EAMON O'DOHERTY,
Madam, - While I was working at the University of Jordan in the 1980s, the EU Commissioner for the area organised a cultural festival with the intention of showcasing European culture for our friends in the Middle East. Each European country was asked to contribute.
The French sent a magnificent collection of modern paintings, the Germans a collection of astrolabes and other medieval scientific instruments, the Italians drawings and models of the work of Leonardo da Vinci, and so on, each country demonstrating something of the richness and complexity of its cultural history. Ireland sent Frank Patterson and the UCD football team.
How we expatriates blushed. Was this the summation of the culture of the Island of Saints and Scholars? Any doubts in the intervening years have been dispelled. Art is now the poor cousin in a combined Ministry of Sport and the Arts, and there can be no doubt about which will lose out.
Last year was a good one for sport. The doings of Roy and Mick were seldom off the front pages and indeed Roy is back, ousting all other news as the lead story for a full four minutes, on RTE's six o'clock news on February 11th, followed by eight minutes of ashen-faced analysis. Football is everywhere. Despite the shelving of plans for the full "Bertie Bowl", sums unheard of in the art world were, and still are, tossed about in the name of sport, €400 million being the latest estimate for a reduced Bowl, or "teacup". As a comparison, the National Gallery extension cost €12 million.
Meanwhile, arts organisations are closed down for want of a pittance. Music, dance, theatre, literature and the visual arts are starved of funds. Arthouse vanished, and the Government, through its quango the Arts Council, withdrew all funding from the Artists' Association, causing its closure. It was not as if it was not getting value for money as the organisation provided not only the essential professional contacts for its 1,200 members, but also, through its estimable director Stella Coffey, negotiated health insurance, hospitalisation plans, protection of copyright, and discount schemes with suppliers and services for its members, the latter saving hard-pressed artists many hundreds of euro a year.
The main reason for the removal of all funding was that the association showed an audited deficit in 2001 of €46,000, about one third of its annual funding (and about one third of the sum being paid each month to Magahy and Co. for advice on the "Bertie Bowl"). All jobs at the Artists' Association were lost, while the Arts Council announced in its November bulletin a 40 per cent increase in its own full-time staff. Closing down useful organisations is hard work.
Both the Artists Association and Arthouse were located in Temple Bar, Dublin's cultural quarter, where I have a small studio (subsidised by the Arts Council, thanks). What used to be the artists' favourite bar now shows non-stop, giant screen football, while the streets outside are largely the province of baying packs of yobs sporting the "stripes" and chanting the slogans of English provincial soccer clubs.
Please put the Arts Council in charge of sport and level the playing pitch. - Yours, etc.,
EAMON O'DOHERTY, Marlborough Road, Dublin 4.