Its grant recipients are often distinguished by Artistry, beauty, and craftsmanship are rejected in favor of radical politics, victim chic and anger. This year, in my own state of Rhode Island, the Endowment provided funds to renovate painting and sculpture facilities in the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design , supported an after-school arts education program for minority neighborhood youth in the fourth and fifth grades, and funded the Trinity Repertory Theater , one of the nation's premier theaters.
In other areas, the NEA funded a Music in our Schools program in Providence and aided a folk arts apprenticeship program. Without this funding. NEA supporters further point out that only a handful of the more than , NEA grants have proven controversial. Robert Hughes, art columnist for Time magazine, says: "You don't kill the endowment over that, any more than you abolish the U. Navy because of Tailhook" [a Navy scandal]. They explain that many great new works of art have provoked controversy.
Today, both of these works are widely recognized as powerful works of art. NEA supporters claim that our nation's culture is enriched by serious art work, some of which will never enjoy support by the marketplace. In contrast, some NEA opponents apply a "survival of the fittest" philosophy to the arts. If an arts program can only survive on government money, they contend, perhaps it shouldn't exist at all. If artists have something of value to offer society, they argue, then people will buy their paintings, books, or recordings, or go to the theater to view their plays and movies.
Opponents point out that, without the NEA, the arts will not die in America. In , private giving to the arts dwarfed the NEA budget by a ratio of 57 to 1. But, they maintain, it will deal a severe blow to many communities that cannot support museums, theaters, symphonies, and arts education. They realize that corporations and foundations do most of the giving. They put the ratio at 12—1. However, they also assert that critics fail to understand that many of these organizations would not be as generous without NEA matching grants—money that must be matched by other donors.
NEA money, they state, serves to prime the pump. For every dollar it gives, many more private dollars follow. In fact, they claim that the NEA's small investment in arts pays huge dividends.
They cite studies showing that each year the non-profit arts sector generates billions of dollars for the economy, creates more than a million jobs, and pays back any federal subsidies by returning billions of dollars in taxes. In addition, federally funded arts projects help rejuvenate business districts and lure tourists and shoppers to cultural centers.
With the enactment of the outlined proposal, the NEA will be given this opportunity, and public art will continue to be available to low-income and rural communities, in both classrooms, as well as within the local economy through museums, theatres, and cultural centers.
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