During the first year of the pandemic, Massachusetts’ arts and culture sector took a $588 million hit. For greater Boston, that meant arts organizations lost a total of $423 million and individual artists lost close to $13 million.
As a mayoral candidate, Michelle Wu laid out a thorough plan to help the arts and culture sector recover. It included everything from boosting Boston’s artists in residence programs to reforming the city’s Payment in Lieu of Tax (PILOT) program, which asks tax-exempt organizations — universities, hospitals and nonprofit cultural institutions — to make voluntary payments to the city.
Wu also emphasized what arts have meant to her personally. Her campaign website says, “growing up, the arts were central to Michelle’s immigrant family, grounding her in culture, heritage, and community.”
Now that Wu has recently marked her first 100 days in office, and arts and culture venues are reopening, GBH’s Executive Arts Editor Jared Bowen visited the mayor at City Hall to talk about her commitment to the arts and culture sector. One thing that immediately stood out was an upright Yamaha. A classically trained pianist, Wu had the city-owned piano moved into her office right after her inauguration.
Of the piano, Wu says it has grounded her. “When my parents first came to this country, they didn't speak English very well," she said. "Music was how they could still feel connected to community here, despite language barriers, despite other cultural barriers. Music transcended everything. I've been playing piano since I was four or five years old, and it's been a source of comfort, a source of strength, a source of just finding myself.”
The role that arts and culture has played in Wu’s life is something that she wants to be central to Boston’s life. [The arts] “are not only how we hope to connect with each other and heal after such a trying difficult two years, they’re really going to be central and key to our economic recovery as well.”
As Wu sees it, Boston can also use the arts and culture sector to lead the way in this post-pandemic recovery. “We're going to be the city where you can't miss out. You need to be here to enjoy the shows and see the public art and to enjoy our restaurants and cultural scene. That is critical to drawing people back in and making sure that we can continue building that foundation of what it means to be a creative, dense, welcoming, inclusive city," she said.
However, for the city’s arts and culturee community to thrive, artists need to thrive too. Affordable housing and a lack of studio space remain a challenge for artists who want to stay in a city whose skyline is dominated by cranes and shiny new skyscrapers.
Wu says that the development in Boston shouldn’t be to the detriment of the creative community. “Our growth as a city should be providing the same mechanisms and support to be able to build arts facilities and spaces and resources right into that," she said. "With every new building that goes up, there needs to be a conversation about what the contribution to our cultural fabric is as well. Many of our neighborhoods that represent such treasures are at great risk. Not only could arts organizations be lost, but larger cultural institutions as well.”
When Wu was running for Mayor she would play the piano before the debates to clear her head. Today, when she sits at the piano, her office overlooks the city of which she is now mayor.
"It's shocking to remember what life felt like when I first started piano lessons, that my parents felt excluded and shut out from so many of the systems," she said. "We never could have imagined that one day I would be involved in government.”
Reflecting on her years of practice and performance, Wu says “with music, when you're looking at those notes that someone else brought to life hundreds of years ago, you can still bring a little bit of them, bring a little bit of that spirit they were trying to convey into this moment to match how you're feeling," she said. "It's incredible, that sense of meeting people where they are — transcending language and time and every other way that we’re divided. That’s what I hope that the city of Boston can represent too."
