The administration of culture in Brazil still follows the models set by Gustavo Capanema and Mário de Andrade.
In contrast to France, USA and England, the country did not establish priorities for culture and tries to set limits between the State and the market.
The writer Pedro Nava was the one who stated: “It all began with Capanema”. It might not have been everything, but almost everything. Gustavo Capanema, Minister of Education and Public Health during Gétulio Vargas administration, founded the headquarters of the Ministry of Education in Rio, designed by Le Corbusier, created the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Department, the National Book Institute and the National Museum of Fine Arts.
Villa-Lobos dedicated him “Bachiana nº 5”. Drummond de Andrade directed his cabinet. Mário de Andrade was one of his closest assistants. Without denying the validity of Nava’s statement, it is important to remember that it was Mário de Andrade who, in 1935, created the Culture Department at the municipality of São Paulo. At that time, it was established that the State had the duty of offering culture to the citizen and the modernist poet became our first cultural administrator.
Eight decades have passed and Andrade and Capanema are still the most important theoretical references of Brazilian cultural policy. “We tried to take up the importance that culture had then for the formation of Brazilian identity, from a 21st Century viewpoint”, affirmed the minister Juca Ferreira. “Today we know the State is indisputable. If we were to leave culture in the hands of the market, the people’s right to access would not be fully exercised.”
The market’s dilemma
If Capanema was the first to design the State’s participation in culture and Mário de Andrade conceived public administration, it could be said that Brazil adhered to the so called economy of culture thanks to the Incentives Law –strengthened in the 1990s-.
Besides Rouanet Law, a series of incentive laws created by regions and municipalities injected money collected through taxes from private and public companies into the cultural sector. “The artist still awaits for paternalism, for money for his productions”, states Ney Piacentini, from the Cooperativa Paulista de Teatro. “The audience was neglected.”
For Sharon Hess, who works raising funds and has a masters in public policy administration from England, the problem, in Brazil, is that what is discussed is the model, not the policy. She considers that “The answer to the question What is wanted for culture? is not clear”. “The government set goals for education. Why not doing the same for culture? What is it that the country wants? To create access policies, to invest in popular culture or in large events?”
Around these three questions are structured the three big models found worldwide: the French, the North American and the English.
In France, almost everything is the State’s job. From the public coffers, in 2009, R$ 7 billions were destined to producers from a very wide arrange of areas and profiles.
In the USA, there are large private foundations and a mechanism for tax relief that, contrary to what occurs in Brazil, foresees private contributions. There are also public funds distributed by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency that promotes what it calls “excellence in the arts”. However, we are talking about a limited amount of money.
England, on the other hand, earmarks R$ 5.3 billion annually for culture, but it is not the State, as in France, that takes care of their distribution. There is an intermediate body, the Arts Council, made up by specialists, that has independence to define budget allocation –as long as it meets the goals established by the government.
http://blogs.cultura.gov.br/blogdarouanet/brasil-adere-a-economia-da-cultura/