Danehy

By the time you read this, the Tucson city elections will be over,
and we’ll all know whether Steve Kozachik pulled the upset over Nina
Trasoff, if Ben Buehler-Garcia came close enough to put a scare into
Karin Uhlich, and if Shaun McClusky pulled even 30 percent against
Steve Leal’s anointed successor, Richard Fimbres. Then there’s also
that pesky Proposition 200, which would make the city of Tucson safer
or bankrupt, or both.

I’m writing this the weekend before the election and pondering the
possibilities. (Hey, what if all three Republicans won, but Prop 200
lost? What then?) Whatever the outcome of the vote, it’s going to be
interesting to see what the City Council does with downtown.

Even if the incumbents (and I count Fimbres in that number) get
re-elected, there’s no way that they’ll be able to continue with the
Pushme-Pullyou, scattershot approach to revitalization. They’re going
to have to scale back, set priorities, stick to them and, most of all,
stop trying to be everything to everybody. It’s human nature to want to
be generous (and to be liked for being generous), but the days of free
spending and pet projects are long gone.

It’s probably not a lot of fun to be elected to office, only to find
that you only have three major obligations: maintaining healthy police
and fire departments, fixing the streets and figuring out ways to pay
for the two aforementioned items. Even if Prop 200 didn’t pass, the
budget shortfall will force the council to severely narrow its
focus.

I recently came across a story in The Economist that might be
helpful. In 1850, the relatively new country of Belgium (which had
gained its independence from the Netherlands two decades earlier) was
looking to make a name for itself in the European community and the
world. Aware of this, an artist named Antoine Wiertz offered the
fledgling government a deal: He would trade his biggest paintings in
exchange for the government providing him with a studio. This was a
bold step by Wiertz, because, for centuries, artists had been supported
by individuals and/or families who were patrons of the arts, but not by
governments.

Somewhat surprisingly, the government went for the deal. It paid a
lot of money to build a “huge, comfortable and well-lit” studio that
would, after Wiertz’s death, display his works for all time. (The
Economist calls the deal “a masterclass in maladministration.”)
Wiertz was actually moderately successful for a while. Some of his
paintings were well-received in Rome, and Belgians went gaga over such
paintings as “Premature Burial,” in which a terrified man tries to
escape from the coffin in which he is about to be entombed; “Ravishing
of a Belgian Woman,” in which an assault victim—completely naked
but somehow armed with a pistol—blows her attacker’s brains out
(in vivid detail); and “Hunger, Madness and Crime,” in which a peasant
woman brandishes a bloody knife as the leg of her infant sticks out of
the cooking pot. (Nowadays, we just have people who pee on
crucifixes.)

Wiertz was able to play the politicians like a freakin’ fiddle. When
his work was panned by critics in Paris, Wiertz published a manifesto
calling for Brussels to become “capital of Europe,” leaving Paris as a
second-rate “provincial” town. His little hissy fit earned him a medal
from the Belgian government.

He toiled away in his government-provided studio and was rather
prolific, if not altogether good at what he did. He even died in that
studio, in 1865. After his death, the Belgian government was left with
220 of his works. (He was also an equally inept sculptor.) In accepting
Wiertz’s estate, the Belgian parliament acceded to the artist’s demands
that his paintings never be moved, loaned out or put in storage.
According to his wishes, they should “remain invariably fixed” to the
walls of the studio the government had provided for him.

For a few decades, it wasn’t a horrible deal for the Belgian
government. Back in the 1920s, the Wiertz Museum attracted a couple
hundred people per day. These days, maybe 10 people a day wander in …
and then scurry out. Nevertheless, the government is bound by honor and
duty to keep the museum open. Indeed, as long as there is a Belgium,
there must be a Wiertz Museum.

These days, Belgian officials try to put a pretty face on the deal,
explaining that while his art is stinko, the museum gives visitors the
opportunity to step into an authentic (overpriced) 19th-century art
studio.

One interesting note: Back when Wiertz was scamming the government
into becoming a patron of his “art,” the place where his studio was to
be built for him was out on the fringe of Brussels, in a sparsely
populated area. In his written request to the government, he predicted
that the area would someday become “the centre of an immense and rich
population.” Today, only a stone’s throw from the museum are the towers
that house the European Parliament. The buildings are officially on Rue
Wiertz.

The piece in The Economist was designed to be a cautionary
tale about the Obama administration and its rush to form partnerships
with institutions that should flourish or crumble without any
governmental intervention.

I kinda took it another way.

This article appears in Nov 5-11, 2009.