael Kaiser)

       It is a great pleasure to be here today to discuss the 
     Kennedy Center's approach to international cultural exchange.
       I must admit to being a relative newcomer to the 
     international arts scene. In fact, after I finished business 
     school and applied to the World Bank for an entry-level 
     position, I was told I was exactly what they were not looking 
     for--someone who demonstrated no passion for international 
     affairs. I hope they would take me more seriously today.
       In the early 1990's, I took the Alvin Ailey American Dance 
     Theater on tour to Japan, Greece, France and elsewhere. But 
     my international work really began with an invitation by the 
     Rockefeller Foundation to help the Market Theatre in 
     Johannesburg in 1994. Three weeks after Nelson Mandela's 
     inauguration I took my first of 18 monthly trips to Jo'burg; 
     I worked for the Market Theatre, I participated in the 
     creation of the Arts Council for the new South Africa and I 
     taught an arts management program in Jo'burg, Durban and Cape 
     Town. I fell in love with a nation and gained a mentor at the 
     same time.
       Barney Simon, the late, great founder of the Market Theatre 
     taught me that the arts truly can change the world. Barney, 
     an unlikely father for South African theater, developed and 
     exported anti-apartheid protest theater. He played a major 
     role in educating Europeans and Americans about the horrors 
     of apartheid. He did change the world.
       And he changed me.
       I learned from Barney about truth in art; about the courage 
     it takes to be a real leader, and about the difference 
     between producing a show and producing change.
       When Barney died in 1995 the world lost an arts hero. And I 
     lost a mentor.
       What I learned from Barney provided the foundation for my 
     international work at the Kennedy Center.
       I have spent the last 5 years building an international 
     activity that I, perhaps naively, believe will change the 
     world. Maybe not as dramatically as Barney's work at the 
     Market Theatre, but change nonetheless.
       After my internship with Barney and after observing the 
     arts world from a different perspective when I ran the Royal 
     Opera House in London, I developed my own ideas about 
     cultural exchange.
       The Kennedy Center has given me a unique platform to test 
     these ideas. Shortly after I arrived in Washington, I was 
     approached by State Department officials asking me which 
     American artists should be sent abroad to represent the 
     United States and to foster cultural exchange.
       I surprised these State Department representatives by 
     explaining that many people around the world feel they 
     experience enough American culture. It may not be high 
     culture but people from London to Jo'burg to St. Petersburg 
     to Beijing have so much exposure to American movies, 
     television and pop music that they have no real interest in 
     more.
       And while I am certainly in favor of sending talented 
     Americans to perform abroad, sending a great artist for one 
     concert for 1000 of the richest and most powerful people in 
     any nation has virtually no impact.
       I suggested that we need to take a new, two-pronged 
     approach to cultural exchange.
       First, we need to recognize that Americans know almost 
     nothing about other peoples. We read about political leaders 
     and movements but we know nothing about the people who live 
     in China or Lebanon or Colombia.
       And I believe the most effective and engaging way to learn 
     about other people is to experience their arts. We need to 
     provide access to the art and the culture of other peoples. 
     We need Americans to see what moves other people, what they 
     think of as beautiful, what they worry about. When we hosted 
     the Iraqi Symphony at the Kennedy Center three years ago the 
     most common response I heard was, ``I didn't know Iraq had a 
     symphony.'' Most Americans were completely unaware of the 
     level of education and culture of the people of Iraq. In 
     October of last year, we hosted 900 performers from China at 
     the Kennedy Center in a landmark 4-week festival of Chinese 
     art.
       We presented eastern and western music, Chinese opera, 
     theater, ballet, modern dance, film and puppetry. Virtually 
     every performance was sold out. One memorable shadow puppet 
     performance depicted the devastating impact of the Japanese 
     bombing of China through the eyes of a little boy. My 
     audience developed a new and vivid idea of the concerns of 
     Chinese parents; they realized they were far more like 
     Chinese people than they were different.
       Not only our audiences were affected. The press attention 
     in Washington, throughout the United States and in China was 
     huge. I believe we influenced the thinking of many people.
       We have festivals of Japanese art, Arab art, Indian art and 
     Russian art planned for the coming years.
       But that is only one half of the cultural exchange puzzle.
       I feel we have to exchange with other nations but it does 
     not necessarily have to be art that we offer.
       I have learned through my travels that there is almost no 
     arts management education in other countries.
       And while I could and often do make speeches on the need 
     for better arts management education in the United States, I 
     find the state of this training in other countries to be even 
     more rudimentary. It appears that the central role of 
     government funding in other nations has limited the perceived 
     need for this kind of education. But so many governments, in 
     fact most governments, are cutting back on their arts 
     support. And arts organizations in big European countries and 
     small African nations and Latin countries and Asian countries 
     are threatened. Arts managers here and elsewhere have no idea 
     how to respond.
       They have never learned how to develop new sources of 
     contributed funds and have been unable, for various reasons, 
     to develop high levels of earned income.
       Therefore, I believe that instead of only exchanging our 
     art for the art of other nations, we should also offer our 
     experience and expertise in arts management and revenue 
     generation to arts managers and government officials in other 
     countries.
       We at the Kennedy Center believe we are in a strong 
     position to address this issue because we have systematically 
     developed approaches to teaching arts management.
       When I first arrived at the Kennedy Center in 2001 we 
     established an arts management institute to address the 
     challenge of training arts managers in the United States and 
     abroad. To date, we have welcomed 66 Fellows; half of them 
     have come from countries other than the United States. These 
     practicing arts administrators have come from Russia and the 
     Czech Republic and Malaysia and Spain and Egypt and Pakistan 
     and numerous other countries. They take classes in 
     development, marketing, technology, financial management, 
     labor relations etc. I teach strategic planning every Friday 
     morning.
       But they also work in our various departments on high level 
     projects, participate in board meetings and other similar 
     events, and develop a strong understanding of the way an arts 
     organization can function. For many of our Fellows, and 
     certainly most of our foreign Fellows, this is their first 
     exposure to a large, well-functioning arts organization.
       Just last month on a trip to Cairo I was touring an 
     independent arts center named the Townhouse. As I opened a 
     door to its new theater, there was Nora Amin, a former 
     fellow, teaching arts management to a group of young 
     Egyptians. It was both surprising and deeply rewarding.
       We have also developed a training program for the leaders 
     of arts organizations of color throughout the United States. 
     This program complements periodic in-person symposia with 
     more frequent on-line training sessions that have become an 
     efficient way for us to reach students from many geographical 
     areas at once. Since developing this program four years ago, 
     we have created others for small and mid-sized orchestras and 
     arts organizations in New York City. In total we are working 
     with 90 arts organizations in this country, And, most 
     recently, we have developed a program for training Board 
     members of arts organizations and created a website, 
     artsmanager.org, featuring arts management resources.
       In some cases, we work with individual arts organizations 
     in need. For the past two years we have worked to help save 
     the Dance Theatre of Harlem. More recently, we have worked to 
     assist an arts organization truly in a perilous place at a 
     perilous time: the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra--New 
     Orleans' largest classical arts organization. Hurricane 
     Katrina destroyed the LPO's theater, its offices, its music 
     library, and its larger instruments. The subscriber base has 
     been scattered and the donor base focused on other more 
     immediate needs.
       Yet the intrepid LPO staff and Board, with some guidance 
     from us, has been able to raise enough to bring the full 
     orchestra back, to mount a fairly large spring program this 
     past season, and to pay off virtually all the payables of the 
     institution.
       All of this work has prepared us to address the challenge 
     of teaching arts management in other nations.
       Our focus has been on countries in transition and in 
     trouble.
       Why?
       Because I believe that the arts play an especially 
     important role in troubled societies.
       I believe that the arts have a power to heal. Expressing 
     anger, pain and fear on stage is productive and effective. 
     The protest theater of South Africa helped many people cope 
     with their anger while also producing change.
       Arts can address all segments of society. While the largest 
     arts organizations typically address the wealthier and 
     better-educated segments of society, the smaller non-
     government organizations reach far beyond the elite. That is 
     why we have focused our attention on these organizations.
       Artists are opinion generators. When we support artists in 
     troubled areas, we teach others about the problems in society 
     and the impact of those problems.
       In fact, the arts are the safest way for people to express 
     themselves.
       And the arts can replace pain with beauty.
       My first foray into this new international realm was in 
     Mexico--until the recent Presidential election not really a 
     country in turmoil but an arts environment in turmoil.

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       The government of Mexico has been responsible for 
     approximately 90% of arts funding in that country and has a 
     stated goal of reducing this level of support. Also, this 
     funding is concentrated; too few organizations receive any 
     government funding and the non-government organizations--
     NGO's--are typically tiny and struggling.
       I have spent the last two years training a group of 35 arts 
     managers of small arts organizations in Mexico who all run 
     NGO's. They each received their first government grants in a 
     special program called Mexico en Escena, Mexico on Stage. 
     These grants were 2-year grants totaling $50,000.
       Part of the grant was access to a week-long seminar on 
     planning at the beginning of the grant and quarterly classes 
     thereafter. I am the teacher of these programs.
       The program ends this month, as the government of Mexico 
     changes. Virtually all of the groups have made huge strides. 
     Most have improved their artistic quality substantially and 
     many have created new fund-raising and marketing 
     capabilities. About one-half of the groups are truly poised 
     for additional growth and achievement as this program ends.
       As I was initiating my work in Mexico, I also began to 
     develop a relationship with the government of China.
       Our festival of Chinese art was of great interest to the 
     government there and a strong relationship was developed. In 
     keeping with my philosophy expressed earlier, we traded art 
     for expertise. The Chinese provided us with a remarkable 
     array of performers and performing groups. We offered back 
     training in arts management.
       I go to China twice a year to teach up to 500 arts managers 
     at a time; in addition, we host 20 arts managers from China 
     at the Kennedy Center for a week each summer. I must admit to 
     being a bit daunted the first time I faced a room of 500 
     students; and the Socratic method of teaching I prefer took 
     my students many days to become accustomed to.
       I have also had to fight, as I have elsewhere, to ensure 
     that the majority of my students are truly arts managers and 
     not government bureaucrats. This has been a consistent 
     challenge in every country in which I have taught.
       But my students in China are excellent and learn quickly 
     and are working diligently to develop private sources of 
     funding and new marketing techniques. Like my students in 
     Mexico and elsewhere, there is far greater comfort attempting 
     to raise funds from foundations and corporations but I 
     continually pressure my students to attempt to develop an 
     individual donor base as well.
       For as we have learned in America, individual donors are 
     far more loyal than institutional donors, and there is far 
     more total money available from individuals, and, eventually, 
     far larger gifts available from individuals. Arts 
     organizations that rely most heavily on institutional giving 
     typically remain small.
       Much of my work here and elsewhere focuses in part on the 
     problems faced by all arts organizations, whether in Beijing 
     or Butte.
       Of course, the central difficulty we face in the performing 
     arts is the challenge of improving productivity.
       Unlike virtually every other industry, we cannot cover the 
     costs of inflation with increases in productivity. There are 
     the same number of performers in Don Giovanni as when Mozart 
     wrote it over 200 years ago. This productivity challenge is 
     matched by an earned income challenge: once we build a 
     theater we have literally set the earned revenue potential 
     in concrete. We cannot increase true earned revenue since 
     we cannot increase the number of seats in our theater. I 
     remember bringing the Ailey company to the Herod Atticus--
     a beautiful Roman amphitheater built into the base of the 
     Acropolis in Athens. The entire company was awed by the 
     setting--performing outdoors with the moon over the 
     Acropolis. I only stood on stage and marveled that there 
     were the same number of seats as when it was built 2000 
     years ago.
       These productivity and earned income constraints, that the 
     arts have been facing for centuries, place great pressure on 
     ticket prices, unless new sources of funding can be 
     developed. And in most countries, raising ticket prices 
     simply means reducing audience size and diversity, hardly an 
     attractive option.
       We teach how to plan for the challenges faced by every arts 
     organization and how to plan for the idiosyncratic challenges 
     faced in a given country.
       While every arts organization must address the productivity 
     problem, the challenges posed by religious factions in 
     Pakistan are different from the government restrictions faced 
     by Chinese organizations.
       Of course, a good deal of this planning must address how to 
     develop new sources of revenue, and particularly, how 
     marketing can be used to aid this effort. My mantra for 
     running a successful arts organization is good art, well 
     marketed. I have yet to see an arts organization that 
     routinely produces great art and also markets that art 
     aggressively that does not have the resources to pursue its 
     mission.
       We teach why this is true and how to implement strong 
     artistic planning and how to develop a comprehensive 
     marketing campaign.
       Most recently, we have addressed these issues in Pakistan. 
     The Pakistani arts ecology has experienced 30 years of 
     neglect and its government has asked us to help build back 
     this sector. We have created a plan to address this goal. 
     Central elements of this plan include:
       Investing in physical infrastructure: Pakistani theaters 
     are in tremendous disrepair. I visited one of the country's 
     ``best'' theaters, the Alhambra in Lahore.
       It has a floor so warped it can not house professional 
     dancers, and has only 10 lighting instruments, as compared to 
     the 300 or so we expect in an American theater.
       Creating flagship arts organizations: There are no larger 
     arts organizations that create important art and serve as 
     role models for the nation. A national gallery of art is 
     about to open; we need major dance and theater and musical 
     organizations as well that can serve as centers of expertise 
     and training.
       Improving production capabilities: If Pakistani artists are 
     to compete internationally, the nation must develop more 
     expertise in technical theater: lighting, set, costume and 
     sound design.
       Teaching Arts Management: There is virtually no training 
     for people running arts organizations. We must develop some 
     teaching capacity in Pakistan, as we must in other countries 
     in which we can only play a minimal role.
       Creating arts education programs: There is little arts 
     education in the schools and very few teachers equipped to 
     bring the arts into the classroom. In addition, there are few 
     works developed expressly for young audiences so children are 
     rarely introduced to the arts.
       Building international awareness of Pakistani arts and 
     culture: There is very little understanding of the rich 
     history of culture in the region. And there are currently few 
     arts organizations that can tour with competitive 
     programming.
       We have begun to implement this plan. We produced a one-
     week training program for 30 arts leaders this August. We 
     have created a web site on Pakistani culture to be used to 
     educate their children and others throughout the world on the 
     rich heritage of this nation. We have planned a children's 
     theater collaboration between the Kennedy Center and the 
     Pakistan National Council on the Arts. Additional programs 
     are also in the planning stage.
       But if Pakistan is to develop into a true democracy, 
     artists must be free to create, and an infrastructure to 
     present this art must be developed.
       It is still unclear if the current government will 
     demonstrate a sustained interest in this endeavor and will be 
     willing to change the vestigial laws that continue to 
     restrict artistic freedom.
       I am committed to working with the government of Pakistan 
     to build the strength of its arts ecology but will also work 
     with the nation's artists to change legislation that 
     prohibits this development.
       I have learned a great deal from my experiences in China 
     and Mexico and Pakistan. I can summarize them in ten major 
     observations:
       Most arts managers in many countries have few peers and 
     fewer mentors from whom they can learn. These managers feel 
     isolated and helpless. If a major donor is truly going to 
     make change, one must provide consistent and substantial 
     technical support as well as cash.
       To make major change in many countries requires involvement 
     of the government. In Mexico, for example, arts groups 
     receiving consistent government funding must return to the 
     government that portion of their subsidies that equal their 
     private fundraising or extraordinary ticket sales.
       This means there is no inducement for acting 
     entrepreneurially. I am working with the government leaders 
     of Mexico to change this rule to foster the development of 
     new sources of funding. We must also make the case for the 
     arts to government leaders. Most governments do not 
     appreciate the economic impact of the arts, the role of the 
     arts in tourism and the role of the arts in creating 
     international image.
       Private donors must also be involved in changing the 
     culture of giving in any country. When I consulted to the 
     Market Theatre, one of our Board members was one of the 
     wealthiest people in the world. When I asked her why I did 
     not see her listed as a donor to the Theatre, she replied, 
     ``I do donate. I donate my time by coming to Board 
     meetings.'' But we also need to make donors comfortable that 
     their money is truly having an impact and is being well-
     spent. This is particularly important in countries without a 
     tradition of arts philanthropy. In other words, we must 
     market to our donors as well as to our audience.
       Non-recurring grants must be tied to a matching 
     requirement. If arts organizations are forced to raise new 
     funds to match a large gift from a single donor, they are 
     forced to develop expertise in fund-raising. I asked the 
     Mexican government, before they made two-year grants to my 
     students, to include some kind of match, and I was ignored. 
     As a result, while several of the groups have prepared well 
     for the end of this special grant, an equal number of them 
     have not and are now being forced to down-size and abandon 
     the projects they initiated with grant funds. This could have 
     been avoided if a matching requirement had been attached to 
     the grant and the groups were required to develop new sources 
     of funding.
       Most arts groups in most countries address very small 
     audiences and have minimal scope of operations. While bigger 
     is not always better in the arts, some level of size is 
     required to have an impact and to establish

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     a measure of stability. We need to help arts groups get 
     larger.
       While it is assumed that fund-raising skills are the major 
     deficiency in many countries, in fact, marketing knowledge is 
     minimal at best. We must teach how to develop focused 
     programmatic marketing campaigns that help sell tickets and 
     aggressive institutional marketing campaigns that help raise 
     money and awareness.
       We need to expand the planning horizon for arts 
     organizations in troubled countries. Most arts organizations 
     have planning horizons of less than 6 months. This makes it 
     virtually impossible to build strong fundraising efforts and 
     major touring programs. But we also have to help train arts 
     entrepreneurs. In my experience, there is no conflict between 
     planning and entrepreneurship but this is not evident to 
     everyone.
       We must encourage artists to collaborate with 
     administrators. One of my students in Mexico experienced a 
     total life change when he handed over to an administrator the 
     things he did not know how to do and focused exclusively on 
     his role as artistic director. Today, he has two years of 
     his budget in the bank!
       The training we offer must be practical and hands-on. While 
     our goals are idealistic, our training techniques must be 
     immediately implementable if our students are to make change.
       And finally, we must work hard to encourage arts 
     organizations not to waste anything. While this is true for 
     arts organizations throughout the world, those organizations 
     in challenging environments must use every dollar and every 
     hour to maximum advantage.
       Next on our agenda is a major project with the 22 Arab 
     countries. Again we are using our two-pronged approach to 
     cultural exchange. We are mounting a major Arab arts festival 
     at the Kennedy Center in 2009. But, beginning this coming 
     spring, we are also holding annual symposia on arts 
     management in the Arab countries. We have begun by surveying 
     a large list of Arab arts organizations to determine their 
     chief concerns.
       Just last month I visited Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and Damascus 
     to discuss our plans with government leaders, arts managers 
     and artists. The response was very positive from all sectors 
     and the press we received was encouraging. On numerous 
     occasions during my trip I heard enthusiasm for our idea of 
     helping Americans understand Arabs, as people rather than as 
     political entities. And the training we are offering is seen 
     as an act of generosity by people who do not always think of 
     Americans in that way.
       I am convinced that this project, our most ambitious to 
     date, will have the dual benefits of educating the American 
     public while also creating stronger cultural institutions in 
     the Arab world. We hope this will allow these institutions to 
     play a more vital role in their countries and will foster 
     relationships between Americans and Arabs that will help to 
     unite and bring understanding and peace.
       This is an ambitious goal; some would call it naive.
       But it would be impossible for us not to try.
       Thank you.

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