FEATURE COLUMN by John McDonald: Wyeth never had this problem

By John McDonald
There was a fella back home named Harold Sherm Ames, who had a nice place on a straight-away right there on Route 1 less than a mile out of town. When he retired from operating a log yard, he decided to come up with some clever item he could easily make and sell to the thousands of tourists going by his house all summer.
After doing a little market research, Harold settled on the birdhouse as the easiest and most popular item to make and sell for the most profit. When he told folks around town about his birdhouse idea everyone agreed it was a good one.

They also agreed that Harold had a perfect spot there on Route 1 and he should do quite well. The only fly in the ointment, you might say, was when Sherm finally started making his birdhouses, it was obvious he was a terrible carpenter, completely clueless, totally unskilled, having no idea how to join two pieces of wood together. Despite that, he threw together about a dozen rickety birdhouses, slapped a thick coat of paint on them and hung them from the branches of the large maple tree in his front yard. Then he set a large, gaudy sign on his lawn to announce to the traveling public he was now in the birdhouse business and was offering them for $20 each.
As expected, tourists began stopping almost immediately to check out Harold’s wares. After examining a few of the flimsy structures, those same tourists would get back in their cars and drive away. At first Harold thought he might have priced his birdhouses a little too high, so he reduced the price from $20 to $18 and made signs to reflect the savings. Tourists continued to stop, but after looking refused to buy Harold’s birdhouses. He continued reducing the price. From $18 they went to $16, then $14 and $12. By late-August Sherm decided to price them at $5 each just to get rid of them. At that price he did sell a few, but by the end of the season most of the birdhouses remained hanging in the maple tree — unsold.
Although he was unskilled in carpentry, Harold was not a stupid man, so he did learn a lot from his fruitless birdhouse experience. He learned that despite his perfect location on Route 1 and despite the obvious popularity of birdhouses, he lacked the skill needed to make birdhouses people wanted to buy. So he stopped making them.
I was reminded of Sherm’s experience the other day when I read in the paper about someone known as a “performance artist,” who received a federal grant because no one was willing to pay to see his “performance art.” Many people wish the folks in the art world would learn the simple lessons Sherm learned years ago there on Route 1. But they haven’t. In the art world, if the average person refuses to buy a piece of work because the artist lacks artistic skill and aesthetic vision, then the arts community thinks the artist should get grant money from the taxpayers so he’ll be encouraged to keep making stuff that people continue to not want to buy.
I recently came up with what might be a workable solution to the money-for-art problem. I think the arts people in Washington should follow the example set by the folks in agriculture more than 50 years ago. When people don’t buy enough of the food that farmers produced, the Department of Agriculture folks began paying farmers NOT to grow food. Why can’t we do that with those unskilled artists? If someone insists on making all kinds of worthless objects that no one buys, why not have the endowment folks agree to pay these “artists” NOT to make any more “art?
Think about it while I e-mail my “congressperson.”