6th Day of Xmas

On the sixth day of Christmas, The Arts Muse looks forward to the new year by casting a backward glance at the arts in the old one. Needless to say, it is not a view any of us will be sorry to leave.

This still all-too-present year has proved to be a challenging — OK, let's be brutally honest here — depressing time for the arts as institutions saw their endowments eroded and staffs shrunk while struggling to meet the public's demand for artistic solace and inspiration. By and large, I think the arts responded well to the crisis, the operative words being "by and large".

There was a bit of a tendency to throw the baby out with the bath water — a phenomenon we also experienced after 9/11. I wonder how many of the organizations that cut their staffs to the bone will soon regret the decision not to hold on a little while longer. The market has come back. Markets always come back over time. But when you're poor — or more to the point, you think you're poor — time is a luxury you cannot afford, I guess.

Fear is a funny thing. It can paralyze you, or it can liberate you. Central Park and the Empire State Building were both created in depressed times, the latter, of course, rising in the Great Depression. We saw something of that here. Copland House in Cortlandt Manor has gone ahead with a new music program at the Merestead estate in Mount Kisco. Historic Hudson Valley in Tarrytown has recommitted itself to Montgomery Place — the largest of its properties — with a reinterpretation opening next spring that will plumb man's relationship to nature and the landscape.

When the going gets tough, the creative get going. When you have nothing left to lose, it's time to open your mind and heart to everything.