ART-ACT Art | SPW Art | Introduction | Community | Web School | Free GraphicsEDITORIAL QUESTION: Do large arts institutions hog public arts funds and thereby limit community art activity and the full expression of our urban diversity?
AN EDITORIAL REGARDING COMMUNITY ART IN CHICAGO
Arts renaissance in Chicago? So the Sun-Times concludes in a July 28th, 1997 article. It claims even smaller arts organizations are experiencing good times. However, in the last five years the African American Arts Alliance folded on the Southside. The Greenview Arts Center gave up in Rogers Park. The Randolph Street Gallery shut down in Wicker Park. The only reason the Uptown Multi-Cultural Art Center still produces the free "Art of the T-shirt" exhibit series in public libraries, is its dedicated, and unpaid volunteers. Clearly, this art renaissance is not touching the community artists and art institutions across the city.
One hundred million, two hundred million, three and four hundred million for the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera, big theater and dance groups downtown, but how much do the neighborhood art centers get to survive? One quarter of one tenth of one percent of those funds would have kept any one or all of the community groups mentioned alive. What about the average Chicagoan outside the loop? What about the youth and local artists in our communities?
Yes the
blue-bloods have their arts but us red-blooded folk are left out. Renoir is not a
Chicago artist. A Chicago renaissance means a revival of arts in Chicago not
the import of work by dead masters from another time and space.
Renaissance? Not until we are included!
RESPOND TO umcac@art-teez.org
| Home | Introduction | Events | Community | Promote | History | Support
All rights reserved © 2001 Uptown Multi-Cultural Art Center (UM-CAC). E-mail UM-CAC at umcac@art-teez.org Ph.773/561-7676