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For What It's Worth

Michael Rushton on pricing the arts

Book Diary – April 22

April 22, 2022 by Michael Rushton Leave a Comment

I am writing a book, on the “moral foundations of public funding for the arts”. It will eventually appear in the series New Directions in Cultural Policy Research, hopefully some time in 2023. But first I have to write it. This diary will chart my progress through the year, and I will always welcome your comments and suggestions.

So what is it about? Take as an example a major American orchestra. Each year, it might get $40,000 or so from the National Endowment for the Arts, around $500,000 from its state arts council, and perhaps $1,000,000 from its local arts council (yes, there are such orchestras).

How do we justify this expenditure? Economists might say there are positive externalities from the orchestra, and so public subsidy is warranted. But is that enough? The orchestra only performs for a minority of the local population, and many people in that city might feel there are no externalities at all, yet they are being made to pay increased taxes to support it. Does that matter? Can we justify the expenditure on “art for art’s sake” grounds, or can policies only be justified to the extent that they benefit individuals? Does government have any place in persuading people “music is good for you”, or should that be left to each person to decide for themselves?

What individuals count? In cultural policy, do we have moral obligations to generations yet to come? Do we have obligations to generations of the past, as conservative philosophers would have it?

Should we even be thinking in terms of individuals? Or are our cultural institutions and heritage necessarily a part of our community and nation that cannot be broken down into individual effects, as economists would do it? Are we morally obliged to recognize multiple cultures, and how would we do that?

A lot of questions! My point will not be to provide an analysis and critique of all the strands of moral theory that have been developed – there is a vast literature that does that, better than I ever could. My goal is to enable us (and I include myself) to think more systematically about the most fundamental question in arts policy: why have state support of the arts? Throughout the book I will be asking “if this is how we justify arts support, what are the implications for how we ought to fund the arts?”

It’s been a long semester, next week I begin to submit final grades, and I can get back to all my notes (many of which I have tried out in my classes) and producing something that makes sense…

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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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