By Lynnda Greene
Photograph by Eric Fogelman
Like many St. Louisans, I spent pleasant hours this past year reacquainting myself with Forest Park. Strolling newly restored paths through plangent meadows, tufted groves and sparkling lagoons, I tried to imagine that spring morning in 1904 when our city fathers opened the Louisiana Purchase Exposition with the call to “Open ye gates. Swing wide, ye portals.”
Over the next seven months, 20 million people from all over the globe would come to meet us in St. Louis and experience the latest in technology, manufacturing, science, fine arts and education in 1,500 ornate palaces spread across these very 1,200 acres. By the time the gates closed and the portals came down, St. Louis had begun its ascendancy to national prominence as a center of innovation in transportation, commerce, industry, aerospace, education and medicine.
A century hence and the city’s fortunes have flagged in the wake of socioeconomic changes. And yet, if we look behind the commercial malaise to our creative heart—our rich and varied cultural institutions—we find the entrepreneurial spirit of that fabled fair more vibrant than ever. We know our art museum, zoo, botanical garden, symphony orchestra and opera company are world-class. But here’s what most of us don’t know—they represent only a fraction of the artistic activity here, which includes 25 theaters, 55 music organizations, 15 dance companies, 80 galleries and museums, 28 arts advocacy organizations and 30 festivals.
Last year the Regional Arts Commission awarded $3.6 million in grants to 220 nonprofit art/cultural organizations and programs, an astonishing number for a city this size. At this writing, the Post-Dispatch’s “Get Out” section listed no fewer than 93 musical, theatrical, literary, dance, art and educational events for just one week.
St. Louisans didn’t really know the arts’ precise dollar impact on the local economy until the Regional Chamber and Growth Association decided to find out. The results of its study, released in September, are jaw-dropping. The 88 participating arts and cultural organizations rendered direct revenues approaching $244 million, indirect revenues (hotels, restaurants) exceeding $450 million and generated more than 4,400 jobs. Together, arts venues drew a combined annual attendance of 12.6 million people, more than the combined seasons of all three major sports teams. Ergo, art = $$.
But to regard the arts solely as a commercial drive shaft to a healthy economic engine dismisses their real value. I thought about this on a recent visit to the Egyptian gallery of our Saint Louis Art Museum. Surrounded by centuries-old artifacts, I recalled those magical Stone Age paintings of animals in the caves of southern France and Spain. Lugging materials down into a dark cave and erecting scaffolding was most probably a communal effort, but it was an artist who climbed up to paint a bull in bold, sweeping lines of motion, power and, above all, possibility.
We at St. Louis Magazine hope, within the parameters of this column, to provide readers with a means of enlightenment about the cultural experiences available in our city—an arduous task, blessed as we are in quantity and quality. But we also hope to offer some reflection upon their meaning in our lives. Indeed, their import holds the original root of the word art, from the Latin ars, or artis, for “skill in joining or fitting.” In a world ever-threatened by some mindless act of collective suicide made possible by man’s own scientific ingenuity, we need what art offers us—communion, exchange—more than ever.
“No city is really great that neglects art,” local philanthropist Sam Davis said as he donated his collection to our art museum, That the visionaries who conceived and birthed the World’s Fair understood this is evident in the very existence of the structure that houses the museum. In 1892, planners intended that this building, of all the fair’s structures, stand as a permanent home to a growing collection supported by public funds.
Over the last 40 years, we’ve come to regard the Arch as the city’s principal symbol, but I wonder if our true direction isn’t to be found in the shadow of Louis IX. Talisman of the creative vision that beckoned the world to these slopes so long ago, his steady gaze reminds us that our future will ever flourish in the minds and hearts of all the artists, actors, musicians, dancers, writers and facilitators who have ever lived and worked here. Their talent, passion and, above all, devotion to the highest in us reminds us of our humanity, our potential for a better life. By their efforts, we will thrive—together.
