The Arts and The Wisconsin Idea: A Conference Report

"I would have no mute, inglorious, undiscovered Milton in Wisconsin…"
—University of Wisconsin President Glenn Frank

Senator "Fighting Bob" LaFollette and his wife Belle Case LaFollette, deceased for over 50 years, were keynote speakers at a day-long investigation of the arts in rural Wisconsin.

Perhaps I should back up a bit.

"Wisconsin Barn Dance" (1946)by Katherine Hadden, from John Steuart Curry's Wisconsin Rural Art Project workshop

If you look through time at the development of community-based arts in America — especially rural arts — you are struck again and again by the outpouring of creative expression among small-community and farm folk in Wisconsin. "The Arts in the Small Community," which has been the rural arts-development "bible" for many people, came from Wisconsin in 1969. The Wisconsin Idea Theater and the Wisconsin Rural Writers Association and the Wisconsin Rural Arts Project engaged thousands of people in making their own plays, their own art. "Let's Draw!" was perhaps the earliest distance-learning arts-education program, offered via WHA Radio to schoolchildren in Wisconsin starting as early as 1935. The first artist-in-residence at any public university in the country was at the University of Wisconsin — in the College of Agriculture, starting in the 1930s. Ethel Rockwell of the Extension Bureau helped countless community theater groups form. "Pop" Gordon of the Extension Bureau crisscrossed Wisconsin by train in the 1920s, forming rural singing societies statewide.

How did all of this come about?

The Big Idea

We return to Senator "Fighting Bob" LaFollette, remembered nationally as the founder of the Progressive Movement and senator from Wisconsin, the only senator to vote against the United States' participation in World War I. But in Wisconsin, he is known for the vision of the Wisconsin Idea, forged when he was governor of the state at the turn of the 20th century.

LaFollette and his close friend Charles Van Hise attended the University of Wisconsin together. Influenced by the progressive ideals of their economics professor, John Bascom, their career paths led LaFollette to the governorship (1900-1906), and at the same time, led Van Hise to the presidency of the university (1903-1918). They decided to put their progressive thinking to work. "A government infused with the talent of trained professionals, guided by the expertise of our wisest scholars and answerable to an active and well-educated citizenry…" This was the vision.

It was all bound up: In order for the citizenry to govern themselves actively and wisely, locally and at the state level, they must be fully educated, their talents fully developed. Therefore, the university had a responsibility to all Wisconsin citizens (whether they could get to the campus in Madison or not). And therefore, the state had a responsibility to ensure that the university had resources to educate and fully develop the talents of all of the people of Wisconsin. Professors worked to better the quality of life of the people; it was all about service. Correspondence courses, traveling faculty, WHA Radio — all were designed to deliver a quality education throughout the state. "The boundaries of the campus are the boundaries of the state" was the slogan. The governor kept up-to-date with big new ideas by inviting notables like Frederick Jackson Turner to his "Saturday Lunch Club" — gatherings of university professors meeting for lunch at the governor's mansion to discuss the development of their respective fields of learning.

President Van Hise's successor, President Glenn Frank, was especially aware of the role that the arts could play in the Wisconsin Idea. "There's a gap in the soul of a people that troop into a theater, but never themselves produce a folk drama," Glenn Frank said in the 1920s, noting that the arts are especially vital if in the years ahead we are to control, rather than be controlled by, rapid technological advances. Frank hired Dean Chris Christensen to head the College of Agriculture, believing that the college had a special role to play in helping to fully realize the talents of farm folk, so that they could be full participants in the great vision of the Wisconsin Idea.

Robert Gard in front of a model of the Portage, Wisconsin amphitheater. Photo courtesy Robert Gard Wisconsin Idea Foundation

As a result, Dean Christensen hired artists for the College of Agriculture (and not only artists — Christensen hired well-known conservationist Aldo Leopold, as well; it was a big vision). John Steuart Curry, a colleague of Grant Wood, became the first artist-in-residence in the mid-1930s. Curry's job was to be available to anyone in Wisconsin who wanted to paint; he helped literally thousands of Wisconsinites define their own personal style of painting. In 1945, Dean Christensen also hired Robert E. Gard, a young Kansan who had been influenced by Alexander Drummond of Cornell University. "When plays cannot be found to fit the needs of the people," Gard wrote, "someone or some group must make up a play: in such playmaking there is a wonderful freshness."

This thinking meshed with the Wisconsin Idea, and Gard founded the Wisconsin Idea Theater out of the Ag College. The "Theater" was not a place; it was a network of ideas and creativity, expressed through drama. Gard helped any Wisconsinite with an idea turn that idea into a radio drama or a stage performance. He worked with 4-H, envisioning all of Wisconsin's 4-H Clubs as potential children's theaters. He worked with faith groups, helping them envision the creation of dramas to investigate the meaning of their faith and to express that meaning to others. He inspired drama groups in state parks, toured Wisconsin history musicals to county fairs, worked for the publication of Wisconsin plays. He founded the Wisconsin Rural Writers Association, a network of literally thousands of writers (which continues to this day as the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association). And more. And more.

Arts Extension, at its peak in the early 1970s, had 28 artists on the faculty, all of whom embodied the Wisconsin Idea. They included Gard; Ed Hugdahl who created the "Music in the Small Church" program to assist rural organists; Marv Rabin, who created the Norwegian Folk Fiddling program to keep ethnic music traditions alive and well; Helen O'Brien, whose vision didn't allow her to drive, but rode the Greyhound bus to countless towns to help make the 4-H Youth Drama vision a reality; Karen Cowan, rural dance specialist; Dave Peterson, who wrote the Wisconsin musicals that toured to county fairs.

In 1967, the Office of Community Arts Development at the College of Agriculture received the first rural arts grant ever awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts — a three-year program to create an arts-development model for rural places. In year one, funds would be used to bring to the five "test communities" artists chosen by people in that community. In year two, local people would respond to the guest artists by deciding on the creation of arts programs of their own. In year three, programs would be documented and infrastructure built to maintain the programs would be created. "The Arts in the Small Community" was the result.

Tracing Wisconsin's Rich Arts Heritage

This brings us, finally, to the conference, "The Arts and the Wisconsin Idea: New Vigor for Local Arts," held at the Agricultural end of the University of Wisconsin campus in October 2003. Sponsored by the Robert Gard Wisconsin Idea Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Foundation, with assistance from the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Wisconsin Assembly of Local Arts, the gathering was designed to inform people of their rich heritage. Perhaps more important, the gathering made the point that arts programs — to survive difficult economic times — must be grounded in a vision of society, of humankind and its potential, that is larger than the arts.

"Passenger Pigeons" (1944)by Walter Thorp, from John Steuart Curry's Wisconsin Rural Art Project workshop

So it was obvious that LaFollette should be the keynote speaker. Played by historian Rob Nelson, who thoroughly knows the life and writing of "Fighting Bob," LaFollette invited his wife, Belle Case LaFollette (incidentally, a feminist and the first woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin Law School) to join him, and the "speech" became a dialogue between the two, outlining the Wisconsin Idea and setting the context for the day. Said "Bob" in closing: "If it can be shown that Wisconsin is a happier and better state to live in, that its institutions are more democratic, that the opportunities of all its people are more equal, that social justice more nearly prevails, that human life is safer and sweeter — then I shall rest content in the feeling that the Progressive Movement has been successful."

The next panel included myself, Robert Gard's daughter; Harv Thompson, the last full-time employee of Arts Extension, which has fallen victim to budget cuts; and Karen Cowan, retired Extension dance specialist. They told the story — summarized above — of the arts and the Wisconsin Idea. The story even included a 1954 television interview with Dean Christensen, in which he explained why the College of Agriculture must be involved in the arts.

The next group revisited the 1967 rural arts-development project, and looked at its impact. Mike Warlum, now of Seattle, Washington, was one of the two graduate students who worked with Gard on the "Arts in the Small Community" project. He outlined the project's breathtakingly large vision of 35 years ago. Dr. Robert Curtis of Portage, Wisconsin, was one of the participants of the project in that community. He recalled how the vision became real in Portage, and he traced its impact over the past 35 years, for Curtis is still supporting the arts. Portage has an extremely active arts community and arts center, and Curtis attributes the outpouring of support of the arts in Portage to those 1967 beginnings.

"A community group raised money to buy the old Bapist church, built originally by the Presbyterians in 1893 at the corner of East Cook and Adams Street," Curtis wrote me recently. "These people were the leaders of some of the organizations that were active in the rural arts. They were organized as the Portage Center for the Arts Inc., and called it the Zona Gale Center. Fueled by a grant from the city's tourism committee, it has been successful in presenting a concert series, and the summer is taken up with children's theater — the latter thanks to a former Portage boy who got a start in children's theater here and became a professor of drama, and returns each summer."

Liz Nevers, a young woman with the Sauk County Extension Office investigated the impact of the project in her county — from the perspective of someone who "inherited" its results, never having known of its origins. Nevers pointed to the extraordinary - nearly 100,000! — visitor-draw of the regional studio tours, the nationally acclaimed American Players Theater and the growing community of young artists in the area as evidence that the ground was laid by the 1967 project.

And Steve Duchrow, who uses the "Arts in the Small Community" as his "arts-development bible" in Crystal Lake, Illinois, passionately pulled the session together by describing how "The Arts…" was ahead of its time and pertinent to our world today, demonstrating how the arts can work with all sectors of a small town's population, from its faith community to its historians to its recreation specialists.

George Tzougros, executive director of the Wisconsin Arts Board, then held a conversation with Belle Case LaFollette, ruminating about how these historical reflections and these big social ideas could serve as the action framework today for small community arts groups. Participants then discussed how they could use these "big ideas" on Monday morning when they returned home.

The day ended, appropriately, with ceremony. Moving to a hilltop that overlooks Lake Mendota, at the center of campus, they broke ground for a Robert Gard Story Circle. The Story Circle, fittingly, will be constructed at the place where outdoor classes and small impromptu performances and speeches have always been held. Discussion, investigation, reflection and expression are, after all, the heart of the Wisconsin Idea. The Story Circle is both a fitting memorial, and a fitting living setting for vibrant ideas. Poets, balladeers, Gard's widow and representatives of the state's artists as well as the Campus Natural Areas Committee performed the ceremony, which was blessed by a red-tailed hawk, circling, circling throughout.

On the floor of the story circle, these words — which close "The Arts in the Small Community" — will be engraved: "If you try, you can indeed alter the heart and the mind of America."

Maryo Gard Ewell is a community arts development specialist who has worked for state and local arts councils for 35 years. One of her first jobs was for the 1967 program referred to in this article.

References

The Robert Gard Wisconsin Idea Foundation is on the Web. http://www.wisconsinacademy.org/gard

"The Arts in the Small Community" by Robert Gard, Ralph Kohlhoff and Michael Warlum (Office of Community Arts Development, U. Wisconsin, 1969) was reprinted by Americans for the Arts in 1984.

"Grassroots Theater: A Search for Regional Arts in America" by Robert Gard is back in print, an affordable paperback published by the University of Wisconsin Press. Published in 1955, it provides the philosophical framework for the importance of helping everyone uncover his or her artistic talents, within the context of the Wisconsin Idea.

Information about the Gard Archives at Steenbock Library may be obtained by contacting archivist Bernie Schermetzler at bschermetzler@library.wisc.edu.

"Distinguished Service" by Ayse Somersian was published by U.W. Extension recently and details the contributions of the University of Wisconsin Extension in all fields of learning.

Robert La Follette's "Autobiography" (U.W. Press, 1960) is a classic.

Original CAN/API publication: December 2003