Experts discuss how the arts can weather pandemic fallout

MAY 27, 2020 — Artists are known for their creativity, resourcefulness and ability to transcend limits. They’ll need to rely on all of those skills to adapt to the postpandemic arts landscape in San Antonio and beyond. This was the underlying takeaway of Reimagining the Future of the Arts in San Antonio and Beyond, the fourth in a series Community Conversations that brings together UTSA experts for a live interactive webinar.

The discussion was moderated by Tracy Cowden, chair of the Department of Music, and featured panelists Libby Rowe, an associate professor of art; Troy Peters, director of the UTSA Orchestra and music director for the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio; William McCrary, director of the Lyric Theatre and an associate professor of music; and Constanza Roeder, CEO of Hearts Need Art and a research partner and guest lecturer.

Each panelist discussed how current social distancing measures and a foreseeable future of reduced arts budgets will thrust artists and musicians into tight spots. Yet in that struggle, they said, innovation will emerge.

“I’m hoping that people do see this as an opportunity, not as something that definitely stifles,” McCrary said. “That’s really what we’re feeling right now—that struggle. I do know, though, that the artistic and creative heart is going to reach out for something bigger.”

“The great thing about artists is that we’re pretty resilient and we’re problem solvers.”

UTSA panelists on reimagining the arts: Tracy Crowden, Libby Rowe, William McCrary, Troy Peters and Costanza Roeder.

McCrary and his music students have already seized this opportunity. When the student production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro was canceled this spring, McCrary collaborated with Peters and voice lecturer Christopher Besch to “pull out all the stops” and stage a virtual hour-long production. The result was Marriage of Figaro 2020—officially released on YouTube on Wednesday—which sees Figaro contracting COVID-19 and being forced to wed via Zoom. Edited by McCrary using Adobe Premiere Pro, the production had student-written modern-day dialogue for the production and incorporated social media platforms into the storytelling.

Rowe’s visual art students were similarly ingenious. They didn’t let a lack of facilities or canceled exhibitions knock them down. M.F.A. candidates Gabi Magaly and Omar González, for example, both staged outstanding virtual thesis exhibitions with Presa House that allowed viewers to float through the gallery and see each of their individual artworks.

“The great thing about artists is that we’re pretty resilient and we’re problem solvers,” Rowe said. “I think museums are finding ways to stay engaged with their communities through online tours of exhibitions and through bringing in artists virtually to give talks about their work.”

Many artists and organizations have been providing free virtual content to stay on the public’s radar with social distancing measures and stay-at-home orders in place. But the panelists indicated they would be wise to transition out of that phase in the near future to generate money. Peters laid out an especially bleak reality for the performing arts community that is only starting to sink in: Large performance groups can’t gather, large audiences can’t gather and that won’t be changing anytime soon, he said.

“The scope of loss is so huge that it’s important to be aware of what we’re wrestling with,” Peters added. “Sixty-two percent of artists and performers in the United States have become fully unemployed in the last 90 days. Nationally, individual artists expect to lose $50 billion in revenue this year. Our arts organizations have already lost $5.5 billion in the last three months.” He pointed out that performing artists have stopped hoping for a return to normalcy and are now facing the reality that they will be performing for limited audiences for years to come.

Arts organizations have often relied on philanthropy and funding to provide programming, but Peters noted that will also be a challenge during this pandemic. Donors are now more frequently holding back or understandably giving more to causes providing basic human needs. Meanwhile, arts funding in San Antonio has decreased because it is directly tied to hotel-occupancy tax revenue, which has taken its own dramatic dip.

“We’re all going to be looking at a painful and long period of reduced donated revenue,” Peters said. “The flip side, though, is that we can also count on reduced earned revenue because ticket sales will also be dramatically lower for every artform until we have a cure of some kind.”

With revenue streams drying up, artists will have to examine how they best serve their audiences and reexamine what those audiences might look like. This was something that Roeder and her organization were doing long before COVID-19. Hearts Need Art identifies and trains artists, musicians and writers in the community to provide accessible arts activities for patients in health care settings, from corridor concerts to bedside art sessions.

⇒ Explore previous presentations of Community Conversations town halls with UTSA experts.

Roeder discussed the undeniable link between art, health and well-being. She emphasized the importance of artists developing soft skills, like listening and eye contact, because people still need to feel seen, heard and loved—even in a virtual environment. She also encouraged everyone to pick up a creative practice, regardless of skill level or perceived ability.

“It’s about the process more than the product,” she said.

A few other highlights from the event:

• The panel addressed the technology-related issues plaguing artists in the virtual space, from upload speeds and copyright issues to erroneous bot detection that’s removing music recordings from platforms like Facebook and YouTube.
  
  
• McCrary, Cowden and Peters touched on how different populations—ensemble musicians, dancers and children—have coped with the loss of arts programming and continued with instruction in the virtual landscape.
  
  
• The panel stressed the importance of buying memberships to keep arts organizations afloat.

— Shea Conner