My thanks to those who took the time to comment on my most recent post. As usual – and this is for the good! – discussion went in unexpected directions.
One commenter wrote, in response to my line that local government arts funders should respond to local tastes:
Should “taste” be the deciding factor of who and what get’s funded in the arts? Shouldn’t governmental or even foundational funding sources take into consideration the minority voice just as our constitutional government is required to consider not just the voice (taste) of the majority?
If not, how will anything new ever get developed under such a qualifier? Should we fund the arts that mimic established tastes or rather should we be funding the arts which lead us to experience new things?
This is not an easy question. A few points.
First, it is entirely possible that a voting public welcomes an arts council that funds experimental art from diverse sources. You could even make the argument that on pure economic grounds such funding makes the most sense, since the spillover benefits of inspiring new creators are largest for funding the new and the radical (even if in many cases it leads to nothing, in some cases it might lead to something great).
Second, what should we do when the public really wants funding to go to the middlebrow and the known? Departing from this might eventually lead to a decrease in funding; when taxpayers are unhappy with how money is being spent, it becomes easy to cut. What if the local arts board recognizes value in certain types of funding (or, for that matter, historic preservation) that the public simply does not see? The best analysis I know of that supports the state overriding the wishes of voters in this case is by David Throsby, who looks at the issue in the context of ‘contingent valuation studies’ that purport to estimate the values the public places on cultural goods through surveys. There are those who think contingent valuation will never generate numbers with any kind of accuracy at all. But what if they could? Throsby says there are still good reasons to fund projects contra the numbers they generate on voters preferences. This is far too big a topic for this post – do read Throsby!
Another, in response to a thread on the higher direct public sector funding of the arts in Europe relative to the US, writes:
I’d be curious to see what the figures end up looking like when you factor in tax-deductible contributions from the private sector.
Those contributions amount to indirect government subsidy, and they are of particular relevance to this article. The opportunity to make tax deductible contributions encourages arts funding on the local level in the most direct and personal way possible.
Another thing is that this support doesn’t depend on taste, rather it ends up weaving a complex web of support that often defies categorization.
Whether this is a better way of doing things is another story. For example, Western European countries seem to have done a better job of helping their arts organizations weather the economic downturn, since they were not so reliant on donations from private entities that suddenly had much less to give away (although I’m not so sure whether that holds true in the UK or Italy).
There are two issues in play when we weigh the relative balance of direct funding for the arts from the public sector with indirect funding through public sector subsidy of private donations: the amount of funding (and how that might fluctuate), and how the funding is allocated. With heavy reliance on indirect funding, the donors are deciding what gets support: not just their own support, but the support from taxpayers as well. US arts nonprofits are so dependent upon this system that their reluctance to question it is understandable, but if we step back and look at it from a public policy perspective? I’ll save this one for a future post …
How do we even know that the “public really wants funding to go to the middlebrow and the known” and more importantly, should we be asking them? ( I can hear the gasps in the room.) Is Art simply another commercial product that caters to the whims and desires of the consumer? John F. Kennedy didn’t think so when he planted the seed for the NEA. He believed the arts faced unique economic difficulties that required our public support.
And let’s be honest about local arts funding. We barely fund the arts in this country any longer. We say we support the arts. We say we think the arts are important but nationally we spend more on one f-35 fighter jet than we do on the entire annual NEA budget.
And who or what is actually being supported? It’s not the artists. Here in Michigan in 2013 roughly $500 million dollars of federal, state, foundational, and private money was funneled though the state’s arts organizations. Around 1/10 of that amount was spent on “artistic programing” (Pew Cultural Data Project). And it’s questionable how much of that 1/10 ended up in the pockets of artists and performers. Is that supporting the arts or supporting arts organizations?
If, as Peter Drucker has often said, organizations thrive because they address the needs of their customers, then is the local arts council who concerns itself with the minority voice doomed to failure? Is the surreptitious approach to exposing minority voices beneath consideration? Perhaps my questions are commentary on social conditions (or my perceptions of them), but they also represent opportunity in arts management innovation.
Richard, your point is well taken. But, we also should consider indirect funding for the arts in the form of tax breaks to arts nonprofits. Some how, this point is rarely a factor in these discussions.