Staff Blog
Reaching for the Czar: Q&A with Gary Steuer
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| MEDIA HOUNDED: New hire Gary Steuer fields questions at last week's press conference, during which Mayor Nutter (finally) announced his choice for Arts and Culture office honcho. |
| Photo | Andrew Thompson |
After keeping the arts community on the edge of its seat for months and months, Mayor Michael Nutter finally announced who will head the city’s resurrected Office of Arts and Culture. Gary Steuer, who currently serves as a vice president for D.C. nonprofit Americans for the Arts, will serve as director of the brand-new Office of Arts, Culture and (as of 2008) the Creative Economy beginning in October.
Steuer comes with a solid background in heading arts organizations big and small, as well as soliciting support from the private sector. It’s good experience to have, considering that Philly has thousands of arts organizations of various sizes and millions of dollars in private funds just waiting to be wooed over to the arts. Most importantly, Steuer will represent the agendas of the arts sector and creative economy to address city priorities, and he’ll use the city to promote the agenda of the arts.
The newly reborn Office has the potential to be a blessing for both the city and its artists — if it’s well-funded. The original Office of Arts and Culture was created during the administration of Wilson Goode and was shut down by John Street in 2004 after he saw no reason to sustain its existence. Maybe this time will be different.
City Paper: What’s your initial impression of Philadelphia as an arts city?
Gary Steuer: From my perspective as an outsider on the verge of becoming an insider, it really has an extraordinary arts sector. … There’s a great sense of dynamism, of excitement. One of the great preparations I had at AFTA was visiting dozens and dozens of cities around the country and some around the world. One of the things you see in these cities is large organizations up to bat, but, to use a sports metaphor, here isn’t a big bench. My sense of Philly is that it has both: strong leading institutions but also just this array of smaller organizations, cultural specific organizations, neighborhood organizations and so on. So I’m sure there is an enormous amount of work to do, but there’s a lot of work that’s been done already.
CP: Philly was seen as lagging behind other cities because it didn’t have an office like this. Do you think the addition of “Creative Economy” not only brings it up to speed but possibly ahead of the pack?
GS: It’s a really powerful statement by the city and the mayor. My hope is that we can actually follow that up with action that will put Philadelphia ahead of the curve in which other cities will look to Philly as a model for best practices that will help the arts sector that will be much more holistic — not just grant-making, but looking at the arts as a fabric of city life.
CP: One of the things noted in the 2006 RAND report on Philly’s arts ecology was, for better or worse, the predominance of funding given to the large organizations. Do you see this as something that needs to be addressed?
GS: I see striking the balance between those two competing interests will be an ongoing challenge as it is in every major city. There are never enough resources to go to everybody, the major institutions tend to play a major role as the beacons of cultural life in a city — attracting tourism, being a reason why people locate to the community, being why businesses choose to locate in the community, and there’s a civic value to that. On the other hand, a healthy, thriving arts sector is more than major arts institutions and the constant challenge is balancing those two issues: doing the best job possible to support the major institutions, but at the same time always doing everything possible to support these other organizations and individual artists.
CP: What's the first thing you'll get started on when you sit down in your new office?
GS: I would probably say the first order of business is just figuring out what the city is already doing in the area of arts and culture and really looking at everything that exists within city government that relates to arts and culture and the creative economy.
CP: You spoke about your own impression of Philadelphia as an arts city, but what do you think others’ perception is right now?
GS: I definitely think there’s a perception out there in the world that Philly’s arts sector is growing and dynamic and definitely on the upswing. I’ve had calls and emails every day since the announcement saying, “Wow, this is such an exciting opportunity to be in Philadelphia.” So I think there is definitely a perception out there that this is a city on the move and that this is a city of arts and culture.
CP: Do you have any ideas of where this office went wrong when it existed and what you hope to avoid this time around — or what you hope to do again?
GS: I’m certainly aware of the fact that it was shut down under the previous administration and hasn’t existed for several years. Looking at the creation of the new office, I’d like to try and not view it as a re-creation of the past but view it as a fresh opportunity. From my perspective, one of the most telling things about this new intiative under the mayor to establish this office is the addition of “Creative Economy” to the name of the office and his strong assertion that the scope of what this office will be responsible for will be much broader than what is has been in the past. It would be exciting anyway, but I think what the mayor has charged me with and charged this office with is a broader mandate that is looking to support the arts and culture sector, but also look at this intersection with the rest of civic life — how we can bring in more tax revenue, bring in more jobs, create stronger neighborhoods?
[...] Read about Steuer in the Inquirer and City Paper. [...]