Food for the mind

By The Art Newspaper. From In The Frame
Published online: 12 October 2009

While catching up on our backlog of television watching this weekend (What? We’re not always thinking about art) we were happy to see a public service advert featuring a talking Vincent Van Gogh self-portrait. Created by Americans for the Arts, with The NAMM Foundation and the Ad Council, the spots encourage parents to give their culture-hungry children access to the arts. We even sympathise with the artist, who after giving a wide-eyed boy a cup of Van Goghgurt to feed his rumbling tummy (and one assumes equally ravenous mind) is asked “So what’s the deal with your ear?” Some things you can’t live down Vincent. You can watch the adverts online at: http://vimeo.com/4477739

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Comments

19 Oct 09
15:36 CET

LAURA H. CHAPMAN, CINCINNATI

Americans for the Arts is the $85 million-dollar lobby for the National Endowment for the Arts. This campaign is a perfect example of the NEA's drive to commercialize arts education in a manner that enables arts organizations to profit from providing "arts education services" and "culture" in schools and to youngsters. The profit is not just monetary (fees for services), but political. Providing educational services is NOT the top priority for most arts organizations and artists, but it is good PR in the quest for public funding of the non-profit arts. This ad campaign plays to all of the stereotypes that professionals in arts education work hard to dismantle. Cute it is, but the ad is not really helpful in promoting studies of the arts as a legitmate and important dimension of educating all youngsters.

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Comments

Americans for the Arts is the $85 million-dollar lobby for the National Endowment for the Arts. This campaign is a perfect example of the NEA's drive...

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