Except when it isn’t.
“Devastating” cuts in British Columbia literary circles here, from the Globe & Mail.
Previous on this blog, the effect of similar cuts to B.C. visual art groups, here and here.
U.S. artists exhibiting in B.C. are frequently stunned by the support offered. They are paid to participate in group shows at galleries. In the U.S., government funding doesn’t carry art culture. Culture has to sell itself to the audience.
Because B.C. museums and galleries know they can count on hefty support, they are free to mount exhibits that don’t have to appeal to a wide, general public. B.C. artists are famed for their brand of conceptual photography. They produced it without the necessity of selling it, because public funding offered them a funding floor.
I love that model, but what happens when the government in power at any given moment is impressed by the sink-or-swim U.S. approach and greatly curtails the cash? Devastation.
Live on the government, die on the government.