A ridiculous question, sure. The National Endowment for the Arts is the channel through which the federal government invests money in the arts. And though it’s not much money, compared to what other countries invest, it’s something. Besides giving money, the NEA also has the value of drawing attention or legitimacy to the things it supports. Good things.
But some of the recent debates about whether the arts ought to get cabinet-level prominence in the Obama administration seemed to me to be missing something. Sure it would be nice if the feds supported the arts a bit more. And culture ought to be featured more prominently on the national stage. But these are not the best reasons to think about a new Arts Department.
The NEA has been a great supporter of the arts. But on matters of culture, it has had little or no voice on important issues of the day. Where was the NEA when media ownership rules were being discussed by the FCC? Where was the NEA when Disney and the recording and movie industries were largely shaping copyright law? Where was the NEA in speaking for artists when the stimulus package was being written?
The answer is that they weren’t. The NEA wasn’t set up to work on cultural policy. Sure, groups like Americans for the Arts advocate for the arts. But that’s different than being in the room where the policy on cultural issues is made. Sure, “a great nation deserves great art,” and supporting worthwhile arts projects is important. But the dribble of financial support for art is almost insignificant next to the impact on the arts of important legislation being shaped elsewhere in the capital without the input of artists.
I love the NEA. I do. But in larger public policy terms, maybe it’s a bit of a subterfuge. It allows the feds to claim support for the arts while making decisions on cultural policy without the arts’ participation. Think that doesn’t matter? The copyright lockdown of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act affects the ability of every artist to build on work of other artists. Attempts to change how information flows over the internet – the so-called net neutrality laws – will affect any artist delivering work over the internet. Right now, these issues are largely decided by corporate America. How do you think that’s working out?
The NEA has been absent since 1989. They have folded or avoided every major arts issue. Where were they when major symphony, opera, and theater companies began to fold, “fighting to allow diva artists to smear chocolate over their bodies.” Needless to say they picked the worst issues to fight for and left most of the artists and art groups struggling for the last 20 years. Did they ever lobby Congress for arts tax support, or more educattion in the arts for schools, No. Instead they allowed themselves to be a hotbed issue receiving less money each year, spending what they receive for administrative costs and not helping the museums which are now struggling. It is an organization that has been dying and needs to end so something else can grow to support real art issues not just cult pop artists who live off grant money.
You raise an important point — isn’t the NEA merely the conduit for whatever federal arts funding there is? As opposed to an influencer over policy? To be clear, the NEA was never meant to influence policy, and as an arm of the federal government, a federal agency, is has theoretically little place in strongarming the Congress. Or does it?
“The NEA . . . has the value of drawing attention or legitimacy to the things it supports. Good things.”
Do you mean things like persuading hair salons in a New York City neighborhood to allow children between eight and twelve to offer the public free haircuts for a period of one week? Or, protesting the Guantanamo terrorist detention camp by traveling across the country in a van conducting interviews and holding public discussions on security, terror, and human rights?
Both projects, in the category “visual arts,” were made possible through NEA grants in the past two years to Art in General, an avant-garde organization in New York. They are not exceptions.
For a critique of the NEA, see my article “Arts and Public Support” in the recently published Encyclopedia of Libertarianism (a project of the Cato Institute) at Google Book Search.
— Louis Torres, Co-Editor, Aristos