The LexArts audit tells us everything about the value of art in Lexington — and nothing about its meaning.
At Tuesday’s Budget, Finance and Economic Development Committee meeting, Council heard a slick presentation from Sound Diplomacy on their audit of Lexington’s “arts and cultural economy.” The slides were gorgeous. The charts were clean. The multiplier effects were impressive. And the entire thing was spiritually bankrupt.
I don’t say that to be dramatic. I say it because the phrase “arts and cultural economy” should stop us cold, and it doesn’t. We’ve become so fluent in the language of markets that we don’t even flinch when someone tells us a mural’s purpose is to generate $0.62 of “additional output” per dollar. We nod along when performing arts are sliced into “total employment” figures and “gross value added.” We accept, without question, that the proper way to understand a city’s creative life is through the same metrics we’d use to evaluate a logistics hub…