Some Adam Smith as an appetizer…
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident, that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it.
Now to the present. Nashville’s WPLN public radio reports on a dispute at the city’s Metro Arts agency:
The debate can be summed up like this: should Metro Arts focus its grantmaking on individual artists or arts nonprofits? …
Former Executive Director Daniel Singh publicly sided with those who preferred funding individual artists. Compared with arts nonprofits, individuals are less likely to have previously received public funding, and more likely to be people of color. It was part of his larger plan to create a new, antiracist model for arts funding.
“What we know as the arts is a very Eurocentric approach, right, universal neutral, and all of those things are not how the global majority communities practice it, right?” Singh said in an interview with Nashville Public Television. “It’s very place based, it’s based on a practice, it’s for harvest festival, it’s for naming a child, it’s your grandmother’s recipe, it’s your uncle weaving.”
To accomplish his goal, Singh expanded the Thrive program, which funds independent artists and projects.
But doing this meant taking funds away from large, established organizations like the symphony and the Frist Art Museum, which have traditionally gotten the lion’s share of the Metro Arts budget. Some in the arts community felt that was a mistake. Large organizations support smaller ones and hire local artists. Some of the pushback even came from members of Singh’s own staff, including former grants manager Jonathan Saad.
“Is it a better use of funds to take, say, $20,000 and give it directly to an artist, or is it better to take that $20,000 and give it to an organization who is funding 100 artists and serving thousands?” Saad said.
But this is not the right way to frame the question.
Think of something a little more boring: public funding on roads. When the DoT considers various projects it might undertake – upgrade this avenue? Build a new road there? Make these two streets one-way? Put a bike lane here? – they don’t, or certainly shouldn’t, frame the question in terms of which contractors will be able to place bids, or whether they ought to choose transportation policies according to which firms would be most likely to win the contract. Instead, they would think about the outcomes: where would residents most benefit from spending? What projects would keep costs down and most improve transportation outcomes in terms of speed, safety, and environmental concerns?
Does this outcome-based approach to government spending sometimes get corrupted by the interests of contracting firms? Of course it does – nobody who studies US defense policy could ever think otherwise. But at least we recognize it as wrong to allocate our funds on defense in terms of how it benefits Lockheed Martin rather than serving the public interest in national defense.
And so to arts funding through public agencies. The value of public funding of the arts is that more good art is available to the public to contemplate and enjoy. People differ on the specifics: does it matter if the supported art is only enjoyed and contemplated by a small number of people (who might value it very deeply)? Or should the goal be to bring more art that has a wider audience, even if that means the art is not awfully deep? Are there groups of people who have not, as a group, had the same opportunities to experience art as others, and so attention ought to be devoted to them? (Mr. Singh goes off a little bit using the lazy term “Eurocentric” – there might well be minority populations who quite like art forms that have developed through Europe, but have not had a fair go at being included in them).
But it is those specific questions that matter. Whether funds ought to go to individual artists or to nonprofit arts presenters is a question of means, not ends. Once you know what outcomes you want to aim at in terms of art and audience, then you can ask what sort of allocation of funds would best achieve that. It is not about whether individuals or firms are more deserving of arts funding. It is about what outcomes you would get in terms of art.
Cross-posted at Substack: https://michaelrushton.substack.com/
Thought provoking post, Michael. But, I’m conflicted over your comparison between culture and roads.
One would find it difficult to identify even one person who does not benefit personally from roads, which makes them a “real” public good. Culture, however, especially the kind that has historically and continuously benefitted the most from “public” funding has made exclusion central to its mode of operandi. My colleague, Raissa Simpson (2023) called them the S.O.B.s (symphony, opera, and ballet), and of course museums. The intentional practice of exclusion means that the “public” has not had equitable or easy access to “publicly” funded culture, though they have paid for it. Furthermore, the “good” tickets to the SOBs remain cost prohibitive, though the recent report, Understanding Opera’s New Audiences suggests that some first time ticket buyers splurge on opera as a “bucket” list expense. After accounting for the people (disabled, global majority, LGBTQS+, nonbinary, poor, and women) that have not, as you described, “had a fair go at being included in them,” who is left? Is it not this plutocracy that “public” funding of culture really for? Perhaps that is a better framing of the question, no? For whom is public funding of culture?
To close, and as an acknowledgement of President Carter’s overlooked impact on culture, I offer this quote attributed to him during the opening of the East Wing of the National Gallery, “we have no ministry of culture in this country, and I hope we never will. We have no official art in this country, and I pray that we never will. No matter how democratic a government may be, no matter how responsive to the wishes of its people, it can never be government’s role to define exactly what is good, or true or beautiful. Instead, government should limit itself to nourishing the ground in which art and the love of art can grow.” In my view, governments should provide public funding for culture based solely on its ability to promote social bridging and bonding through education. After all, isn’t that why the IRS awarded nonprofit cultural organizations 501(c)3 status?
Thank you, Antonio, for your thoughtful comment.
Re my comparison to roads, let me try another example: federal government investment in high-speed rail. This would not be a pure public good in the way that ordinary roads are, but would in practice serve directly only a small portion of the national population, although the positive externalities – less road congestion, less carbon emissions – would be felt more widely. It would cost money to ride the trains – you can’t have free tickets for something which would then generate demand far in excess of the number of seats (this is similar to your S.O.B. genres). My main point still stands: which routes to prioritize, and the extent of the rail service, comes first – that’s where you start. The contracts for who would do building, and operations, and maintenance come second, they represent the means by which you are pursuing your given end of better rail transportation options.
And the same is true of public funding for the arts *regardless* of what you think the goals of arts funding ought to be: you set your goals first, *then* think about how your budget can best advance those goals.
The Nashville folks are arguing about the means, without having clarified what this is actually meant to achieve.