101460

Public-Private Partnership in Giving for the Arts - The Future of
Sustaining Our Culture and Traditions




by
James D. Wolfensohn
President
The World Bank Group

Ottawa, Canada, September 20, 2001

Introduction by Mr. Mitchell Sharp:

Our guest speaker this morning is uniquely qualified to talk about the
power and the possibilities of arts education. James Wolfensohn has been
a driving force in the United States for including the arts in the school
curriculum. Most of you probably know James Wolfensohn in his capacity as
President of the World Bank. He's led that institution during a period of
unprecedented global economic growth, and global integration, but also
during a time in which the gap between the rich and the poor grew ever
larger. In that context, Mr. Wolfensohn was instrumental in initiating
the first comprehensive debt reduction program to address the needs of
the world's poorest, most heavily indebted countries. But you should also
know that Jim Wolfensohn is a Renaissance Man; someone who straddles the
worlds of finance and art, and that he's been one of America's most
influential figures in the performing arts over the past 20 years. He was
chairman of the board of Carnegie Hall in New York, from 1980 to 1991,
and then assumed the role of chairman of the board of the Kennedy Centre
in Washington DC from 1990 to 1995. He's an accomplished cellist, and
he's celebrated both his 50th and 60th birthdays by playing classical
music at Carnegie Hall with some of the world's greatest musicians. Now
he'll tell you more about those evenings, but I've talked to some of the
musicians who have played in those events, and they were memorable,
unforgettable evenings. If you've ever heard Jim Wolfensohn speak, you'll
know what to expect. For those of you who haven't had that privilege, let
me say simply that his content will be as compelling as his delivery.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming James Wolfensohn.

James Wolfensohn:

Thank you very much Peter, Mitchell Sharp, Ministers and friends. Let me
quickly get out of the way my musical competence. There's a T-Shirt they
sell in New York which says "How do you get to Carnegie Hall" on the
front, and on the back it says, "Practice, practice, practice." There's
another ways to get to Carnegie Hall and that's by being chairman, and it
has nothing to do with the quality of one's playing. But it does have to
do with the quality of one's friends and my last concert I played with
these two, under-recognized musicians at the table, Mr. Ma and Mr.
Zuckerman, and I'm here because I owe them. And my next birthday is
coming up. You have the dates ready?
Let me say, in all seriousness, that I seriously considered coming up
here because of the events of last week in the United States. There were
abundant reasons not to come, in terms of what I have to do and generally
the mood in the United States at this moment. I had a memorial service
last Friday which lasted fifteen minutes at the bank, and fifteen minutes
consisted of my having nearly 2000 people in the lobby of the bank. I had
a cellist and a violinist who played first the Sarabande that Yo-Yo
played recently at the funeral in Washington of Kaye Graham. Then I spoke
for nearly four minutes, and there were 2 minutes of silence. The
American Executive Director spoke for less than a minute. And then we had
the Arioso of Bach, and I got everybody to hold hands, 142 nationalities,
and there was not a dry eye in the room. I decided then I'd come up,
because I felt at that moment that there are many levels at which we
relate to each other, but there is a level in terms of music and the arts
which I've long been privileged to participate in, which is a level
beyond finance, beyond budgets, beyond economics, beyond politics, a
level which is the inner resource that most of us don't talk about most
of the time because it's sort of soft. And it's sort of a luxury, but
when things really come down to it, it's the thing that really makes a
difference in life. I believe that passionately. I've always believed it,
and in periods of good and bad in my life, I have turned to the arts. And
my kids have turned to the arts. It's not a sense of being a Renaissance
man or having some sense of cultural imperialism or being arrogant about
it, it is what, for me, as a child, meant everything in terms of meaning.
And as I get older, as I was in that ceremony a week ago, it made me
recognize that there is a different dimension in terms of human contact
that comes through culture and the arts.

Your Minister of Culture and I were at a conference in Florence which we
called last year. We expected a few hundred people, 700 turned out from
140 countries. Because it's not just in elite countries that you have
culture. One of the real issues today as we build a global society, is to
ensure that we're not homogenized, and secondly, that we treasure and
understand the cultures, starting with our own, and reaching out to
others. But you can't understand others unless you understand your own.
You need a base. Yo-Yo is now doing a remarkable program on the Silk
Routes, in terms of trying to restore and represent the artistic cultures
of those trade routes. Not alone for their beauty, which is considerable,
but also because it is a statement of the unity of the arts on a global
basis. And I have felt, in my own life, that I could contribute certainly
in terms of my professional contribution, whatever it's been. But I also
felt that unless it was balanced by some conscious recognition of this
other aspect of life, life wasn't worth a hell of a lot. In fact, I took
up the cello when I was 41 years, which is why the notion that I'm an
accomplished cellist is, as I get older, a wonderful accolade, but not
wholly true. Although, of course it is true of Mitchell Sharp's capacity
as a conductor. And I hope, Mr. Sharp, when I'm 90, that I'll also be
allowed to play the Devotia (?) Concerto, and that your audience will in
fact cheer me as well as they cheered you last night.

But let me move for a moment from the philosophy to the practice. I read,
with great interest, the report which was done on this National Arts
Centre, which was established during Pearson's time as the Kennedy Centre
was established during Eisenhower's time, not very different in terms of
years, you were the precedent, actually, in Canada, by a couple of years.
What was fascinating to me was that when George Bush asked me to become
Chairman of the Kennedy Centre, after I had done 20 years service at
Carnegie Hall, I discovered a Kennedy Centre which was in much the same
position as you are here. Mr. Stevens, who I'm sure Hamilton Southam
knew, had a special interest in theatre, but the funding had gone down,
the building was almost derelict, the music quality had diminished
enormously, there was little creative work going on, and the National
Outreach was negligible. The program for students was at a level that you
wouldn't want to send your kids to. There was no real dynamism and drive,
either in terms of artistic leadership or in terms of lay leadership. It
was just sort of there, it had the Kennedy Centre Honors once a year,
which was a good party and that was it. I came into this and recognized
right at the beginning that in order to support the Kennedy Centre, which
was the National Centre in the performing arts, the first thing you had
to do was to distinguish it from all the other art centres around the
country, but also to deal with the fundamental issue, which was to get a
group of people together who passionately believed in the importance of
this. And then, having that passionate belief, which you must have, and
which doesn't require a lot of people, then leverage that to try to build
it outwards in terms of establishing the case for a National Centre for
the performing arts.

I had a similar experience at Carnegie Hall which Pinkie knows. Now
nearly 30 years ago, I came in as treasurer. Our dear friend Isaac Stern
had managed to save the building, but the content of what was going on
was not tremendously great, and the building, nearly 100 years old, was
about to fall down, and take with it all the memories that were in the
walls and so on. At that time, we were raising less than 100,000 per
year, for the primary artistic, musical institution in New York,
displaced significantly by Lincoln Centre. And so we decided to build
Carnegie Hall on the basis of one thing, which was quality and
creativity, re-establish the quality, try and make it an international
center, and to get some people engaged in it who could understand that
this is something they wanted to leave to their kids. I remember getting
Sandy Wilde, who has been chairman since I retired. Sandy had never been
to a concert. He came to Carnegie Hall with me; it

was a night when they did the first movement of the Tchaikovsy   Trio; we
had on stage Rostropovitch, Horowitz, and Isaac Stern, playing   the first
movement of the Tchaikovsky Trio, after which Sandy came up to   me and
threw his arms around me, and said, 'you've got me, I've never   heard
anything like it.'

That was a One hundred Million Dollars ago. Sandy is still running
Carnegie Hall, and we got Jim Johnson to come in at the at the Kennedy
Centre whose knowledge of the arts was also not enormous. But that was 30
Million a year ago. Now in terms of what we did at the Kennedy Centre
which could be, I think, of relevance and interest to you, let me start
with the fact that there has to be commitment, and the belief that the
arts need a priority. You need some people who feel that the techniques
of raising money or the techniques of organization don't mean a hell of a
lot, but who believe that you have to have content, you have to have
belief, you have to have creativity, you have to have concern, and you
have to have passion.

You don't need hundreds of people. You need a few people that really are
prepared to do it, people like David Layton and Peter, but also people
from the private sector and also individuals. That is the condition
precedent. You also need friendly ministers. You need particularly
friendly Finance Ministers, though I don't know who your finance Minister
is, although I'm sure he's a man of warmth and sensitivity and
understanding and charm, and he has a remarkable wife, and I'm sure that
he has all those things. I'm not familiar with Canadian politics, so I
can't really say that, but I've heard that he's like that, so that's
another thing that you need. And you of course need leaders like the five
leaders you have of the artistic organization here, of whom I know one
particularly well, and the reputations of the other four. So you're off
to a terrific start, but then why a National Arts Centre in Ottawa, when
there is a Toronto Centre and then you've got Montreal and you've got
Vancouver and you've got centres all over the country. Why something
here?

I think it goes back to the reason that the institution was started
originally, that there is something about having it nationally recognized
in your capital as a sense of identity, not just for the local community,
with your Rush programs and your outreach programs which you must have,
bilingual, - je vais parler Francais aussi pour l'instant, autrement je
ne serai pas politiquement correcte. But now I've spoken French as an
Australian, and I can demonstrate to you that I can speak French. But,
for the benefit of those of you who don't understand French, I'll
continue in English.

My point here is that what we discovered at the Kennedy Centre was that
if you could establish quality levels at the Centre, and you could get
recognition from the highest levels of government, and you could serve as
a centrepoint for the coming together in your case, of two cultures,
that's critically important. And reaching out in terms of what you gave
up here, which was tours by orchestra, by theatre, by ballet, by your
creation of new works, by the recognition of creative artists, the
outreach which you can get from giving it a platform at the centre is
sort of a National stamp of approval, which no centre, be it in Toronto,
or Montreal or Vancouver or wherever else, can give. It needs to be part
of the heart of the country and the heart of the country is in the
National Capital. You've made that commitment at the time that it was set
up over 30 years ago. It would be a terrible thing, in my judgment, for
Canada to be one of the leaders in the world, as you are in so many
political and other things, without understanding, developing and giving
visibility to your own culture.

In Mali, which is the first African country I went to, I discovered that
they used to have an empire that went up to Egypt, and it was a
distinguished cultural empire. I'd never heard of it, I regret to tell
you. My father used to tell me to go to Timbuktu, and I thought that was
a name he had made up, until I discovered that in Mali, there was
Timbuktu. I also discovered that the president of Mali was a poet, and we
started a program of cultural identity in Mali, as the base of getting
young people to come together as Malians.

Well, you're not Mali, you're Canada. And you have a distinguished
history. The notion that this not be carried forward in schools and by
the National Arts Centre is something I just can't believe. I just cannot
believe that it's debated. How can you represent Canada without knowing
what Canada is? How can you possibly be a leader without nurturing the
creativity and the history of your country in its cultural field? It's
not something for an outsider born in Australia and living in America to
come and lecture you about. I speak as a global citizen. I would like to
see a Canada that is Canadian, that reflects the best in Canada. It
strikes me that, along with economic and political advancement and the
leadership that you give in so many areas that have so much to contribute
in the artistic and cultural field, that in the world into which we're
going, it is mandatory that that challenge be grasped. That's my view.
It's not everybody's view, but I just think back to last Friday's vision
in Washington, when I had this memorial gathering.

It wasn't words, it's music that, on that occasion, touched everybody. It
can be theatre, and it can be painting and it could be dance, but there
is a level at which we need to live, and insights that we need to give
our children, that you cannot give just by mathematics and history and
learning how to run businesses. You need to have a well-run business, in
the Centre here, that's clear. I think this report, which no doubt you
all have, is remarkable in its simplicity and its directness in what's
needed. You have along way to go.

When I started in Australia, we had a similar heritage. There was a
similar recognition or belief that government provided most of the money.
When I came to the United States, I was astonished to find myself in a
community in which there was a true public-private partnership. And here,
for the Minister of Finance, whoever he is, the notion of a public-
private partnership is good for government in terms of budget, but it's
also good for the private sector. Because the private sector can
contribute not only money, but people and time and skills. The hidden
advantage of the United States system is not just the resources, which
are enormous - I just got the report, last year, which says that giving
in the United States tops 200 billion dollars. It's an economy ten times
the size of Canada, that means 20 billions dollars in charity for Canada.
Of the 20 billion dollars, 5.6 percent or roughly 11 billion plus go to
the arts and humanities. 11 billion dollars.- What is so brilliant about
it in the U.S. is that the decisions on which arts organizations are
going to thrive is made not by a central government, but by individuals,
and by corporations. There is a competition in the marketplace. They
provide a significant amount of the funding, balanced by funding from
governments, and of course, by ticket sales. And it varies from museums
to performing arts institutions, whether ticket sales make 30 percent or
40 percent or 50 percent, but there is this huge gap. The thing which is
crucial about the gap, which is the objective of your document, is that
if you can get corporations and individuals to come in, you get a
partnership with government, you get the selectivity being made by the
individuals in the community, and you get the hidden plus of their help.
That participation is the key, in my judgment, to what makes the
difference in American artistic and cultural institutions, all based on
the single, most essential element, which is the quality, the creativity,
the outreach to children, which you can now do in many ways, both
directly and, as Pinchas knows in terms of his own leadership,
technologically. So there's nothing complicated about this; there are
well worn paths. The Kennedy Centre was in exactly the same position five
years ago as you're in today. Carnegie Hall was in the same position.
What I simply say to you is that you have everything that is needed to
bring about this resurgence; you truly need a National Centre to give
prominence and outreach, both in terms of tours and co-productions, and
many things that you can do.

But most importantly, you need to establish, without any sense of
insecurity, that in good and bad times, you can proclaim that you care
about the heritage, you care about the arts, and you care about the
creativity and soul of your kids. To me, that's not a debate. It's only a
question of making the decision to get on and do it. I can say this
because I'm not going to benefit from it, I've only got one more birthday
party that I have to try and convince these two guys to come and play at,
at least that's the only one I'm thinking of at the moment. So there is
really no ulterior motive other than a sense that as a great admirer of
your country, as now a neighbor, and as a global citizen, I just hope
that you're going to grasp this challenge, and that today and the weeks
and years to come, will make you feel, when you talk to your kids and
when they go to concerts and arts programs with you, and when their kids
benefit from it, and when the two great cultures that you have plus the
Native Cultures are united, that the result will not be measured in terms
of GDP, but in terms of GDP in soul and heart. I have very little doubt
that you will do it, and if I can make any help at any time, I'd be glad
to do it.