The Arts, the Cold War, and Cultural Investing

         The Arts, the Cold War, and Cultural Investing

               Published in Marietta Daily Journal March 19, 2017

            State school superintendent Richard Woods recently received national recognition for promoting the arts in Georgia’s schools.  Perhaps he believes, as many others do, that the arts carry us out of ourselves: to dream dreams, to learn to look at things from a perspective different from our own.

            One musical artist who dreamed dreams that took him behind the Iron Curtain was the famous pianist, Van Cliburn.  I never met Van Cliburn, but I knew and admired his doting uncle.  The uncle, L.E. Cliburn, was an education professor at East Central Jr. College in little Decatur, Mississippi.  All teacher wannabe’s were required to take Introduction to Education, taught only by Dr. Cliburn.

            If you took Dr. Cliburn’s class, you learned about Van Cliburn.  To illustrate what he called “the art of teaching and the art of life,” Cliburn skillfully wove into his lectures occasional stories about his nephew’s life and work.

            The year was 1963. Cliburn the elder frequently related how his talented nephew developed his art and how “he gave it away freely.”

            “Teachers must do the same,” Cliburn urged, “because you will be just as much an artist as Van is.”

              Perhaps because my father subscribed to four newspapers, I already knew that just five years earlier in 1958, the lanky Texan, Van Cliburn, had traveled to Moscow for a piano competition at age 23.  There he won the First Piano Prize of the Tchaikovsky Competition.  Within weeks, Van Cliburn was internationally known.

            Adoring Russians called him Von Kleeberrn.  According to biographer Abram Chasins, citizens of Kilgore, Texas knew him as the lad who “shot through Kilgore High School in only three years,” and who, as a Baptist boy, “always tithed whatever prize money he earned from his competitions.”  (Cliburn doubled his tithe to Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan once he became well-heeled and famous.)

             For half a century, L.E. Cliburn and his nephew have perched on my shoulder, whispering to me certain life principles and posing questions, some of which I have found answers for, some not.

            The principles have all dealt with the importance of hard work, the pursuit of excellence, and the development of one’s gifts.  Playing the piano so well that the world applauds you is, I suppose, a lofty gift.  But the ability and willingness to smile and encourage those around you is a lofty gift as well.  Van Cliburn’s uncle said so.

            “Be authentic,” they both have whispered, “and humble.”  Despite concerts all over the world, despite being told by statesmen around the world that his magical music would end the Cold War, Van Cliburn remained Texas folksy and humble.  Unlike so many self-absorbed celebrities of today, he remembered his roots, namely his mother who at his own insistence was his only music teacher until after high school when he headed off to Julliard School of Music, and his father, an unassuming purchasing agent for a local oil company. 

            As for the questions, what should be the place of the arts in a school curriculum and in our federal government’s budget?  Are the arts worth an investment?  I’m persuaded that the arts are a civilizing influence.  Much is made, rightly, of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education.  These disciplines have fed our bodies and our minds.

            Yet, because I have watched the arts serve as a gateway for students to enter the joy of learning in general, I’m persuaded we must guard and transmit both the arts and the humanities which in L.E. Cliburn’s words, “feed the starving soul.”

            But should the federal government (through its National Endowment for the Arts) give millions each year to arts programs?  Columnist George Will says government has no more business giving money to the arts than it has to rodeo.  He cites government-funded works of art that denigrate certain religions and people of faith.  Like Will, I also don’t care for taxpayer-funded demented art.

            Nobody, however, can argue that we have over-emphasized the arts.   In the fifties and sixties while American teenagers were swooning over Chubby Checker, Russian youths were clamoring for Van Cliburn.  That’s something to think about: Chubby Checker’s “Come on Baby, Let’s Do the Twist,” versus Van Cliburn’s “Claire de Lune.”

            YouTube Van Cliburn.  See Khrushchev smiling approvingly.  Ponder whether or not the lanky Texan’s Russian connection cooled the hot words of the Cold War.  (The Soviets did let the American pianist in.)  Ponder what our investment should be.  Consider whether or not we should continue to abandon all things classical – at school, at church, and everywhere else.

Roger Hines

3/15/17