8 minute read
Culture
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CULTURE
[MOOLAH]
Big Money
St. Louis City grants $10.6 million in ARPA funds to the Regional Arts Commission
Written by JESSICA ROGEN
Arts organizations and artists in St. Louis city are about to get a big infusion of cash.
Last week, Mayor Tishaura Jones announced that the City of St. Louis would allocate $10.6 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis through the passage of Board Bill 66. The funds, which are the third highest distribution of ARPA monies to the arts in the country, are intended to help the St. Louis arts and culture sector rebound from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Art brings more than just pride to St. ouis,” ones said at an event held outside the Luminary last Tuesday. “It generates economic opportunities for residents across our city. The arts generates more economic activity throughout our region than all of our sports venues combined. It creates thousands of jobs and supports hundreds of independent business owners. Shuttering theaters and closing our galleries, the COVID-19 pandemic brought economic devastation to industries across the country, especially the arts.”
The ARPA money will be dispersed in 2023 and 2024, with RAC President and CEO Vanessa Cooksey saying that it plans to use 80 percent in 2023. Due to ARPA restrictions, the funds will go to artists and organizations located in St. Louis city.
Funds can be used for revenue replacement and to lessen negative economic impact, such as new projects from artists and arts organizations. Cooksey also mentioned beautification such as murals and statues in the community. RAC will also conduct its normal, annual grants process for artists and organizations throughout the greater St. Louis region.
Allocating millions of dollars to the arts makes sense, both Cooksey and Jones asserted.
“The arts generate $600 million in economic activity, 19,000 obs,” ooksey said. obs and economic well-being reduce poverty, “which in turn leads to reduced crime,” ones said.
RAC, which exists to invest in the greater St. Louis area arts, draws 98 percent of its funds from a portion of the St. Louis hotel/motel tax. In 2019, the organization had its highest revenue year in history in the wake of the Blues’ Stanley Cup win. But the pandemic brought a devastating loss of revenue, and RAC went from an approximate budget of $7 million in 2019 to approximately $3 million in 2020 and $4 million in 2021.
Cooksey said she hopes to see $5 million in 2022 and anticipates a long-term rebound. Individual arts organizations, she added, faced similar revenue losses, and as temporary sources of income, such as those from the Paycheck Protection Program, dry up, the problem will continue.
So earlier this year, as Cooksey and others were putting their heads together about lost revenue, several grantees approached them and proposed advocating for RAC to be a candidate for ARPA funds. Together, they decided to approach both the city and the county for a 5 percent ask in October, then got to work advocating.
Ninth Ward Alderman Dan Guenther put together Board Bill 66 with cosponsors 19th Ward Alderwoman Marlene Davis and 26th Ward Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard. Jones signed the bill last week.
“For the last 20 years, I’ve been a neighbor down here and kind of one of the people in the community that has seen exactly what the arts can do to transform a neighborhood and transform our business corridor in St. ouis,” Guenther said.
St. Louis County Councilwoman Lisa Clancy put forward a similar effort in the county for $1.6 million, which failed to pass last month. Since no ARPA funds have been designated from the county, RAC will not disperse funds to artists or arts organizations there.
In the coming days and weeks, RAC will have information on the ARPA funds on its website.
“I’m beyond e cited,” ooksey said. “This is historic for us.” n
RAC President and CEO Vanessa Cooksey announces the ARPA distribution.| JESSICA ROGEN
[TEXTILES]
Chintz ‘Changed the World’
Saint Louis Art Museum exhibit Global reads traces how the Indian fabric transformed fashion, industry and global trade
Written by KASEY NOSS
The lights at the Saint Louis Art Museum’s (1 Fine Arts Drive, 314-721-0072, slam. org) latest exhibition are dimmed to protect the ornate vestments and tapestries that reside there — the fabrics, centuries old, are highly sensitive to light. Yet not even low lighting and the passage of centuries could keep the warm reds and deep blues of the textiles on display from popping. Indian chintz was made to last, and it’s done just that.
The exhibition Global Threads: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz, tells the story of Indian chintz, a fabric as revolutionary as it is beautiful. From the 17th century onward, this cotton textile, which Indian artisans spent centuries perfecting, dominated the global textile scene. Coveted for its brilliant colors and intricate designs, chintz transformed fashion, industry and global trade and was sought everywhere from East Asia to Egypt to Great Britain.
“The most exciting thing about this exhibition is that it really tells the story of a cloth that truly changed the world. This is technologically advanced, visually creative, and that really helps shape our kind of modern understanding of global trade and fashion today,” says enevieve Cortinovis, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation assistant curator of decorative arts and design and co-curator of the exhibition’s presentation in St. Louis.
There are a few criteria for a
textile to be considered chintz: It must be cotton, the designs must be hand painted without the use of machinery, and the dyes generally made from substances taken from the natural world, such as blue from indigo or red from madder. Chintz can take on a myriad of forms, from ornate tapestries and vestments in Iran to protective pouches for porcelain tea sets in Japan. The designs are equally as open to interpretation, ranging from historical and religious narratives to purely decorative patterns.
“The designs can be geometric; they can be floral they can be narrative they can be figural,” says Philip Hu, curator of Asian art and co-curator of the exhibition. “There’s no one look to chint .”
While remarkable in its beauty, what really made chintz singular on the global textile stage was the complex methods of producing dyes and mordants, or binding agents, that went into its production. This innovation by Indian artisans let them design elaborate fabrics in an array of uniquely fade-resistant colors.
“Imagine if all the clothes that you’re wearing could never be washed, and if you did, all the colors would come off immediately,” Hu says. “I mean, you would be quite upset, right? So when the Indians discovered this method of making textiles, where you could have bright and beautiful designs, but they would not wash away, and they would be colorfast, it really became a kind of revolution in the te tile world.”
Though visually stimulating, Global Threads is as interested in exploring the history of chintz as it is the aesthetic of it. Each gallery within the exhibition tells a piece of this story. The first room serves as an introduction to chintz, while subsequent rooms illuminate the way Indian artisans were able to adapt their creations to fit the desires of foreign markets, including Iran, Indonesia and France. One gallery, titled “Cotton and the onse uences of esire,” highlights the way chintz catalyzed the industrial revolution and intensified cotton production in the United States.
The exhibition also features an audio-visual component spotlighting contemporary Indian chintz artists who continue to advance the art form not only to keep its beauty alive but to draw attention to environmental responsibility and sustainable practices in the age of fast fashion.
“Chintz is alive and well today in India,” u says. “There are not too many people making it, but the people that do now have very important concerns about sustainability and responsibility to the environment. They realize that if they continue to only use natural dyes, that will have a much less debilitating effect on the environment as opposed to other printers and designers who use chemical dyes and other artificial elements.”
The exhibition concludes with a display of modern Indian chintz, including that of an artist featured in the aforementioned audio-visual component.
“We wanted to end the show with this sort of modern take on Indian chintz and to again emphasize the great variety that there is in this te tile design,” u says.
Global Threads is produced and circulated by the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. While select pieces are from the Saint Louis Art Museum’s collection, including a chintz-inspired Japanese dish and a 19th-century American quilt with a chintz design, most of the fabrics on display are courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum.
“We’re just really lucky to have that material here,” ortinovis says. n
Sari depicting Ramayana scene by M. Kailasham, 2018. | ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM / PAUL EEKHOFF
Textile depicting Ramayana scene, ca. 1880. | ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM / BRIAN BOYLE
There’s no one look to chintz.”
Check out Global Threads now through Sunday, January 8, 2023. Tickets are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and students, and $6 for children ages 6 to 12. The exhibition is free on Fridays and anytime for museum members.
