[Previous entry: "Winter Lecture Circuit"] [Next entry: "Art for Art's Sake"]
04/07/2006: "Abolish the NEA" by Andrew Wielawski
Sacrilege. Abolish the largest, most powerful organization for the arts in the United States of America. How could Senator Jesse Helms ever have dared to voice such an opinion? As artists, we must hold hands and stage candle lit vigils to preserve what is surely thought of by many to be our best means of cultural salvation.
Only it isn’t. If you’ve ever written a letter to the NEA, as I have, then you will recognize the form letter response that you will receive, unless you’ve offered to donate money, as a non-answer, as an insult to your integrity as a vital and important contributor to the culture of our nation. So if they don’t support artists like you and me, who do they support, and why does their name contain the word ‘endowment’?
‘Endowment’ in the sense they use it, means that they spend money to accomplish their mission. While their guidelines specifically forbid them from making contributions to individual artists, they also explain that a big part of their mission is to increase the public’s awareness of the arts, and make it accessible; this is mostly what they supposedly spend their money on.
Who’s money is their money? Ours. As a governmental organization, they are in part funded by our taxes, and therefore it us who pay, at least in part, for the salaries of all those working under the vast canopy of the National Endowment for the Arts, and for the grants they award. This organization also oversees and hands out grants to state arts groups with similar missions, but on a more regional scale. States also sponsor arts organizations in a trickle down method, with the smallest groups operating for the fewest people getting the least money. Pretty democratic, isn’t it?
There is a very small percentage of the total population of the United States actually doing any work involving the arts, and this is where the process becomes far from democratic. When the choices of what kinds of exhibits get promoted with grants are made by a very tiny group of insiders, corruption is the only natural outcome. The vast majority of Americans are very far from any selection process, and as a result have virtually no say in what their money is being spent on when it comes to the arts.
Our health care system is the pits. In Europe, where I live, health care costs a fraction of what it does in the United States. I get diabetic supplies, including those dollar each blood testing strips for free, because they try to level things out for those afflicted with special disorders. But the quality of the health care in our country, if you can afford it, is better. When rich Europeans can’t get the treatment they need at home, they often come to the United States. What this demonstrates, is that centrally managed systems, while making all the same things available to everyone, reduce the quality of what is offered. They also protect doctors from being investigated for malpractice, until so many of their patients have died that they have to be gotten rid of. Doesn’t this sound like exactly the way our National Endowment for the Arts is run? The same stuff for everyone, and an administration that is virtually immune against being held to account for what they do or do not do. When artists, or their careers die, they don’t leave a corpse. They just disappear. No evidence. How convenient!
That the decisions made in awarding grants regionally come from a central location, is even more disturbing, because it tends to homogenize the art that’s seen everywhere in the United States into one, huge mozzarella blob that’s as different from Los Angeles to New York as a Starbuck’s is. Same bad lattes, same unauthentic cinnamon raisin sugar coated foccaccia. The very organization that’s supposed to make our public aware of our cultural heritage is having the effect of obliterating regional art forms, and making our cultural stage into a strip mall video arcade, offering identical fare from coast to coast.
So what would happen if there were no NEA? Would our citizens descend into a state of television reality show addicts? Without cultural awareness? Would there be no more exhibits, and worse, a diminishment of interest in the arts? What was the scene like before the NEA came into existence?
The scene was, that arts endeavors were run by individuals, with as many different strategies for presentation and funding as the number of movers and shakers organizing them. Some of these people were visionaries, some were not. Going to an art event was exciting if only for the fact that you never knew what you were going to get. Like going fishing. Are we going to catch any today?
When the NEA first came into existence in 1965, its mission was, as stated in its charter, to promote the public’s awareness of our cultural heritage in the fine arts, and as stated in its enabling legislation, “,,,the NEA was charged with supporting projects that encourage and assist artists to enable them to achieve wider distribution of their works.”
In its strategic plan for 2003 to 2008, on page 11, the NEA states that for the future, they plan to “increase opportunities for artists to create and present work.” They have been in existence for forty years, and they haven’t gotten to that yet? Again, this sounds awfully similar to plans to resolve health care issues.
I note also, that when statistical studies used to determine the effectiveness of the NEA’s projects are quoted, it usually turns out that these statistical studies were themselves funded by the NEA. Is this a conflict of interest, or what?
On page five, I note that one of the plans calls for data collection and its reporting. I also note that the NEA provides no links for artists to submit their own data. That would be an easy way to collect some useful data, now, wouldn’t it?
In the introduction, under the heading “Unique Role” the NEA states that part of its role is to establish national standards by which state and local government support for the arts is to perform. That is positively scary. In its vision statement, which sounds an awful lot like the other clichés in its mission statement, it declares it wants to see;
“A nation in which excellence is celebrated, supported, and available to all.” Excellence according to whom? And, in the mission statement;
“The NEA enriches our nation and its diverse cultural heritage by supporting works of artistic excellence, advancing learning in the arts, and strengthening the arts in communities throughout the country.” This is a general sort of statement that covers a lot of ground, but what it doesn’t say is more important…that while ‘enriching’ the nation, the money to do so is coming from us.
We know that many governmental agencies are virtually forced into not making waves to stay in existence. If you read all this legalese even superficially, it becomes quickly apparent that it is written to be bulletproof rather than to make any kind of proposition for the future of the arts. I can just see some upper level burocrat commanding, “Doesn’t matter what you say, just don’t give it a partisan slant, make sure it can’t be attacked, and don’t say anything specific.” With polarized politics being what they are, all an organization has to do is be seen as Democratic or Republican to lose half of the people supporting it, and risk devastating inquiries. This document says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING but hints at a hell of a lot that just isn’t happening. So what’s better?
Let the individual states be the highest and most central authority that has anything to say about how the arts are handled in their area. Even in a low population state like Alabama, no major city is overlooked, Birmingham is important, but to state officials, so are Montgomery and Mobile. State officials tend to be more aware of what would interest their citizens, and what might offend them. In the Bible belt, you just can’t make contact with viewers through the promotion of controversial-in-New-York types of art, nor should you try. You will alienate people from the arts, and this is good for no one, and particularly bad for the cultural heritage of the nation as a whole.
There are several great results that come from locally managing arts funding. One is that local artists are promoted if anyone at all in their area is interested in what they do. That leads to diversity in the arts as a whole, a very positive result. It is also possible that in some areas of the country, the arts will not be sponsored at all, but in the end, these are not areas that will be receptive to cultural development anyway. Do we want to force it down their throats? Do we have the responsibility, or even the right, to do that? Do we want to spend the limited funding available to the arts on watering grass in the desert? Let’s just give the cactus we’d have to remove a chance to grow and flourish. Diversity. Do we want an uninterrupted green lawn that stretches from New York to California? No, we don’t.
Another positive result will be the public’s response to the art they see placed in their communities. Since local politicians are much more sensitive to the public’s reaction to anything in their own districts, they will see to it that their public is going to approve of their choices. That makes their choices much closer to the ones we would make for ourselves, instead of coming from some distant authority bent on educating the unwashed. It also makes our art much more representative of who we really are. More response and less hostility can be nothing but good for artists. Local arts organizations will no longer have to check if it’s ok with central command or risk getting their funding cut. Administrative costs will be lowered, because these entities exist anyway, but are made redundant by the NEA. Understand that only forty percent of the money spent by this central organization goes towards the grants they award. That’s a pretty low figure when you consider what their budget is.
The more centralized the direction of any organization is, the greater the distance is from the people it is supposed to be serving…and the less it serves them. Many individuals are stopped in their tracks by the NEA when they have an artistic venture to propose, because the people around them, perhaps even their superiors, have been trained to think it’s better to leave things like that to the professionals. It isn’t. In fact, if the NEA were suddenly to disappear, all those individuals would probably spring into action to fill the void. Talking to architects around the country about using art in their concepts, I note that many of them are afraid to involve the NEA, and therefore afraid to address the issue of art. One architect put it to me this way when I asked about him about getting funding from them for a project he had in mind;
“Funding from the NEA? You’re out of your mind, Andrew. If we got it, you wouldn’t have a prayer of getting this commission, and we wouldn’t have a prayer of putting up the piece we want.” In other words, people who could make a real difference to artists are afraid to act because they believe their choices will be made for them, and without regard for their own plans.
It sounded good and seemed necessary in 1965. In 2006, it’s a dinosaur, cutting the funding that otherwise would go directly to artists, and reducing artists’ possibilities to create and present work. Exactly the opposite of what it was, in 1965, established to do.
