Question of the day: who should pay for the arts?

[Brian Howell]

The Atlantic recently published an article about the National Endowment for the Arts, which is 50 years old.

The NEA was founded to “nurture American creativity, to elevate the nation’s culture, and to sustain and preserve the country’s many artistic traditions.” In an inclusive, pluralistic society, arts funding should reflect our increasingly diverse communities. Deliberately excluding art made by and for underrepresented communities goes against the spirit on which the NEA was founded.

Lyndon Johnson signed the NEA into existence in November, 1965, as part of The Great Society. He felt that government mustn't only serve “the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.” 

From its outset, the NEA has seen itself as an agent for broadening the breadth of the arts in American culture. It creates opportunities for minority expression that are supported by no other major constituencies. The vast majority of contributions to the arts in the United States goes to "big box" purveyors of the Euro-arts (e.g, symphonies, operas, and ballets), whose patrons—in both senses of that word—are primarily educated and white This truth leaves small African American theater companies, Asian dance troupes, Tlingit storytellers, and similar organizations in constant battles for survival. The NEA is supposed to counterweigh some of this financial imbalance and, through so doing, such cultural imbalance as well, recognizing, surfacing, and sustaining some of the breadth and depth of an increasingly diverse and integrative American culture.

Since Reagan, the NEA has been under attack. Conservatives in particular see it as an example of "empowered central government." Its budget has been cut repeatedly, including by 50% by Bill Clinton. Does the NEA have a valid role in modern society? And should its funding be expanded? For the record, the NEA's $146M annual budget is about one-hundredth of one percent (1 basis point) of federal discretionary spending.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/01/the-state-of-public-funding-for-the-arts-in-america/424056/ 

References

1. http://www.nasaa-arts.org/Research/Grant-Making/NEAFactSheetSpring2013.pdf

[jack saunders]

What a fraught project, when one looks at it after decades of entirely predictable pulling toward the acceptable center.  

On the one hand, one is inclined to be judgmental of any rich society that did NOT set aside some portion of its national treasury for art.  

In Europe, with a much deeper art tradition than ours, art was all handled by an unending game of national oneupsmanship conducted among heads of state who wanted their palaces second to none.  

The results are eye-popping, but, in my view, in bad taste.  Everything covered in gold!  Really?  Yes....eye-popping, for sure.  And, no question about it, art.  Only the finest.  Nobody was looking to see that the overall motif included the tastes of the common man, or even the prime minister.  It was all a plutocratic game of Can You Top This?

Modern America seeks to guide art.  I find that a bit of an oxymoron.

 

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From: Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com>
To: Ipse Dixit <Ipse-...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Kate McNulty <kate.m...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2016 8:56 AM
Subject: [Ipse Dixit] Question of the day: who should pay for the arts?

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