Two unrelated incidents in my professional life have me fixated on the issue of government support for arts and culture. One, the class I’m currently teaching at Drexel took up in discussion and research the topic, and as I had hoped, had strong and intelligent opinions. And two, I’m presently working on a project involving a municipality and its performing arts center. First the class — <\/p>\n
Among many aspects of government funding for arts and culture, I posed the idea of a culture “czar,” a secretary of arts and culture. The summary: dead set against it. My students, many coming from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities, were vehement in their arguments. They zeroed in on the question of “whose art?” “Who would decide?” “Don’t tell me what is worthy or good art. I want to have the freedom to make these decisions myself.” After killing the idea of an arts czar, they quickly moved on to expressing skepticism about government involvement in the arts and culture at all. Are my students liberals? I believe, yes, quite so.<\/p>\n
I realized that they were focused heavily on the more complex interior of government support, such as cultural heritage, dominant cultures, support for large organizations, determination of what constitutes excellence, etc. They were not considering (during this particular discussion) other aspects, such as economic development and equal access. (For this blog post I omit arts education — clearly an important focus — of government interest and support)<\/p>\n
Now the municipality and its performing arts center: in this instance only economic development and equal access are being directly considered (of course many of the government officials recognize the deeper value of the arts and culture). What’s so deeply interesting on the policy front is putting a price or dollar value on the 2 items. Yes, the appropriations process throughout governments places a price on everything, and I think here it’s simply my own sudden awareness of it — enhanced by my students’ comments about the arts czar.<\/p>\n
I think it’s time to rethink the relationship between arts and culture and government. <\/p>\n
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