“I believe that the Metropolitan Opera belongs to the people, not to a select group. The public should not be afraid to come to the Met. Culture belongs to everybody.”
I've posted this quote before and it's here again in response to an email sent by the Occupy movement to Lincoln Center employees in which they state they would like a dialogue regarding "the reality that our commons have been stolen from us to profit the wealthiest 1%: we have lost homes, jobs, affordable education, natural resources, and access to public space, while our culture has been co-opted by a corporate elite."
Agnes Varis worked tirelessly her entire life and earned money by doing something that truly helped people - she was a pioneer in the generic drug industry that makes drugs accesible to everybody. Meanwhile, she was involved in protests in the 60s and 70s against the Vietnam War and for women's equality, a cause she continued to passionately fight for. When she made her money she began to set up multitude of charitable foundations and programs, ranging from health to animal rights to the arts.
She was one of the Metropolitan Opera's biggest contributors and a managing director. She was not one to just throw money at the institution and let it do what it wanted with it. Instead, she directed the funds and set up programs to make culture accesible to as many people as possible. Because of her the Met has the Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Rush Ticket Program which offers orchestra level seats for $20 and sets aside a certain amount of tickets for the elderly.
With donations and corporate sponsorship the Met is able to have more programs like this. The Met Opera Student Ticket Program offers orchestra seats to students under 29 years old for $25 on weekdays and $35 on weekends. The Summer HD Festival is a fantastic event open to the public where operas are shown on a giant screen in the Lincoln Center Plaza at the end of summer. The Live in HD series itself allows people from all over the world to see spectacular productions for the price of a movie ticket - or free, if you wait to watch on PBS.
Lincoln Center Plaza is always open to the public and is full of public goods (I'm an econ major.). This includes the spectacular new fountain and roof lawn in addition to a park with seats and benches. These provide public externalities, benefiting everybody in the area with no personal cost. The Midsummer Night's Swing is another wonderful summer festival open to the public with musical performances in the plaza and encouraged dancing. Lincoln Center also hosts the Big Apple Circus and New York Fashion Week - staples of New York culture - in an otherwise underutilized corner of the property.
In May 2010 it was reported that Agnes Varis had given the Met nearly $21 million, and she went on to give more. Now I'm not a math major, but it seems to me that donating $21 million to make music more accesible and keep the Metropolitan Opera open and running did not profit Agnes, and was not an effort by the corporate elite to steal public commons and selfishly co-opt culture.
There are certainly issues that the Occupy movement can and should address. The arts is not one of them. The Met would be more than happy to have this young, passionate group of people inside the house, celebrating opera and culture. And thanks to the 1 percent, it only costs twenty bucks.
