Thoughts about watching, working and living in the arts, from HMS co-founder, executive producer and arts advocate Scott Silberstein.
Welcome to City Hall, Lori Lightfoot.
I’ve had a few opportunities to talk with our new Mayor, and I'm impressed by her intelligence, wit, empathy and spine.
All these qualities and then some were on display throughout a tough campaign. All have been evident since. And they all shine brightly when our new Mayor talks about the arts.
Several times I’ve heard Mayor Lightfoot recount her how the arts make all of our lives (and have certainly made hers) exponentially more beautiful, by showing us the world in ways we would likely never have otherwise experienced. And she readily acknowledges that the way a city embraces the arts is a measure of its soul.
I deeply appreciate that, and it had a lot to do with why I voted for her.
Yes, I know. Lori Lightfoot's feelings about the arts are not what won her the election. Admirable as a candidate's position on arts policy may be, it's never going to be the defining issue that gets them elected to any office, much less Mayor of Chicago.
But if you want keen and unexpected insights into how candidates view the job they seek, the world they inhabit, the government they intend to lead and the people they aspire to serve, then you would be well-advised to listen to them talk about the arts.
Take President Trump.
Money is my least favorite way to talk about the arts, but it’s the President’s favorite way to talk about everything. So you'd think the Dealmaker-in-Chief would find these facts compelling:
And yet.
For the third year in a row, a President who prides himself on his business acumen and brags incessantly about his ability to know a great deal when he sees one has called not for the zeroing out of the budgets for National Endowment for the Arts (and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcast, Museum and Library Services and all arts and culture related programs and agencies), but for their complete elimination.
Forget for a moment that these agencies benefit our country socially, culturally, educationally and medically. They are also clear economic winners, with a profound return on investment. And the President of the United States, whether out of ignorance or malice, wants them gone. It’s for moments like these that Hans Christian Anderson wrote “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
Now, contrast this with Lori Lightfoot.
At the Mayoral Arts Forum hosted by Arts Alliance Illinois, our new Mayor certainly had key facts at her disposal (for example, that the arts have a $2.25 billion-dollar annual impact just on Chicago’s Loop). She also embraced broad social perspectives about the arts, and opined that Chicago’s greatness will be measured in part by how welcoming and livable it is for artists. And, buttoning her remarks with both savvy and sensittivity, she quoted Steppenwolf Theatre’s former artistic director, the late great Martha Lavey:
“We are fortunate to live in a city that recognizes that artists, and the institutions that support their work, are essential to the quality of life in the city, and to its future. Chicago is a city that recognizes the great human need for beauty, for story, for the respite that the arts provide to engage our imagination. The arts permit us to shift our frame of reference, to see the world through the eyes of another, to see and hear the world anew.”
That same Martha Lavey quote headlines Lightfoot’s “Advancing Arts & Culture” policy statement, something none other Mayoral candidate created, in which the soon-to-be-Mayor declared her intention to:
Mayor-Elect Lightfoot speaks as someone who sees the arts as a unique way to embrace the most essential part of our humanity.
She acts as someone who sees them as a force through which we can shape and improve the way we talk with and learn from each other.
And she appears to think in a way that suggest that “Yes And” actually means something to her.
Time will tell.
But for now, I'm gratified that the arts played a pivotal role in revealing not just what Lori Lightfoot wants to do for our city, but how and why she plans to do it.
And I'm optimistic that our new Mayor will approach arts policy, and indeed all policy, with the kind of creative, improvisational and ensemble mindsets characteristic of the arts in Chicago.