Terry Teachout

[Dale]

President Bush has nominated Terry Teachout, who sometimes writes about ballet and has an book coming out about George Balanchine, to serve on the National Council on the Arts, the advisory body of the National Endowment for the Arts. Oddly, Teachout didn't mention it in his blog.

http://www.backstage.com/backstage/news/ar...t_id=1000584214

[Ari]

Actually, he did write about it earlier this summer:

You heard it here first

[Dale]

Thanks. I guess it won't hurt to get a ballet person in that position.

[Herman Stevens]

I already had my doubts about Teachout as a severe case of lightweightism, and I guess being hand-picked by the Bush people sort of clinches it for me.

[Kathleen O'Connell]

I already had my doubts about Teachout as a severe case of lightweightism, and I guess being hand-picked by the Bush people sort of clinches it for me.

While I think one might reasonably consider Mr. Teachout to be a "generalist" rather than a "specialist," I wouldn't be comfortable calling him a "lightweight." He's a critic, not an artist or a scholar, so I don't expect him to display a scholar’s or an artist’s expertise on any of the topics he writes about, including ballet. Teachout’s tastes in general strike me as being “centrist” or maybe even somewhat “right of center,” but well-informed (I have no idea what his political views are), and my sense is that he’s someone who values the continuity of tradition (which is not the same thing as being a “traditionalist”) and a highly developed level of craft. Although I don’t always agree with him (as my score on the “Teachout Cultural Convergence Index” amply demonstrates), I do appreciate the breadth of his interests, the lively sense engagement with his subject matter that his writing demonstrates, and his evident concern to incite that level of engagement in others.

For me, this last point alone argues in favor of his appointment; if there’s anything the NEA needs to focus on, it’s fostering active engagement with the arts. (And given the rather paltry amount of funding the NEA recieves, it's got to focus like a laser beam on something in order to be effective.) In this regard, Teachout’s nomination strikes me as being something along the lines of Dana Gioia’s: whether or not one likes the latter’s poetry, and as controversial as some of his polemics about the current state of that art might be, one must appreciate his conviction that poetry can and should have a genuinely meaningful place in our lives. One must certainly applaud him for managing to win an increase in NEA funding. In any event, I don’t think Teachout’s appointment is going to be bad for ballet. (I also don’t think it’s narrowly “political”; I wonder how many senior members of the Bush administration actually know who Teachout is or have read anything he’s written – and if the answer is “not many,” that reflects badly on them, not Teachout. I’ll hazard a guess that the President himself had little to do personally with the nomination … It probably is "political" in the sense that Teachout's nomination isn't going to provoke the level of pandering fulmination on the Senate floor about the NEA and its mission, that, say, Susan Sontag's might.)

A quick tour of the bios of the other individuals on the National Council on the Arts suggests that expertise in arts administration or funding features as much if not more than artistic prominence. Its current membership (Dana Gioia (Chairman), Donald V. Cogman, Mary Costa, Gordon Davidson, Katharine Cramer DeWitt, Makoto Fujimura, David H. Gelernter, Teresa Lozano Long, James McBride, Maribeth Walton McGinley, Jerry Pinkney, Cleo Parker Robinson, Deedie Potter Rose, Dr. Karen Lias Wolff ) certainly doesn’t have the cachet of the first NCA members appointed by Lyndon Johnson (Marian Anderson, Leonard Bernstein, Agnes de Mille, Richard Diebenkorn, Duke Ellington, Helen Hayes, Charlton Heston, Harper Lee, Gregory Peck, Sidney Poitier, Richard Rodgers, Rosalind Russell, David Smith, John Steinbeck, and Isaac Stern). Given the NCA’s job description*, however, nuts and bolts experience in making art happen (as opposed to just making art) and a genuine vision for creating a space for art in our national consciousness might be more valuable than artistic distinction at the end of the day. I don’t know enough about the current membership to even guess if they’re up to the task – I certainly hope so. Of course, what probably really matters is who is on the advisory panels. (Does any one know how they're structured and who's on them? I couln't find anything about them on the NEA website.)

Who else would folks like to see nominated for the NCA? Are there any dance "heavyweights" who would be good candidates? (Cleo Parker Robinson appears to be the current representative from the dance world.)

* From the NEA website: “The National Council on the Arts advises the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who also chairs the Council, on agency policies and programs. It reviews and makes recommendations to the Chairman on applications for grants, funding guidelines, and leadership initiatives … The major areas in which the Council advises the agency and its Chairman are:

•Applications for Federal grant funds recommended by advisory panels;

•Guidelines outlining funding categories, objectives, and eligibility;

•Leadership initiatives and partnership agreements with other agencies;

•Agency budget levels, allocations, and funding priorities;

•Policy directions involving Congressional legislation and other issues of importance to the arts nationally.

The Council also recommends individuals and organizations to receive the National Medal of Arts, a Presidential award in recognition of outstanding contributions to the arts in America.”

[Thalictum]

Teachout is a complete dilettante about dance. Sorry to be harsh, but that's why he is attractive to generalist publiations.

[Kathleen O'Connell]

Teachout is a complete dilettante about dance. Sorry to be harsh, but that's why he is attractive to generalist publiations.

Since he's neither a dance professional, nor a dance scholar, nor a professional dance critic, then yes, he could certainly be considered a dance dilletante. Indeed, I suspect he'd be considered a dilletante with respect to much of what he writes about (with the possible exception of H. L. Menken, although there's probably a Menken scholar out there who would argue the point). I certainly wouldn't consider him a dance specialist (nor would I necessarily consider him a full-fledged, heavyweight cultural critic). But I don't think he was nominated to fill a "dance" slot; the fact that he's shown enough interest in ballet to write a book about Balanchine (however great a piece of fluff it may turn out to be) at least suggests that there will be someone on the NCA who has a favorable view of the art form.

By the way, I don't think he's attractive to generalist publications because he's a dilettante; I suspect he's attractive to them because he writes in a manner they believe their audiences will find accessible but not utterly trivial.

[Thalictum]

Those are good points, but it certainly would be nice if generalist publications and boards were not so afraid of people who are actually specialists about dance and had a deeper and more informed take on it than Teachout does.

[Ari]

My take on Teachout is that he aspires to be a general cultural critic, not a specialist in any one form. His blog, the reports on the New York cultural scene he writes for the Washington Post, and his reviews in the Wall Street Journal all embrace many art forms -- theater, music, and literature as well as dance. At one time such generalist critics were more prevalent than they are today, and I think that that's something we're missing in the cultural dialog now -- critics whose interests are broad and who are reasonably well informed on many subjects.

Of course, any good critic, no matter how specialized, should be well enough versed in the other arts to give scope to his writing, but as Kathleen said there are many people who simply don't read specialist critics if they're not specially interested in the art form. Teachout's reports on the New York cultural scene for the Washington Post are designed, I think, to appeal to the sort of person who is, or wants to be, generally culturally literate, abreast of the latest things. They may never go to a ballet or a jazz club, but that doesn't mean they're not interested in knowing what's going on. In our over-specialized time, I think that's a healthy thing.

[Herman Stevens]

Teachout's reports on the New York cultural scene for the Washington Post are designed, I think, to appeal to the sort of person who is, or wants to be, generally culturally literate, abreast of the latest things.  They may never go to a ballet or a jazz club, but that doesn't mean they're not interested in knowing what's going on.  In our over-specialized time, I think that's a healthy thing.

I think that captures it perfectly.

There is a type of lightweight critic who writes about the arts in such a way that he will never arouse the need and longing in his readership to get their complacent butts off the sofa and go buy that novel, go see that show or do something else that will cost time and money, and lord knows may expose them to some kind of visceral experience.

It has nothing to do with being a specialist or a generalist. A writer is a specialist in writing; he should be able to convey some kind of passion with his writing. But perhaps with Teachout it's not so much about what he's writing about but about spreading the product Teachout.

And about the Balanchine biography. If it's going to be a cut-and-paste tertiary work that would be a very bad thing. Together with the Croce book Teachout will saturate the market for many years, and it would take a long time before a publisher could be persuaded to do another, better Balanchine biography.

[kfw]

I already had my doubts about Teachout as a severe case of lightweightism, and I guess being hand-picked by the Bush people sort of clinches it for me.

I don't think Ashcroft or Rumsfeld or the two left-footed W himself handpicked the guy, and Dana Goia's no lightweight (or a real conservative). As for Teachout, I'm looking for a big band CD he recommended.

[dirac]

Teachout can make a decent stab at several forms of criticism as Ari notes, so it’s not as if he isn’t well-rounded, always a good thing in any critic. He is certainly right of center culturally and politically, no problem for me, but I do find him a tad predictable, which is an issue, again speaking for myself. Predictability in a critic is not in itself a Bad Thing – once you begin to read a good writer regularly, you’ll get a general idea of his views and how he approaches his subject, and be able to anticipate to some extent what he will say. I don’t, as a rule, find what Teachout has to say in his more ambitious efforts to be especially illuminating and I don’t look to him for unexpected insights or anything with the force of revelation --he's kind of obvious, in short. However, I'll always take a look at what he has to say.

I quite agree, kfw, none of those gentlemen could be accused of taking a personal interest in such matters. Particularly the Attorney General, whose fervent disapproval of dancing is a matter of public record.

[kfw]

I quite agree, kfw, none of those gentlemen could be accused of taking a personal interest in such matters.  Particularly the Attorney General, whose fervent disapproval of dancing is a matter of public record.

Determined to stamp out dancing, the Attorney General nominates a choreographer's biographer to the NEA!