GOODBYE TO THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS ?
This sets us up for the second category — arts as ideologically pure — in which the rhetorical game is two-pronged . In both cases , we are pushed to understand the small number of dollars spent as material and symbolic . First :
Note that the amount of arts funding in the federal budget is quite small . That might be taken as a defense of the funding , were it not for the important reasons to avoid any government funding of something as intimate yet powerful as artistic expression . ( 536 )
The number is admittedly small , but — the authors say — we make this claim because art is important , not because it isn ’ t .
The second prong of the ideological purity argument speaks more to conservative values . In order to do this , the authors remind us of controversial NEA-funded works , harkening back to the culture wars of the mid-1990s when the conservative “ Contract with America ” congress most effectively slashed the NEA budget :
Among its more famous and controversial grant recipients were artist Andres Serrano , whose exhibit featured a photograph of a plastic crucifix in a jar of his own urine , and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia , which sponsored a traveling exhibition of the late Robert Mapplethorpe ’ s homoerotic photographs . ( 535 ) 3
That tap on the shoulder about controversial art is not because we cannot take it , assert the authors ; on the contrary , this is important stuff and therefore the government should keep its grubby paws away . ( Worth noting here is that this section has not been updated very much in this edition , so trotting out these now-25-year-old examples is either still wildly relevant to their readership , or the best example they can come up with .)
In the third group — class-based arguments — the authors assert that federal arts and culture funds provide a subsidy for elite entertainment :
Since art museums , symphony orchestras , humanities scholarship , and public television and radio are enjoyed predominantly by people of greater-than-average income and education , the federal cultural agencies oversee a fundamentally unfair transfer of wealth from the lower classes up .... ( 537 )
In this rhetoric , government support of culture benefits an elite class that robs from the poor to entertain the rich . Another version of this , which one can find throughout the
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This sentiment is repeated again in the conclusion to this section :
Because art is so powerful , because it deals with such basic human truths , we dare not entangle it with coercive government power . That means no censorship or regulation of art . It also means no tax-funded subsidies for arts and artists , for when government gets into the arts funding business , we get political conflicts . ( 541 )
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