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For What It's Worth

Michael Rushton on pricing the arts

Museums are not like highways

February 14, 2024 by Michael Rushton 1 Comment

In a New York Times op-ed, Laura Raicovich and Laura Hanna call for a generous increase in the way the government, in particular the federal government, funds arts institutions: As policymakers in Washington gather to draft a new budget for fiscal year 2025, they could solve culture’s current financial crisis and radically reshape how we think about sustaining the arts. They could do this by tapping into abundant appropriations that already enjoy bipartisan support. To make this possible, first we need to stop treating museums, theaters and … [Read more...]

UNESCO and the United States

August 7, 2025 by Michael Rushton Leave a Comment

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us... In the Washington Post, Charles Djou, who was a Biden administration official and briefly held an Hawaiian congressional seat, says the US should not, once again, remove itself from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), but should instead remain in and seek positive reforms. Well, who could be against that? I believe in UNESCO’s founding vision: to unite humanity through education, culture and science. But to achieve that mission, UNESCO needs … [Read more...]

What is Free Speech? A Review

August 5, 2025 by Michael Rushton Leave a Comment

“Freedom of speech” is never an absolute. Even in a country where people have a great amount of freedom of speech, such as the US, there will still be restrictions on the time, place, and manner of speech, laws regarding libel and defamation, and against fraud and blackmail, and against inciting violence. Freedom of speech will not give the right to take anyone else’s copyrighted works and use them and distribute them however you like without the permission of the author of the works. How these laws are interpreted matters a great deal: severe … [Read more...]

The search for the very nice arts philanthropist

July 18, 2025 by Michael Rushton Leave a Comment

Last month, the Scottish government came up with a one-time grant of £300,000 to cover the Edinburgh International Book Festival, after pressure from environmental protestors caused the previous sponsor, Baillie Gifford, to back out. This week in Canada, its premier book award, the Giller Prize, having lost its primary sponsor, Scotiabank, after protests, has appealed to the Canadian government to keep things afloat: Without stable funding, the Giller Foundation says the prize will be forced to end operations at the … [Read more...]

Should we subsidize arts consumers, art producers, or neither?

July 2, 2025 by Michael Rushton 2 Comments

My friends Joanna Woronkowicz and Doug Noonan have started a new venture, Arts Analytics, where they hope to bring more extensive, and shared, use of data into arts policy thinking, and also to spur discussion. A recent post of theirs asked what is actually an old question in the arts policy world: if we are going to subsidize the arts, is it best done through grants to arts producers, or through running the subsidy through arts consumers? They think we ought to give more consideration to the latter: A demand-centered reframing would … [Read more...]

On the frontiers of AI

May 13, 2025 by Michael Rushton Leave a Comment

Prelude, from The Onion: Now then. A few days ago, my son googled “Franz Kafka Airport” and here is what Google AI came up with: Being a public spirited sort, son informed Google that they might want to tweak this a wee bit. And so I had to check this afternoon for an update, and I get something new: Well, it’s a start? But of course there is no “Business Week” 2009 report - that was a fiction from the Onion story. The future’s so bright I’ve got to wear shades. Prompted by reading the always insightful Timothy … [Read more...]

Children of Men

May 3, 2025 by Michael Rushton Leave a Comment

At Indiana University each spring there is an arts festival in honor of Kurt Vonnegut, Granfalloon. This year’s theme is his novel Cat’s Cradle, which is the book where he introduces the term Granfalloon (although, to my mind, not really as something one would celebrate; Karass would have been a better choice to name a gathering?). Since that novel is about the end of the world, the IU Cinema is showing films with that theme, including Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006), drawn from, though with differences, … [Read more...]

Even more on the economics of live theatre

April 25, 2025 by Michael Rushton Leave a Comment

The Freakonomics series on the economics of live theatre continues with this third and final episode, in which I talk about its value - no, not economic value: all the other kinds... … [Read more...]

On the hidden economics of live theatre

April 18, 2025 by Michael Rushton Leave a Comment

Freakonomics Radio has a new three part series on the economic landscape facing live theatre. Part One is here, and part two is here, which as a supporting act in an episode with Lin-Manuel Miranda, has me trying to coherently explain cost disease in the theatre, where it comes from and its implications. Part three will come next week, but if I say so myself it is a really informative series so far. … [Read more...]

What to do with the NEA? Make it Conservative?

April 14, 2025 by Michael Rushton 1 Comment

In my last post I wrote about the Cato Institute’s Ryan Bourne’s call to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. Here I will consider a different approach from the right, Mark Bauerlein’s “MAGA needs High Art, Not just Kid Rock”, from the New York Times. He writes about the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as the NEA, but I will focus on his thoughts about the latter (to this point, the NEH has taken some heavy cuts, but not so the NEA). Here are some selections from the op-ed: But for the Trump … [Read more...]

What do to with the NEA? Pull the plug?

April 11, 2025 by Michael Rushton 2 Comments

Two opinion pieces were published this week giving different conservative takes on what to do with the NEA. I’ll talk about Mark Bauerlein’s New York Times Op-Ed in the next post; here I look at the Cato Institute’s Ryan Bourne’s briefing paper “End the National Endowment for the Arts”. To begin I’ll skip all the way to his last paragraph, which begins: There is no robust economic case for direct taxpayer funding of art. And, as I wrote in chapter two of my book on arts funding (an ungated working paper version of … [Read more...]

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Michael Rushton

Michael Rushton taught in the Arts Administration programs at Indiana University, and lives in Bloomington. An economist by training, he has published widely on such topics as public funding of the … MORE

About For What It’s Worth

What’s the price? Everything has one; admission, subscriptions, memberships, special exhibitions, box seats, refreshments, souvenirs, and on and on – a full menu. What the price is matters. Generally, nonprofit arts organizations in the US receive about half of their revenue as “earned income,” and … [Read More...]

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Recent Comments

  • antonio c. cuyler on Should we subsidize arts consumers, art producers, or neither?: “As a form of indirect funding, the federal government has equitably afforded all cultural nonprofits tax exemption and the ability…” Jul 5, 14:16
  • Paul Kassel on Should we subsidize arts consumers, art producers, or neither?: “I think the goal of public art policy is the creation of art by, for, and of the people. Resources…” Jul 3, 07:24
  • Carlo on What to do with the NEA? Make it Conservative?: “The Kennedy Center is offering $25 tickets in only select orchestra seating for the performances of Washington National Opera: Porgy…” May 20, 14:17
  • Carlo on Art in Turbulent Times: “The Kennedy Center today is selling discounted tickets for the Washington Opera for $20.” May 1, 21:31
  • Montague Gammon III on Art in Turbulent Times: “We would like to think that a Trumped Kennedy Center would experience a significant downturn in attendance, but we should…” Apr 22, 05:51
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