The Recurring Death of Arts Funding

Once again, the Republicans are suggesting that the NEA should go, entirely:

An advisory panel composed of over 100 Republican members of the House of Representatives has recommended ending all funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The NEA is the federal government's chief source of funding for nonprofit theatre groups, dance companies, and arts presenters. The CPB is a major funder of noncommercial broadcast programming of the performing arts.

The Republican Study Committee recommended that the two agencies be eliminated as part of its "RSC Budget Options 2005" report. The 23-page analysis offers cuts in nearly every area of the federal budget, leading to savings of $102.1 billion in fiscal year 2006, five-year savings of $369.9 billion, and a decade's savings of $949.7 billion.

Presented by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the RSC's chairman, and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), the committee's budget and spending task force chairman, the study indicates that the lost federal funds could be made up through private sources.

"In 2001, America spent $27 billion on nonprofit arts funding: $11.5 billion from the private sector; $14 billion in earned income (tickets sales, etc.); and $1.3 billion in combined federal, state, and local public support (of which $105 million was from the NEA -- 0.39% of total nonprofit arts funding)," the report states. "The funding could easily be funded by private donations. Savings: $1.8 billion over ten years ($678 million over five years)."

I go back and forth on this issue. On one hand I think that eliminating taxpayers' support frees institutions to curate as they see fit, totally. I also believe that nations that create art welfare programs generally encourage mediocrity, because the artists/institutions can live comfortably without having to compete in a jungle of a market. Taking that argument to its logical conclusion, then, nations that don't support the arts at all produce highly competitive artists and institutions, who must excel to survive.

On the other hand, I believe that if my money's going to be spent on roads to nowhere in Alaska or (yes, here it comes) to line the pockets of Halliburton cronies, then it makes sense to fight to ensure at least some of that money is also targeted to support education and institutions in places where there's simply not enough local money to pay the bills to keep an art space open, let alone offer programming that might encourage some budding artist to follow her dreams. I mean, if I thought that by eliminating the NEA, our Congresscritters would also then eliminate the pork to their pet projects that benefit only their contributors, then I might actually consider it.

Further, you do begin to suspect that it's not the money, but the resentment, that drives efforts like this. The arts often champion liberal ideals, and Republicans can't stand having their share of such funding spent on efforts that offend them. Again, I must reference Halliburton (such a useful shorthand) in repsonse.

But the NEA's not the only arts program slated for cuts. From the Americans for the Arts website:

House Education Chairman Suggests Terminating Arts Education Program
10-10-2005: House Education & the Workforce Committee Chairman John Boehner has suggested eliminating the Department of Education's Arts in Education program to pay for hurricane recovery efforts. Boehner's Setting Priorities in Spending Act (H.R. 4018) would eliminate a total of 14 Federal programs, including the Arts in Education program which Boehner claims "has a limited impact in integrating arts into the school curriculum." This couldn't be further from the truth. Arts in Education programs offer grants for the development, implementation, and expansion of arts education programs and the integration of arts instruction into the core curriculum.

Paying for the hurricane by ending arts funding. A hurricane that destroyed New Orleans, none the less. Sigh...back to the NEA article:

[Americans for the Arts] said in an emailed "arts action alert" that the RSC was using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina as a rationale for the recommended cuts: "Needless to say, cutting this funding would not even make a dent in the need for hurricane relief, and at the same time it would deprive the affected areas of much-needed help in rebuilding their vital cultural sectors."

The argument I hear from conservatives on this is often: If the arts were relevant to the average American, then funding would be seen in a more positive light. The blame for this animosity or at least ambivalence falls at the feet of the art world, which produces work that doesn't speak to the people.

The more cynical side of me can't help but interpret that to mean that paintings of NASCARs or three-legged kittens or wrestlers would increase arts funding, but there must be something to that argument, no?

What I generally try to argue in response to that though is that art, like science, is a discipline with two audiences: the general public and the peers. It can take the peers decades (or longer) to find the metaphors/vocabulary that will provide access to the general public for a development, but eventually the public will get it (think of how Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, made blackholes and such more widely understood or how abstract art is now more widely appreciated than it was a few generations ago). We wouldn't expect scientists to stop pushing as hard as they can into new frontiers or argue that there was no role for the state in funding their work (much of which never results in advancements the general public will understand or ever use), but somehow we expect all art, even the most bleeding edge work, to satisfy Joe Public, whether he's willing to make any effort to understand it or not.