Gertrude Kasebier thought so. In 1897 she was publicly advising women that photography could be a “gratifying and profitable success.”

 This was new. On all sorts of levels. This was new.

The print above, “The Manger” sold for $100. A record.

Today Kasebier is viewed as a giant of modern art.

At 37, she entered the Pratt Institute of Art and Design. Here’s a portrait she took of her teacher, Arthur Wesley Dow.

 Dow was an ancestor of mine, cited by artists other than Kasebier, as being a major influence on their work. (See Teaching Genius to Paint).

Here’s a piece by Kasebier clearly showing Dow’s influence and his stewardship of the Japanese term, “Notan” Very loosely translated as “filling a space with beauty.”

One theme in Kasebier’s enormous body of work was the bond between mother and child.

Her own marriage was not a happy one. But like every artist she channeled that into her work. This is called “Yoked and Muzzled—Marriage.”

In the late 1890’s, “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” show, a theatrical performance set up shop in Brooklyn; and Kasebier wandered over with her camera. Throughout the next 10 years she’d photograph members of the troupe.

Unlike other artists who would focus on the Native American dress or customs; Kasebier zeroed in on her subjects as individual people. Individual people. That too, was new.     

Her legacy as an American artist is of course first in her stunning body of work; and the influence she had on those who came later.

But there is another legacy woven into the full, rich tapestry she left behind. It’s a footnote to her history. But it’s a reflection of an argument that has been going on since cavemen and women first drew pictures of last night’s dinner on the walls of their caves. It’s a really simple question. Much deeper than it sounds.

It’s this: Should artists make money?

At one point in her career, a seminal figure of American art, Alfred Stieglitz, called Kasebier, “beyond dispute, the leading artistic portrait photographer of the day.”

Few years later, that changed. Kasebier and Stieglitz had what’s described as an “unexpected personality clash.” Now while no one ever has a lens large enough to know what that means in total; one thread of the clash was Kasebier’s belief that it was OK for artists to be commercially and profitably successful. Stieglitz, on the other hand, put forth the idea of “art for arts sake.”

Kasebier had that “thing” artists have. That thing where if you don’t do your art, if you don’t pour yourself into it down to the tip toes of your soul; you find yourself not breathing right. Who knows? Maybe she would have done her work for free?

An awful lot of people in the business of packaging every kind of art and bringing it to the world know about that “thing,” artists have. They know it can be a vulnerability and they know how to exploit it.

But not everyone in the business of bringing some kind of art to the world sees it that way.

Some would agree with Gertrude Kasebier. Some who are, today, right now, in the position to make a difference.

Like, for example, Rocco Landesman, recently appointed by President Obama as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Landesman’s belief, which he has demonstrated in his own career, is that the arts can actually be an economic engine.

Now, take that core belief, which Mr. Landesman stated in his initial interview with the New York Times; and start dreaming.

What if the arts could; Change lives? Give voice to history? Create literature by opening doors to literary talent that would otherwise be closed?

What if the arts could  build community among the arts, business and government? Groups of people who don’t talk to each other all that much.

And what if, here’s the big one, what if the arts could be a force that wasn’t seen as simply a “nice to have” part of life?

What if the arts were NOT seen simply as something business or the government supported?

What if we took Gertrude Kasebier’s way of looking at the world  one step further and figured out how to put the arts on equal footing with business and government?

A true economic engine. What if the arts could actually stimulate economic growth?

In that same New York Times interview, Mr. Landesman had a quote that I’m guessing Gertrude Kasebier  would have liked. Here’s what he said,

“Artist’s kids need shoes too.”

What do you think?