ArtPlace America shows why culture matters to communities

Sometime in the next few years, crews dispatched by the Environmental Protection Agency will roll into Ashland, Massachusetts, population 19,000, and begin a $20.5 million cleanup of groundwater contaminated by waste from a chemical dye plant. That day will mark a victory for the town, where cancer deaths have been linked to toxins from the factory, which operated from 1917 to 1978. Among those buried and mourned are teens and young adults who grew up playing in puddles and ponds turned blue, purple, and other candy colors by the plant’s discharges.

Sharing in this victory will be a high-profile philanthropic arts venture inspired by a Broadway producer and funded by some of the country’s largest grant makers. For a decade ending last December, ArtPlace America sprinkled $150 million across the nation, backing a kaleidoscope of projects. The goal: prove that the arts and culture are critical to the social fabric, identity, and well-being of communities.

Not all the work paid dividends, and the effort raised questions about whether art-based revitalization can fuel gentrification. But the ideas behind ArtPlace are so commonplace now that President Biden named one of their leading proponents, scholar Maria Rosario Jackson, to lead the National Endowment for the Humanities. Jackson, who has studied how the arts contribute to community building, will be the first NEA chair with a Ph.D. in urban planning.

At the local level, places such as Boston, Los Angeles, New York, and St. Paul and Granite Falls, Minn., have embedded artists in government agencies, often searching for fresh ideas to old problems. This fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced $2 million in grant funding for arts organizations to promote Covid-19 vaccines.

In Ashland, home to the cancer cluster tied to toxic waste from the dye...