On Quality (14 July 2003)

Last Monday the National Art Gallery opened at Villa Doyle. For those of you who don't know, Villa Doyle is the big yellow house at the junction of West Street and West Hill Street, in town, opposite the St Francis' Catholic Cathedral and just up the hill from Educulture.

It is the best thing the Bahamian government has given the Bahamian people in a long, long time.

Now let me be clear. I'm not talking about the fact that we have an art gallery, that the Bahamian government has established a place where Bahamian artists can showcase their art, although that is fundamental and important. I'm not talking about the institution.

I'm talking about its execution.

It is rare, you see, for me to go into something built or run by government funds and feel as though those funds are being spent on creating or maintaining something of quality. Government offices are all too often rabbit warrens, soul-deadening places full of cubicles and partitions and stained ceiling tiles and half-working artificial lights. Government schools start out looking bright and clean and fresh, and in ten years become run-down and dog-eared. Even a place like the General Post Office, which was an impressive building when it was new, a fine example of the architecture of the time and an innovative use of space, is showing its age. It's younger than I am, but the eastern stairway is treacherous already, even deadly to people in fancy shoes.

But the building that houses the Art Gallery is 140 years old and absolutely beautiful.

The minute I placed my foot on the bottom step of the main entrance, I knew something was different. I felt as though I was not standing on something Bahamian, something built with government funding. I felt as though I was in some other country, where institutions routinely spend money making things just right, not because some tourist is going to set foot in it, but because the project and the people to whom the project is directed are worth it. It was a treacherous feeling — I am a firm believer in the talents and the abilities of my fellow Bahamians — but it was real.

Because, you see, it's rare that I've been inside anything that has been built in Nassau in the last decade or so and known that it was well done. Beauty, quality, polish — these do not seem to be ideals that we have subscribed to for a long, long time. We are far more accustomed to functionality and expediency.

Now I know that the general wisdom tends to question the value of beauty and quality. When things need to get done, they need to be done quickly, and got out of the way. They need to be able to serve people when service is needed; beauty and polish are luxuries that can rarely be afforded. Government isn't in the business of being pretty. Government is in the business of providing large numbers of people with services that they can't otherwise get, and it don't have time for the frills.

I will concede that there's something to be said for the urgency that pervades many of the public ventures with which we have learned to live. Many of the things our governments offer us are long overdue, and we're running to catch up. We live in a country that started out behind. In 1964, when we got internal self-government, and in 1968, when we got true majority rule, we were far behind the rest of the Caribbean in terms of basic provisions for the mass of the Bahamian people. Education, health care, public works and utilities, roads — the basic, basic infrastructure of a country — were limited to very specific sectors of the Bahamian archipelago and society, and the first governments had a lot of ground to cover. Cover it they did, and wonderfully, all in the matter of a decade or two, and we are all the better for it.

But there's a downside. It turns out that expediency isn't all that matters; thirty years down the line, we're learning that just getting the job done today doesn't always work for the future. Think of the chunks of ceiling that have fallen down on workers and patrons in the airport, or the killer sidewalk that throws people down by the Straw Market in Cable Beach. For far too long we have inhabited a country that works on the principle that's shared by certain Junkanoo artists when going to Bay: if the front is pretty enough, nobody will look too hard at the back, and nobody will see that what looks like paste is felt, or that it's just cardboard beneath that patch of glitter, or that (heaven forfend) the costume is finished with spraypaint. Nothing matters much as long as we get there. Thirty years down the line, we're realizing that looking good up front may be fine for a single rush, but the flam doesn't hold up in the long run.

We're starting to realize that being interested in nothing more than getting it done actually disrespects as much as it serves.

It disrespects because it works on the assumption that getting the job done is all that matters. How that job is done, how well it's maintained, and how long it lasts, are not important. It disrespects because it assumes that the majority of the Bahamian people don't care about quality, that all that matters is having the service in place. It disrespects because it assumes that the ordinary person doesn't appreciate beauty, that because poor people can't afford quality they don't deserve it, and that all there is to a job is a speedy finish, usually in time to for a general election.

And it disrespects, fundamentally, because it teaches us Bahamians that we are not worth the best the country has to offer. Because we are Bahamian, grass-roots, regular people, poor people, down-home people, perfection is not for us. We all do fine just getting by.

The National Art Gallery changes all that. For the first time in decades, the government has given the Bahamian people an institution that has been restored and polished and finished to perfection. Elementary details have not been overlooked. Light switches are not crooked, doorknobs are free of paint smudges, floor tiles are even, locks and handles have not been installed upside-down. Even special touches can be seen: the mouldings of doors and baseboards are beautifully turned, the wood floors shine. These are not altogether necessary for the functioning of the gallery, but they are beautiful; the whole thing smacks of quality and beauty and perfection. And it's not for the tourists. It's for us.

And why is this important? It's important because we need reminding that we are worth the best that we have to offer — that all Bahamians are precious enough in the sight of our governments to be given institutions that are beautiful, that quality is not just something we reserve for the tourists. It's important, because a people that is respected learns to respect itself. If we are given institutions that strive for perfection, then we will strive for perfection too.

So this is a celebration, and a charge. It's a celebration of the quality of the new National Art Gallery, and a charge that, from here on in, when we create public institutions, we pay attention to their quality as well as their function. It's a post in anticipation of the great national institutions that are yet to come; and it's a call to the people who plan these things to remember that placing quality over expediency, just sometimes, is not the worst thing in the world.