 and welcome to Discovery, Knight Foundation's weekly series that looks at the creation of informed and engaged communities through the lens of artists in the arts. I'm Victoria Rogers, Vice President of Arts for Knight. I'll be joined today by Dina Higag, President and CEO of United States Artists for a conversation around the dynamics of living and working as an artist. Please submit your questions throughout the show via Zoom using the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, through Twitter using the hashtag Night Live, and in the comment section of your Facebook live stream. We'll get to as many as we can. Dina, welcome to Discovery. Thank you for having me. Thank you for taking the time to do it. So I was doing research the other day and I came across this quote by George Bernard Shaw. Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. We definitely find ourselves in the midst of the crudeness of reality. But as you and I have discussed, in fact, it's never been a picnic to be an artist. Let's start our conversation there. What does it take? You know, it takes work to be an artist. Let's talk about that. Yeah. Yeah, so, oh man, yeah, it's definitely not for the faint of spirit to want to be an artist. Yeah, I think one thing that has always been abundantly clear both at our work at United States Artists and in my personal practice as a curator is how much labor it takes to be an artist, how many entrepreneurial skills it takes to survive economically as an artist, and how good artists are at hustling to make it because it is not infrastructureed as a very traditional profession with the traditional things that we understand to make a productive work force. Recently, United States Artists, and I know we'll talk about this in a bit, engaged in a large National Artist Relief Fund to support artists on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic recession. And really there, in that space of watching artists have to apply for these relief grants, did the picnic that none of us are at become incredibly apparent. And it also made apparent just how good so many artists are at business and how much so many of them have survived despite how little infrastructure we are as a professional field. But yeah, it's not easy to be an artist and I commend, if there are artists on this line, I commend every single one of you for being able to pull this profession off in the way that you have. What are some just related to that and the types of applications that you all have been seeing? Talk a little bit about those. Yeah, so Artist Relief is a large National Fund that supports all kinds of makers across the country. So everything from designers to filmmakers, theater practitioners, dancers, painters, poets, et cetera. And each of these disciplines has very different economies and structures. Every part of the country has very different needs. And one thing we've noticed in our pool is across every single discipline, we have seen both incredibly emerging practitioners and profoundly established ones. And it's made us realize that even when artists are at the height of their success, the precarity of our field is very, very present always. And when the economy stops, so does every single one of these disciplines. When something like COVID happens, writers can't do readings across the country anymore. Theater practitioners can't tour their work across the nation anymore. Visual artists lose their marketplace. Designers have their construction projects just stopped. And so I think one thing this fund has made clear is in this new world, whatever new world we are all hoping to build and emerge into, we will need to seriously revamp almost every discipline. And we'll really need to think about ways to support artists from the ones just starting out, all the way to the Pilter Prize winners. There needs to be a little bit more stability. And I think we've always known that a United States artist. It's why I think our fellowship is very committed to funding across a very diverse career stage spectrum. But artists' relief really, really animated that in a very different way. We've had a lot of conversations about the fact that artists are workers. You just talked about it. It really takes hard work. So within the context of your last two or three sentences, what does that mean today as we try to create a revamped discipline across all artistic genres? Where are those similarities? But what are the things that have to happen to enable people, artists in this case, to gain some modicum of sustainability? Or to really be sustainable? Yeah, so it's so interesting. For me, it actually feels like two separate conversations. So for me, there's a conversation which is what are we doing to better infrastructure and sustain arts organizations? And how are we encouraging those organizations to better respect the labor of artists? Right? It's the old, like, we got to clean up our own house first on the heels of this recession. And I know it is not easy to run an arts organization, but it's terrifying when the artist line item budget is one of the first things cut. And when we realize that the support for artists is decreasing rapidly in this professionalized space. So there's this whole new world. We really got to flesh out for our beloved arts organizations. On the other side, there's, you know, it's funny, with artists really full, a lot of people, we've been having conversations nationally about a new WPA, new jobs opportunities for artists. And all of those things are sort of needed and deeply important. But one thing we're really struck by is if we just had a better healthcare system, we wouldn't have half of our applicants. We're really animated by conversations that are happening with the domestic workers Alliance really funds the restaurant workers, the transportation workers, educators, other workers that really just need very baseline things to live healthy and productive and safe economic lives. And I think my biggest takeaway from artists relief is what are we doing to support the arts field so that it can better support the creation of work and the livelihoods of the people that make it. But more importantly, what are we doing to advance workers rights, cross sector, national, and there's a lot of amazing thinkers in the field, right? Laura's able at springboard for the art killing it in the space, right? I know Clay Lord is like trucking along at after like really trying to drive this point home. I mean, there are people on the ground trying to figure these things out. And I think I want, especially in an election year, especially the next, whoever this next administration will be, there are a lot, there's a lot of advocacy that'll be needed for workers. And we just have to keep reminding artists that they are workers. And then everyone else that artists are workers, and they need unemployment insurance and all kinds of things. So I want to get to advocacy in a minute, but we've got a question here from a seminar. I believe an artist is primarily a core identity and a profession secondarily. What do you think about that? I don't disagree. I mean, I don't disagree. And I don't, I feel like a lot of, you know, if you'd ask my, I think you could make that argument about any, right? Yeah, I feel like, you know, I come from a family of scientists and, you know, to them, science is the core identity of the family, you know, it's what they believe in. It's what motivates them every day. I think our challenge is to find ways to protect both, right? How do you preserve the identity of an artist so that they don't have to give themselves a way to survive professionally, right? So that they're not so beholden to a market, so beholden to things they don't always want to do. And then at the same time, how do you dismantle this notion that being an artist is a higher calling and thus completely dehumanizes artists into not needing very basic rights, right? And so I think we're kind of stuck in the middle of these two spaces. And I think, I don't think they're mutually exclusive and I don't think one is the primary and one is the secondary. I think we just got to find a way to meet them in the middle. So you talk a lot about your work being about advocacy. I'd love to sort of eavesdrop on some of the conversations that you're having with different people that you are advocating to about the arts, you know, whether it's somebody at the NEA, whether it's somebody in either one of the houses or state level, but talk some about that work and ultimately how can all of us who are so passionate about the arts fulfill that role of advocacy? Yeah, so I think a few things. You know, we, despite our name, United States artists are not affiliated with the government and when we say advocacy, our team and our board and I, I mean, we're not necessarily in the business of government and in the business of legislative advocacy because, you know, electoral politics is not our site of battle necessarily. What I think our work is and what I strive to do is really just like public will building, right? So one thing that was really clear when we first announced to artists, really, for example, we got some pushback online. Why are you working so hard to support artists when so many Americans are struggling right now? And there's, of course, this disconnect, which I think USA has been trying to resolve since its inception, this disconnect between what artists and who artists are and how we protect them. When we say advocacy, what I want is I want a more clarified understanding of who artists are in society, right, that they are everything from eighth generation basket weavers in South Dakota to blue chip painters in New York to Hollywood filmmakers, potters, poets and everything in between. And I think when I say advocacy, what I want to do is better illuminate who artists are and why they matter so that the NEA is and the houses and everybody else has an easier time convincing people legislatively that this is a group of workers that need to be protected. So for us, I think the battleground really is public will building. And I think that's why I'm so animated by United States artists as an org is it's easier to do that if you really look at every discipline, every state, every territory, every tribal nation, and you honor the collective cultural landscape, excuse me. So I'm an advocate as in a believer of artists and wanting everyone to know that there are artists in their community. And so what would we do locally for that? You know, you have you do have a national platform, which is phenomenal and so happy that you're in that position. But what are your suggestions? You know, some of the I've read a lot and talked a lot with Laura about some of the, you know, the openness they are about artists and the contributions that they make to communities. And then how do we ensure that they get that kind of support that not only can they make a living, but it also addresses them having a life. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think there are really small things. I think as arts lovers at a local level, we should try to bring more people with us. And I literally mean this as like taking my engineer brother to a play, like like really just like bringing people in that maybe don't realize there's something for them here. I think we really have to dismantle this like romantic notion of who an artist is at a very local level. I think and I think, you know, Angie Kim at CCI and Laura again at Springboard have been so good at trying to remind folks that artists is a broad spectrum. And I think at a local level, I would highly encourage, especially in our new world, that every institution really reconsider the kinds of artists that they're working with, you know, and to support artists locally in their community as well as national and global stars, right, to really start to build these local inroads to that. And lastly, I think that at a local level, I think there will be ample opportunities for arts organizations and artists to collaborate with things outside of our sector. I think we're going to be rebuilding a lot for a very long time. I don't know how those things get infrastructureed, but every time somebody says WPA, I, you know, I'm like, I don't, I don't know that that's happening at a federal level, but I think it can be enacted locally by foundations and arts institutions and artists and businesses and other nonprofit ventures on the ground. And so I think I'm curious to see what small things germinate from small cities and small towns that really support advocating for artists and their role in a rebuild. Yeah. On a personal note, I have a connection with that former program. My aunt painted murals at Berea University outside of Louisville, Kentucky. Oh, I love that. That was one of the ways she helped to support their family. I love that. Also, Berea is amazing. Yeah, Berea is pretty, it is a beautiful, it's a beautiful place, but you know, we also have been having a lot of conversations about the intrinsic and sort of extrinsic value of the arts. I want you to talk some about that because we believe in this intrinsic value of it to connect us to each other and to tell our stories, but it also does have an economic impact on our cities as we've discussed and the vitality of a city. So I'd really love for you to talk some more about that. Yeah, it's been interesting. So I'm in Brooklyn currently and have been really monitoring, you know, some of the local efforts here to really think about how the city and the state are going to survive in this new post COVID landscape and a few different things. So yes, right, like in New York and in most major cities, you can track the cultural spending and all tangentially related restaurants, hotels, etc. And they're usually pretty sizable figures, right? Like how much money culture generates in tourism and in local commerce. But one thing that I think has actually been really interesting in New York is we've been watching conversations unfold about the gig economy and how completely abusive and predatory it can be. And I was actually recently reading a study that the new school issued about how there are low earning gig workers and high earning gig workers. And this is a very, very gross generalization, but overwhelmingly they would categorize artists and cultural workers as like high earners. And they meant that as in most artists can control the conditions in which they work. It's a little bit different than a domestic worker or a landscaper, etc. They'll also they noted that oftentimes artists are both, right? Many artists end up having a low earning gig job like driving an Uber and being a playwright, right? Like they sort of live at the intersections. But one of the things I think the new school was trying to urge here was that not only do artists bring intrinsic or extrinsic monetary value to a city, they're also remarkable advocates for the gig economy. Because they have more power in these conversations, they oftentimes have two-year degrees and higher. And if you can get artists at the table to re-envision labor and work, they actually carry with them lots of other vulnerable gig workers. And a part of me beyond the monetary values of the arts, I want to remember artists as people and the skills they bring to a conversation. And I think in New York, there are some efforts to get artists at that table. What has it been like to work gig to gig in New York State and in New York City? What are the things that don't work about it? What are the employment insurances that they need? And if artists can advocate for themselves, they also bring with them taxi drivers, nannies, you know, restaurant workers. And I think we really need to remember that that artists are powerful and educated and can like blast through advocacy in ways that would help a lot of people. So we've got a question. I'm going to look down so I can read the question here. Do you think the Western concept of the artist as the outsider works against advocating for artists? Earlier in your conversation, you talked about Indigenous people where art is just ingrained in their being. I mean, in some, there's not even a word for art. It's just it's a way of life. So talk some about that and what you're seeing. Yeah, I would agree actually that the Western conception of the artist has worked against advocating for the arts. Not to get too, I don't come from a family that is in the arts, like it just confused them, that I did not become a scientist. And they are Egyptian immigrants. And it's funny, I think I spent the first like 30 years of my life thinking I was railing against them, like educating my immigrant parents about what art was and the value of it. And it wasn't actually until I got to USA and we could break the fourth wall, this sort of, you know, the title of our talk about what art is that it dawned on me that the reason this confused my parents so endlessly is back home where they're from in Egypt, art is just part of everything. They don't have to justify it in such specific terms. And so I've been really thinking about that in USA has definitely been a lesson in this as we've watched how different art manifests from New Mexico to Hawaii to New York and beyond. Um, but yeah, I, I don't know how to dis, I don't know how to work together to really dismantle this Western notion of the singular artist genius. I don't know a single artist that makes things alone. I don't know a single artist that can support themselves without their communities and without an audience and without a constellation of workers around them that make it possible. And so I think maybe one thing we could do in our new world is if you are an artist to be more overt about how it gets made and where it comes from and what it's like. And I think one attempt we are trying to have at this at USA is last year we started the Beresford Prize named after one of our co-founders, Susan Beresford, to honor administrators in the arts, the entire workforce that makes art possible. And I think the more we can do to highlight this ecosystem and how culture is made, the more it dismantles this idea that there's a man alone in a studio making two million dollar paintings, but that's not really how this works. But yeah, we really got to kill that fast. So we've got a question from Wayne Brown in Detroit now, formally with the NEA. Considering the duration of the pandemic, are you giving any consideration to support artists for more than one round of artist relief? And these artists that demonstrate exceptional artistry yet continue to try and navigate a really dire state? Yeah, that's an excellent question. So right now, frankly, no, we are not considering re-granting, if I'm understanding the question correctly, an artist that's already received a grant, mainly for two reasons. Right now, artist relief has almost 128,000 applications, many of whom are incredibly urgent. And so I think we're trying to reach as many people as possible. And it's one of the reasons we actually made the grant $5,000 is we were hoping it would buy people a pretty long runway to figure something out in such a crisis zone. Wayne, right now, our biggest priority is actually just to extend the grant past September and to take advantage of the IRS's Qualified Disaster Relief designation, which we think is the rest of this year. So we're just trying to work to making sure we can keep funding artists through December and then reevaluating as the pandemic unfolds. Yeah, today we have funded 2,400 people out of 128,000. So we're really up against quite a wall of need. So we, one of the other things we've talked about is even beginning to reimagine a new normal. And that we've also had conversations about moving from scarcity abundance. We talked last week when I was talking with Christy Bowlingbrook, who heads up the Choreography Center in Akron about that concept. But when you're dead in the middle of it, how do you move beyond that? Have you seen artists doing that? And what are those key things that enable them to do that? Are the ones that are able to do that, do they have a different kind of support system? Yeah. Yeah, you know, man, so a few things. One of my biggest takeaways from this summer has actually been how much remarkable mutual aid artists have taken it upon themselves to implement. And we've seen it everywhere. Sometimes it's for other artists, sometimes it's not, right? We've seen artists like Lauren Halsey run food justice projects in LA for families that can't access food. We've seen artists in New York run bail funds. We've seen disabled artists run Crip funds for disabled people that can't access medication right now. And one thing that kept coming up this summer, which was really interesting was that artists could not administrate these mutual aid funds because they were growing faster than they realized. And essentially what artists were saying is I'm willing to deploy my social capital to make something possible, but I don't have the administrative support system to actually intake the money, distribute it, and safely record all of these dealings. And it was really hard this summer to find nonprofits that could take on that work for these artists for lots of complicated reasons, namely that most of the artists didn't want it promoted as a nonprofit project because they were really adamant that these were artist led mutual aid projects and this got kind of slippery. Most nonprofits didn't know how to take in an artist project in that way and not articulated as an artist led project. And so I think this summer we watched nonprofits come to the table and meet artists and figure out how to amend their infrastructures to help them in the way that they needed. And things happened, but they had to happen away from the guys of PR. They had to happen with very flexible finance departments and legal departments. And they had to happen because an institution and an artist truly collaborated on something. And that was really beautiful to witness. And I hope we see more of that. And the takeaway there was that the artists really led with what they needed and with what their community needed. And what the institution did was say, we have an infrastructure to surround us. And I think we'll need a lot more of that for the next few years. That institutions don't necessarily see themselves as the curatorial lead, but see themselves as truly a resource to artists and communities. And if you're listening, the artist knows what's happening in their community. And they know where the resources have to land. You just, I think, have to make yourself available to that artist in that way. But it's very counter to how we at the institution are so used to doing things. We're used to making the thing and then inviting the artist in. And this time, I think we just got to switch it up a little bit. And I think yesterday I was actually having a conversation with a few colleagues and one of them said, it's everything's just going to shrink. That's it. It's just all going to shrink. And so rather than fight tooth and nail to maintain it, figure out how to shrink gracefully. And I've really just all night been thinking about that. What does it mean as a cultural sector to shrink gracefully? And I think I don't know anyone that knows how to do things more gracefully on as little means as possible than artists. So we really got to let them lead here. And I also think, you know, we know that some institutions who obviously employ artists. So we're, it's, in this case, I'm talking about one and the same, you know, are really concerned that when they do that, they lose that talent. Yeah. And rebuilding, you know, nine months later, what does that look like if in essence, you're starting from scratch and wanting to really be able to continue paying or to continue supporting these artists that have been working with them. Yeah. So I think that gracefully doing it is one thing, but it does mean, you know, that not everything will survive. And then what is that? So that ties into our even reimagining what this future might look like. There's, there's another one in here that is, do you think that artists, arts, do you think the arts are being sufficiently discussed in our political discourse, both on a local or a national level? No. Oh my God. No. No, absolutely. Zero. No. Okay. Well, I'm going to issue your challenge here. No. What do we need to be doing? No, no, no, it's not being discussed enough. I mean, I also, I think maybe the question is, what are we asking them to discuss? Right. Like, what are we asking for when we say that we want the arts discussed more in these political arenas? Like quite actively, what are we saying? Which is one reason I don't honestly even know that I have an answer to that quite yet, aside from the fact that we cannot lose so much of the good cultural work happening across our entire country. For me, I think really, because I'm so focused on the individual, I am wondering what can artists do to better advocate for everyone around them? Right. Like actively, what can artists do to advocate for better healthcare reform? What can artists do to advocate for better unemployment insurance? What can artists do to better advocate for that low earning gig work? Or if they are not that already? So, for me, it's more like what are we, where are the kind of the what are we doing for our country? Not what is it doing for us? Like where are the productive conversations happening that are going to build a better, safer, more equitable United States? And how do we make sure artists are at that table and are fighting hard with their exceptional storytelling skills, language skills, community skills? But on a political frame, no, I worked in Baltimore for a long time. And there was a very contentious mayoral race. And there was one time I remember an organization and a foundation went out of their way to host a cultural debate. They had every mayor respond to the needs of the cultural community. I've never seen anything like that since in any other city I've lived in. But I do think that even that one evening, watching however many it was, half a dozen candidates have to answer difficult questions about how they were protecting their cultural bears felt productive. And on a small scale, I think we can all use more of that in our local municipalities. But politically, I think the question is, are artists politically engaged? And not just for artists, but for everyone? Because I think we're about to enter, I hope, a very productive legislative era for the US. And I want artists to be there too. You know, we've especially, you know, over the last couple of months, we've seen artists coming together to really talk about what's happening in this country now. And you see it at the core of so many cities, you know, whether they're voices, you just mentioned voices being heard. So we're seeing these voices. And it's, you know, it's about long standing biases that exist in our country. But it's also about, it's to me, this power of the artist to see, not only to look at what was, but to look at what is today and what might be. We don't have really any time left, but I still want you to talk about, you know, how the artists are that active, connective tissue in our communities. And because they're so important to the economic development and frankly, to the the challenging of long held beliefs and opinions, you know, it's such an important role. Yeah, I think, I think that in the United States, sometimes we do not like complexity, right? We want things to resolve very neatly, right? We like a history that just starts in a complicated place and then slowly gets tied up. You know, we love to point, you know, I don't know, like the civil rights movement was like a three day parade, you know, and then suddenly there were rights for everyone, and not better acknowledging how complicated things are. I think that art, what art does very, very well is it makes complicated things more legible. And it doesn't always need a tidy solution. Art reminds me that it's okay for me to not always know and to just feel something and to steadily move through it. And I don't know how we survive what our nation is going through right now. I think it's complicated everywhere. And I think if we do not incorporate artistic thinking skills, critical thinking skills, the things that make art viable, then I don't know how we make it. Recently at a party of socially distanced party where I just sat with two other friends and screamed at them from 10 feet away. Well, we were wondering about the value of our art history degrees, like we were just like, what was the point of this? You know, because there's ongoing conversations about whether people should get those degrees now in a very precarious economy. And one thing we all agreed on is art history made me feel like I was learning the history of my nation for the first time. There's the history told by the victor that I was taught in high school, and then there's everything I learned directly from artists who were alive, who left a record of what was really happening. And I think right now, that's what artists are doing. They are leaving a record of what it is like to be in the United States in 2020. And it's that record, it's really facing the thing truthfully, that's going to help us reimagine the future. And I think right now, months into this pandemic, this is not a pivot, we're not pivoting, we're really reimagining, we have to start over. And I think artists are the ones that have the record of everything we've tried so far truthfully in efforts to find the strategies we need to really move through as a country with a little bit more keys. And so I want the truth. I don't want the stagecraft. I want the truth. And I think that's what artists do. They tell us the truth. I agree with you. And I think our generations to come deserve the truth. Yeah, I really do. I also want to give a shout out here in Miami, locally to Rosie Gordon Wallace, who instituted a food program for artists. So it's that spirit and that generosity that we find in artists. And it's their perspective on things. That's not just their work, it's their lives. Well, it also shows how big and broad their interests are. These are people in our community. We work with them. We see them. We love them. So I cannot thank you enough. Thank you. Unfortunately, our time is up. I want to thank everyone who joined us. And of course, special thanks to Dina Haggag. I might say the amazing Dina Haggag. And to the night production crew, the beats of the top of the show were created by Chris Barr, our director of art and technology here at night. And the music that will play us out is composed and performed by the amazing jazz pianist Theron Brown from Akron, Ohio. Next week for discovery, Priya Sarkar, director of arts will be in conversation with Connie Martinez, CEO of SV Creates, about how you can center the arts and artists in your city's present and future. We hope to see you next week at 1 p.m. Eastern. Again, Dina, thank you so much. Thank you. Bye. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Victoria. Thank you, night.