{"id":543,"date":"2010-08-25T21:19:05","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T21:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15bytes12\/2010\/08\/25\/back-to-work\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T08:55:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T15:55:33","slug":"back-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/back-to-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The return to regular routines for children and adults alike this week marks an unofficial end to summer for most of Utah, including those of us at 15 Bytes. During most of the summer we have taken a break from our hectic routine, both on the blog and in the pages of 15 Bytes. But no more. We\u2019ll be out with a new edition of 15 Bytes next Wednesday, and, to prime the intellectual pump, this week we\u2019re reawakening our relatively dormant blog.<\/p>\n

One of the items that has caught our attention as we\u2019ve returned to work is a recent piece by Chris Vanocur on ABC\u2019s local affiliate, Channel 4. The piece was titled \u201cCould Salt Lake County sell multi-million dollar art collection to save money?\u201d despite the fact that apparently no one, besides Vanocur, is even suggesting that possibility. As Vanocur reports, over the past 3 years the County has spent $85,000 on art (that at one point in the reporting this is called \u201cnearly $100,000\u201d suggests these journalists may not be the best people to keep track of our money). The piece fails to report that over half of that amount was spent in the first half of 2008, prior to the economic crisis. And while the last third of the piece mentions that the County art budget has been cut, it does not say by how much. In 2010, the Salt Lake County art budget was only $10,000 (or about one penny for every citizen in the county). Thankfully Vanocur\u2019s piece does mention a few important points: that the Salt Lake County Art Collection is the largest collection of Utah art on public display, and that all the work is in public view. We\u2019ll add a couple more: the County Collection art budget is used exclusively on work by Utah artists, so the money spent goes back into the local economy; and the well-respected collection attracts out-right donations as well as reduced pricing by artists and galleries so that the value of the collection exceeds its price.<\/p>\n

When Vanocur couples the County\u2019s art collecting with ominous phrases like the \u201cworst economic stretch since the Great Depression\u201d we wonder if he realizes that the State\u2019s public art collection was begun during the Depression of the 1890s (and has yet to be auctioned off), or that the 1930s saw a flowering of art projects throughout the state, including collections in many of our public schools. We also wonder if Vanocur will soon be \u201cfollowing our money\u201d to other County programs and asking if the Salt Lake County parks should be sold to private developers to make up for budget shortfalls, or if the County library system should sell off its books, movies and DVDs.<\/p>\n

Vanocur\u2019s piece made us consider two salient factors relative to our own project here at 15 Bytes: the perception of the arts\u2019 relationship to the economy, and the state of journalism.<\/p>\n

On Marketplace\u2019s Monday PM edition, Bill Radke spoke with Randy Cohen about the state of arts non-profits in the country. In his wrap-up Radke referenced the importance of the arts for the economy: \u201cThere’s 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations. That supports 5.7 million jobs in this country. If you’re a company or a government worried about jobs, that makes the arts a smart investment.\u201d While well intentioned, Radke may be making the wrong argument from an economic perspective.<\/p>\n

As British economist John Kay points out in a recent essay, it takes a good economist to know the \u201ctrue value of the arts.\u201d The value of the arts, writes Kay, is often spoken of in terms of jobs created, incomes paid. But according to this type of reasoning we could also say \u201cdisease is good for the economy.\u201d \u201cIn Britain, more than a million people are employed to diagnose and treat disease and care for the ill . . . Illness contributes about 10 per cent of the UK\u2019s economy: the government does not do enough to promote disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kay says, \u201cthe economic value of the arts is in the commercial and cultural value of the performance, not the costs of cleaning the theatre. The economic perspective does not differ from the commonsense perspective. Good economics here, as so often, is a matter of giving precision to our common sense. Bad economics here, as so often, involves inventing bogus numbers to answer badly formulated questions.\u201d Read his full essay here.<\/p>\n

Another recent radio program explores the second topic Vanocur\u2019s piece on the County art collection brought to mind: the state of journalism. Vanocur\u2019s chosen journalistic medium, television, favors attention grabbing headlines and simplistic sound bytes to reasoned analysis and in-depth reporting. Traditionally we turn to print journalism for this latter type of reporting. Doug Fabrizio\u2019s recent Radio West segment on the future of the Deseret News and the current state of journalism may make you wonder if there is any hope of survival for this more informed mode of journalism. We found the program interesting in light of our own \u201cjournalistic\u201d experiment (now nine years old) at 15 Bytes. Talk of \u201cdisruptive change\u201d made us think of our own network of volunteer reporters and critics. As the Radio West program points out, this model for journalism can be very dangerous when it comes to reporting on politics and local civic news. But what about the arts? Is the coverage of the arts in 15 Bytes better or worse than what it was\/is in the papers?<\/p>\n

disclaimer: 15 Bytes editor Shawn Rossiter currently serves on the Salt Lake County Art Committee. But you might have already figured that out.<\/i><\/p>\n

image: 15 Bytes editor Shawn Rossiter on a pre-summer vacation in Paris — working on 15 Bytes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The return to regular routines for children and adults alike this week marks an unofficial end to summer for most of Utah, including those of us at 15 Bytes. During most of the summer we have taken a break from our hectic routine, both on the blog and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-public_issues"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/paris.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-18 14:28:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99402,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions\/99402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}