When Doth a Community Protesteth Too Much About Art?

A Sociological Study Explains How Rapid Local Change Stirs Art Wars

In the 2012 predictions department, here is a question that’s yet to be asked. Will art stir any great protests in America this year?

            We may not know what the big art controversy might be, but according to sociologist Steven Tepper, it will probably erupt at a community level, where debates over art—visual, literary, cultural, or theatrical—typically arise before becoming a nationwide culture war.

            To understand how art controversies are born, Tepper studied 71 cities and how they handled such events in the late 1990s. He also looked closely at Atlanta, Georgia, which under a microscope revealed far more art disputes in a few years than most people could imagine. The best predictor of art controversy is the rate of change in the community, Tepper discovered. When a community sees itself changing too quickly, putting its identity, norms, or future into uncertainty, art becomes a potent symbol of the values citizens want to preserve (or values they reject).

            The social changes come mostly from immigration, says Tepper. This itself has little to do with art, except for perhaps more Hispanic, Ethiopian, Russian, or gay pride parades down Main Street. But immigration goes along with economic shifts, volatile housing, and new interest groups in city hall or the schools. With these changes, the topic of a public mural or sculpture, a randy library book, or how to spend city money on art becomes ripe for protest.

            Art controversy usually evokes a stereotype of an outside religious or political demagogue coming in to stir protest. More benignly, you might think of the Music Man, who said, “There’s trouble in River City and its spelled p-o-o-l.” Tepper hopes to correct that stereotype by showing that “local concerns, local issues” drive these art debates. “When the things around [local citizens] are changing fast—economics, demographics, technology—art becomes something that they fight over as a way to reassert their values, reassert a sense of who their community is,” he recently told the PBS Newshour.

            Tepper makes all of this plain in his new book, Not Here, Not Now, Not That!: Protest Over Art and Culture in America, which has been praised for being the first to bring hard data to topic. As well he might be, Tepper is fascinated by how this community dynamic works: he is associate director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University.

            The story of a crusading minister or politician who wants to defund artists or ban books is too well known, both in American novels and the usual spin of newspaper headlines. However, Tepper says that the “art community” (and perhaps novelists, too) can be just as intolerant. From on high, the art camp often tries to offend the community on purpose, and then cries censorship if anyone criticizes the art.

            “These fights are not just knee-jerk reactions, it’s not just about personal offense and it’s not just about politics,” Tepper says. “These [art issues] are so deeply meaningful and important for communities that are trying to figure out and work through these social changes together.”

            In other words, the free speech shake-down often used by artists may not work as well as it used to. This is especially so where public funding or children are involved. “I don't think we can afford to silence critics [of art] in the 21st century if we want our communities and our arts to thrive together,” Tepper said on national television. “As our cultural world gets noisier, as there are more things to offend more people, . . . there will be more opportunities for people to work together to figure out which forms of expressions are good representations of our community and which ones we don’t feel we’re ready for or represent us well.”

            As Tepper’s analysis suggests, the U.S. Supreme Court has been onto something when it has tended to rule that disputes over values should be judged by “community standards.” When community standards are clearly in violation of conventional human rights, we have the First Amendment of the Bill of Right (extended to communities by the 14th Amendment) to correct egregious intolerance.

            In all of this, the diversity of American communities is a major part of the solution, allowing everyone to get whatever art they want without great culture wars. In looking at 71 cities, Tepper found that a theatrical production on AIDS, or an artwork on Jesus or Muhammad, may be accepted in some locales, but not others. The same goes for the book Huckleberry Finn, in which Mark Twain uses the n-word. We go to Seattle and Manhattan for some things and to Kansas City and Atlanta for others. This can even work within the same county, or parts of town.

            So where will the next big art protest be, if one arises in 2012? The answer might be found in a close study of the Census, which shows how rapidly communities are changing. Then look in the Entertainment section of the local newspaper and see what’s showing at the avant-garde repertory theater, or at the public funded museum.