"The ants on the crucifix" should be a synonym for "the writing on the wall". This winter, the Smithsonian Institute removed an artwork that had angered the Christian Right, and last month, the House voted to cut a quarter of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) budget. It happened like clockwork, and it's only the latest sign that arts advocates must abandon the federal funding model.
Critics don't care that the Smithsonian exhibit was privately funded. Over the years, the "save our children" lobby has streamlined its arguments; every time another controversial artwork shows up anywhere near public funding, they'll cite the precedent of the ants on the crucifix. But even if it's no longer possible to have a bipartisan conversation about arts money, maybe that's for the best. Maybe the culture wars can still be fought without a frontal assault.
An example of the convoluted path to arts funding can be found in Los Angeles. Tourist visits in the city jumped 8% from 2009-2010, and Australians, for the first time, made up the largest chunk. The economy helped, as did the exchange rate, and Gustavo Dudamel couldn't have hurt, but some sources credit cheaper flights between LAX and Australian airports. Los Angeles gets money for its Department of Cultural Affairs from a portion of hotel tax revenues, so when it got cheaper for Australians to fly across the Pacific, hotels filled up and helped fund the arts.
That contribution was small, but there are countless factors like it in transportation, communications, tax incentives and copyright law that play a much larger role in determining what gets funded than does the federal arts budget. Within limits, wider expressways mean more trips to city centers, faster internet means more YouTube videos, and larger gift allowances mean more museum donors. This logic also addresses the furor over cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities and, to a lesser extent, the Institute of Museum and Library Services. As a general rule, federal projects that make it easier to do anything also make it easier to do art.
And, as any manufacturing tycoon will tell you, it's more efficient in the long run to invest in means than in ends. Arts advocates sometimes forget that we ought to agree with this: when we talk about culture and heritage, we're talking about future generations and long-term benefits, not immediate profits. So why are we still relying on the government to fund individual projects?
It certainly isn't the money. Just because NEA funding is invisible on a graph next to the defense budget doesn't mean arts organizations are automatically worth supporting. That would assume they function the way we'd like them to. But naturally, the sort of projects that actually drive tourism and innovation are usually self-sufficient anyway, and the programs that subsist on grants are unlikely to make a broad economic impact. I owe this last point to Tyler Cowen, who wrote the book on the subject.
On top of the federal arts budget's inefficiencies and lack of influence, there's the intrinsic trouble of centralizing something people are expected and even encouraged to disagree about. Someone will always be offended. Hell hath no lobby like a fundamentalist scorned, and under the current system extreme positions can't be ignored.
Saying we should abandon national arts funding is not the same as saying we should abandon the arts. The NEA survives as a symbol, a reminder that we Americans believe in the arts. But artistic works are a byproduct of a healthy society, not the other way around, and a much more potent symbolic gesture would be to let the arts budget die and show that we Americans aren't missing the forest for the trees. Instead of arguing over the pittance of direct funding to the NEA, we should focus on better harnessing the massive indirect funding all around us. Maybe we could even push that kind of initiative through Congress, for once.
This link below was produced by John Olbert Art and Drama teacher with his students
it has a message that enhances your agenda .
Please take a look
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q42sg2bJ9Q4
Mickey Carroll
http://www.theartsweb.com/artspotlight/Mickey_Carroll.htm
http://www.youtube.com/user/MickeyCarroll#p/u/1/MNydQ2eQ8MA
This is no longer the case. The nation has slipped in its standards and its standing in the world of art. If the right had as its goal to diminish us vis a vis the world beyond our shores, it has succeeded. This is a terrible shame.
As for arts ed - the former head of the NEA, Dana Gioia, said: We don't support arts education because we want our schools to produce artists - we support arts education because we want our schools to produce complete human beings.
Arts education teaches kids how to solve problems that have no "right" answers. If we want innovative thinkers, we need our kids exposed to art. Period.
No religion should be singled out for insults under the guise of 'art' or 'free speech.'
- The most significant thing said in the provocative piece above. Recognizing the role art and culture play in successful community development, we arts activists are already there. Now let's see some models for directing national funding across the board in ways that acknowledge how art and culture create jobs. Then there is no need for the NEA or NEH. Until then, back off arts subsidy.
It's the "thousand points of light" argument all over again. It wasn't a rational argument years ago and it still isn't.
If we eliminate the arts, we also eliminate a skill that we need.
States and cites are all budget constrained and the arts will certainly not be high on the list.
Perhaps that is the goal as those who use both sides of their brain can think and are not as easily manipulated as those who only use one side of their brain, the concrete instead of abstract, the structured instead of flowing.
One step backwards takes us ever closer to the one type of person, who is under someones control and lacks the skill to know it is happening.