How Should the Arts be Funded?
Government or philanthropy?
As happened when the Trump administration took over the federal government in 2025, cuts to arts funding institutions are again proposed for the coming fiscal year. Last time, government-funded organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) escaped elimination. Some republicans joined democrats to save those organizations, not necessarily because they supported individual arts endeavors, but to ensure public access to the arts and libraries.
The FY 2026 budget proposals seek to reduce arts funding again. For details and to voice your comments, see the info at the end. There are only a couple of days left to do so.
There has always been pushback to government arts funding. I’m reminded of Andres Serrano’s 1987 photo of a crucifix in a container of his urine. Was that art or blasphemy?1 Soon after, a photography show produced by Robert Mapplethorpe, called “The Perfect Moment,” featured images of nude men and women in compromising positions. Both were sponsored in part by the NEA, and 36 US senators signed a letter protesting those uses of funds, which helped lead to an early effort to defund such organizations.
The issue seems connected to competing concepts of imagination and control. The arts agencies are, in theory, committed to fostering artistic imaginations and expression, particularly those of representatives of groups that have traditionally lacked opportunities to pursue art. It can lead to art that is considered unacceptable to the mainstream population. This is in direct opposition to the idea of “acceptable art,” which by definition reaffirms what has previously been produced, particularly by representatives of dominant cultural groups.
I think it’s interesting to look at what each side of the debate considers unacceptable or offensive. In other words, where do we draw the line?
If there is no line, then it seems that something like child porn could be considered art. How about scenes of mass murder? Those examples indicate the line is drawn when people are harmed. Okay, but then how about scenes of war? Those have been common in art for thousands of years. Maybe, instead of physical harm, it’s about emotional harm? Images depicting the cruelty of slavery can harm Black people. But they can also enlighten us as to what actually went on during slavery. A crucifix in a jar of urine can emotionally harm devout Christians.
The standard defense of allowing disturbing art is that if we do not, then what other potentially great art do we prohibit? We must accept some things that disturb us for the greater good that may come from unrestrained creativity.
And who knows how public opinion will change? James Joyce’s Ulysses was banned as obscene in the US when it was first published. Now it is considered a classic. I have a copy displayed on our family room mantel. In another era I might have been jailed for that.
Ryan Bourne, writing on the Cato Institute website, echoed the conservative think tank’s stand for the end of government funding for the arts. Among the arguments offered are that art is not inherently a public good, or even a “merit” good. The organization justifies most of its positions by considering art in terms of economics rather than aesthetics. This leads them to conclude that art would be better supported by philanthropy. If you consider that the United States operates in a capitalist economic system, then it makes sense to defund the NEA and similar organizations. If people want art, let them finance it themselves, rather than through the government, because the arbitrary judgment of art is not in the public interest.
But there seems to be another, unacknowledged, motivation here. If we leave support for the arts to those who can contribute monetarily to its continued existence, then that small segment of the population, which is made up primarily of affluent, highly-educated white people, will decide what qualifies as art. Although their opinions may vary, will it ensure the creation of art that is representative of the broader population?
Or does the opinion of the broader population even matter in this equation? Those in favor of defunding government support for the arts would say people can speak to the issue in the ways that have always been open to them, through collective buying power and attendance at artistic events.
But there you go again, defining art in terms of economics.
I guess that’s what some people do, judging everything from the perspective of its monetary value. Perhaps that should disqualify them from making decisions about art altogether.
What happens when there is less money to support artists?
The Art Newspaper reported on how reductions in funding are forcing artists across the US to subsidize budgets for museum exhibitions, public commissions, and acquisitions. The article noted, “In some cases, opportunities evaporate entirely when the artist and organization are unable to raise the money needed for production.”
In other words, art is now often defined by those who can afford to pay for its creation.2
That seems to mostly affect visual artists. But many writers rely on grant money, both government and philanthropic, to pay expenses and give them the time they need to improve their craft. Without those grants, they might have to abandon that pursuit.
Does that matter? What’s the loss of one more wannabe writer when so many others are working for a living, and writing when they can without relying on grant money? Or do the grants make a difference? I did a little research and found that the following writers all received NEA grants: Alice Walker, Raymond Carver, Maxine Hong Kingston, Tobias Wolff, Ernest J. Gaines, Joyce Carol Oates, and Louise Erdrich. Another grantee, Kelly Link, said, “The kind of work made possible by such grants — and such an organization — enlarges and expands the boundaries of the country in which we live.”
But then again, if you read Michael O. Church’s latest you might start to think that we would be doing emerging writers a favor by decreasing funding.
On May 29, the US Office of Management and Budget proposed extensive changes to the Uniform Guidance, the set of rules governing federal grants and other monetary awards to nonprofits, state and local governments, and other grantees. The Pennsylvania Association of Nonprofit Organizations said that if implemented, the proposal “would create significant financial risk and instability for federal grantees, including nonprofits,” and “attempts to grant unprecedented discretion to any administration to withhold, suspend, or terminate grants, and change terms and conditions mid-performance.”
Whatever your opinion on this issue, you can let your legislators know about it. The public comment period is open through July 13. The National Council of Nonprofits has a comment guide, a national sign-on letter, and a template to email members of Congress.
And of course, I’d love to get your comments on this issue.
What else I’m reading:
The Art of Joy, by Goliarda Sapienza, translated by Anne Milano Appel. That’s the book by the Sicilian author that I wrote about a few weeks ago. Just a few pages in, but I can already tell why it is a classic. I can also tell why Italian publishers refused to accept it for a couple of decades. It is a semi-biographical story about a woman unrestrained by convention.
The Digital Reversal by Andrey Mir. The book, written in a series of tweets, discusses how new technologies often turn into their own enemies.
Known as “Piss Christ,” the photo won an award at the 1987 Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art’s Awards in the Visual Arts competition. The artist said it was not intended to be blasphemous.
Full disclosure, my wife is the president of the local museum of art, and we know all too well how true this is.
Another thoughtful essay, Joe. Generally, I view NEA funding as something that few enjoy (a tax on all to benefit the few), and when a fraction of that few are pushing agendas that spells trouble; someone else deciding what everyone else should benefit from.
Private funding can do what it wants, and has done so throughout history; that's its prerogative. People pay for what they want, and Taylor Swift will always draw more attendance than "Piss Christ," and those who pay money to see TS are willing to pay for it, whereas very few would be willing to pay to see PC. Some will, of course, but the cost of that gallery opening would be affordable.
The argument for NEA to support libraries is getting weaker, as the internet can do much the same in terms of basic services (one reason libraries are changing--enhanced high-tech, free classes, or as Library Journal noted in a June 21, 2021 article, they are changing into "full-service community centers"--all in an effort to make themselves relevant; they know who butters their bread.
The ubiquitous internet and smartphone make accessibility fairly easy. You can watch Shakespeare plays on YouTube, listen to symphonies on Spotify. Few attend these in person, relative to ball games or Taylor Swift concerts.
The NEA was established in 1965. What artists will do if there's no NEA is what they did before that date. Joyce's Ulysses was banned in 1921, then became legal in 1933 (twelve years). The NEA had little to do with it. Great works of art tend to surface. Solzhenitsyn's first work published outside the USSR was in 1968; he had to smuggle them out. Art and risk go together.
I recently read an article I wrote after the 2009 F. Scott Fitzgerald Festival at Montgomery Community College in Rockville, MD. One of the keynote speakers was Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran.
Her speech was deeply insightful - I offer her closing observations:
Writing is about the stranger within you – within all of us. Nafisi is concerned about the shallowness of modern American culture where imagination has become insignificant. She spoke against categorizing writers in "little boxes" such as "Cuban American" or "Dominican" – she said these categories marginalize writers who speak universally. The individualism of great writers is the loneliness of outsiders who connect to the world through their visions.
She was dismayed by the closing of libraries and bookstores, the Congressman who required the Nat Endowment for the Arts to "Justify itself," as though if the value of art and literature could not be quantified, they wouldn't actually have any.
"If not us, who will bail out imagination and thought?" she challenged. "Readers of the world unite!"
If we consider the NEA solely as a resource for grants to individual artists, we have overlooked its larger impact: support for art institutions: schools, museums, libraries, and other public spaces where people have opportunities to encounter works of art. To me, art is that magic moment in creation when one's efforts suddenly reveal a direction, a resolution, a situation unplanned and unforeseen - that "Oh yes, that's it!" spark. And to be able to make that visible/ legible in one's craft, is to be an artist.
As the US settles into autocracy, inevitably its sanctioned "art" will follow. I've been reading Soviet writers most of my life, and admire the cleverness and satiric edge that kept many of them ahead of the censors - Vladimir Voinovich's The Fur Hat is a wonderful short novel about how writers fare in that system. And Lyudmila Ulitskaya's The Big Green Tent opens on the day of Stalin's death, making clear that the systems and apparatchiks he put in place, carried on without him - Perestroika took decades to show up.