{"id":2059,"date":"2016-07-25T09:59:04","date_gmt":"2016-07-25T16:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/?p=2059"},"modified":"2016-07-25T09:59:04","modified_gmt":"2016-07-25T16:59:04","slug":"does-arts-policy-require-quantification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2016\/07\/does-arts-policy-require-quantification\/","title":{"rendered":"Does arts policy require quantification?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"time<\/a>The NEA has posted a very interesting interview<\/a> between their Sunil Iyengar and the critic Leon Wieseltier. It raises interesting questions about the role of measurement in arts policy, and so here is something of an annotation of part of the interview (and do read the whole thing).<\/p>\n

IYENGAR: To measure the value of arts and culture in society: is this a fool\u2019s errand, then, or do you think there are probably legitimate ways within the social sciences?<\/strong><\/p>\n

WIESELTIER: I think the question of what the value of art is in society is not a scientific question. By the way, I think that the question of what the value of science is in society is not a scientific question either. Science cannot tell us what the place of science in our lives should be. That\u2019s a philosophical question. Philosophy is even grander and greater than science. Similarly, the question of what the arts mean in a society, what place they should have in our lives, is not a question for science to answer. It\u2019s a category mistake. It\u2019s another misapplication of the terms of one field aggressively against another field.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Iyengar asks a good question. Wieseltier says something interesting, though it is not really an answer to the question. I agree that the value of art in society is not a scientific question – values are values, and science cannot answer questions about values. If we are talking about the values of art and of science in society, it is in the end a political<\/em> question: these are collective goods, funded to a large degree by collective means, and that means there is a political question at stake. When other countries have different collective policies towards art and science, it isn’t because philosophy has generated a different way of valuing those things, but because they have made a different collective, practical decision on how to fund the arts and science.<\/p>\n

Economics has tried to find ways to measure collective preferences – through contingent valuation models for example – but neither science nor economic theory tells us that the adding up of citizens’ willingness-to-pay for collective goods is the right way to set policy (I highly recommend reading David Throsby on this question – paywall article here<\/a>, working paper version here<\/a>). Again, this is a political question, to be resolved through the give-and-take of deliberation and public policy setting.<\/p>\n

IYENGAR: But in a policy arena, where one constantly has to justify public spending, for example, or build public will for these kinds of initiatives, whether in the arts or humanities\u2014without relying on performance measures or evidence, how would we do that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

WIESELTIER: There are many, many realms of social policy in which numbers are entirely appropriate. When you aggregate individuals, and make generalizations about them, for the sake of understanding certain social behaviors, it may not be germane to wonder about the specificity of those individuals or their feelings or their worldviews because you\u2019re not asking that sort of question. So of course, without numbers, without generalizations, there would be no social policy.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that one can make social policy for happiness or for love. What bill are we going to put through Congress to maximize love in our society? It can\u2019t be done. It must be done in the sense that we need more love in our society, but it\u2019s not going to be done by means of social policy. And it\u2019s not going to be done by means of numbers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So here is a question: what really is<\/em> the demand for performance measures in public spending? After all, the biggest spending item in the US government (excluding transfer payments to individuals) is far and away the military. It is not my impression that defense spending is determined by the latest set of performance indicators. Farm subsidies? Transportation infrastructure? The tax expenditure involved in granting an income tax deduction for charitable donations (which, as we know, amounts to far more dollars of arts subsidy than the NEA budget)? I really don’t know the answer – I am a Washington outsider to say the least. But do performance metrics really determine budgets?<\/p>\n

And if so, what metrics? Measuring the size of the creative sector, and trends within that sector, is interesting for social science research, but it doesn’t give us a lot in terms of input into policy decisions (though I see a lot of advocacy that follows the ‘1. the cultural sector is bigger than you thought it was, 2. ???, 3. deserves more public funding’ model).<\/p>\n

I’m all for using evidence when making policy. But I agree with Wieseltier that quantitative<\/em> evidence isn’t likely to give us much when it comes to the arts.<\/p>\n

Is the need for quantitative evidence being unfairly demanded from the arts sector? Here’s a thought: what if advocates for the arts in the public and nonprofit sectors have themselves<\/em> chosen to emphasize quantitative evidence, in part because the rhetorical case for arts support is so very challenging? Presenting numbers, after all, has the virtue of being just so easy<\/em>, even if in fact they are numbers that don’t mean anything (I’m looking at you, ‘economic impact’ studies). Just asking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NEA has posted a very interesting interview between their Sunil Iyengar and the critic Leon Wieseltier. It raises interesting questions about the role of measurement in arts policy, and so here is something of an annotation of part of the interview (and do read the whole thing). IYENGAR: To measure the value of arts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-issues","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/1-aircraft-carrier.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dIW5-xd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2849,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2023\/03\/does-arts-share-of-gdp-matter\/","url_meta":{"origin":2059,"position":0},"title":"Does arts’ share of GDP matter?","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"March 17, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"In the US, in 1900, over 40 percent of the workforce was devoted to agriculture. Agriculture's share of GDP was 7.7 percent in 1930, 6.8 percent in 1945, 2.3 percent in 1970, and is less than 1 percent today, according to this study from the USDA. According to this study\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/tomatoes.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/tomatoes.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/tomatoes.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/tomatoes.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1861,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2015\/03\/does-cultures-share-of-gdp-matter\/","url_meta":{"origin":2059,"position":1},"title":"Does culture’s share of GDP matter?","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"March 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't see how it does. Americans for the Arts sees it differently - writing about the recent Bureau of Economic Analysis accounts, they write: Much has been written about the truly mind-bending sum of $698.7 billion in industry expenditures\u2014a substantial contributor to the economy that supported 4.7 million jobs\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"what's your share?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Art-works.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Art-works.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Art-works.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Art-works.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4636,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2026\/01\/cultural-policy-what-dont-we-know\/","url_meta":{"origin":2059,"position":2},"title":"Cultural policy: what don’t we know","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"January 22, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"This past week I\u2019ve been sent different, interesting takes on the state of cultural policy research. 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