It was a punchline when Academy Awards host Neil Patrick Harris joked about how the Oscars were going to Hollywood’s “best and whitest — I mean brightest.”
Here in New York, it’s no joke. Apparently our city’s cultural institutions — museums, orchestras, performance centers and their audiences — are insufficiently diverse under the current standards of political correctness.
So, at least for those institutions that receive some sort of city funding, the mayor has commissioned a study that will examine the ethnic, racial and gender makeup of each group’s board, staff, audience and the like.
What happens then?
No one seems to know. Or at least no one is willing to say publicly.
Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl insists the data given the city will be limited to general trends, not specific institutions. Which means, he says, it will not be used to impose quotas or deny funding for groups whose diversity numbers do not pass the city’s approved levels.
“We don’t want a moment when a list gets published,” says Finkelpearl, insisting he’s only interested in broadening audiences and staff.
Count us skeptical.
This is the same administration, after all, that only recently tried to shake down conservancies formed to aid large city parks by having them turn over some of their cash to smaller parks. Strictly “voluntary,” of course.
So however much City Hall may not want such a list published, no one should be surprised when it eventually is.
But the bigger problem is with the whole idea.
It is simply unrealistic to expect that every arts institution’s audience will mirror the city’s population. Different cultural events appeal to different people. Some will attract primarily audiences of color; others will not.
Sure, it would be nice if there were more crossover. But the fact that the Metropolitan Opera, say, attracts a mostly white audience doesn’t automatically translate into discrimination.
A far better measure of the cultural diversity of a city may be the diversity of institutions themselves, and their appeal across a spectrum of constituencies.
Because the alternative is to suggest a definition of diversity where everyone is diverse — in exactly the same way.