As the late, great Arte Johnson would say (as Nazi soldier hiding in the grass) at least once an episode of “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in,” “Veeery interesting!”
Arts organizations in Florida were apparently completely blindsided this month when Florida’s conservative Republican governor Ron DeSantis struck all of the arts funding out of the state budget approved by the legislature. $32 million vanished in a flash and without warning. Arts groups large and small were counting on grants from that pool to balance their own budgets.
DeSantis, a Republican, gave no explanation other than to say that he made veto decisions “that are in the best interests of the State of Florida.” He vetoed nearly $950 million in total proposed spending, leaving $116.5 billion.
Arts group leaders interviewed for a Times story said that the move signaled an attitude that “taxpayer dollars should not be used in support of arts and culture.” I’d say that’s a pretty fair conclusion. If there were ever a time for the government to provide assistance to arts groups, it would be now, after the stupid pandemic lockdown wounded, crippled or wiped out entirely struggling arts groups across the country.
The Times story, in interviewing the traumatized artistic directors and board members, repeated many of the familiar arguments for government funding of the arts. Arts organizations encourage tourism and provide a public good, including benefiting children, seniors and “under-served communities.” They are learning institutions, we are told, educating both students and adults, broadening their horizons and perceptions. They support an important group of professions and crafts in the community, all of which are historically under-compensated in comparison with the benefits they confer on their communities. And so on.
I’m familiar with all of these and more, having run small professional theater company for 20 years that desperately needed the small grants it received annually from the county and the state of Virginia. I have also been a fund-raiser for other non-profit arts groups beginning when I was still in college. Those small grants enabled The American Century Theater to mount productions that not only benefited the local community but the national theater community as well. Naturally I sympathize with all of the arts leaders and administrators in Florida now scrambling to pursue their missions without any government assistance.
Yet I also can see the reasons for DeSantis’s decision. Among them (in no particular order):
- There are undoubtedly better ways to spend $32 million, ways that benefit a higher percentage of the population.
- Increasingly, the arts are patronized by a smaller and smaller segment of the population, and that segment is more affluent than the group whose exposure to the arts is confined to largely television.
- That group can afford to fund arts groups as well or better than the government. Those rich patrons of the arts should get used to it.
- The money would be better spent funding arts programs in the public schools. These have largely disappeared.
- Arts reliance on government is inevitably abused…by government. Artists serve the community best by being rebellious, raising uncomfortable issues, challenging the establishment and “speaking truth to power.” “Art isn’t nice,” Bertholt Brecht famously said. When governments fund art, they want the art they are funding to echo that government’s messages, in other words, propaganda.
- Government grants are addictive, and the addicts eventually will do whatever they need to for their “fix.” It wouldn’t happen in Florida, but more government funding in much of the country means more DEI art, aka., bad art.
- For governments to fund opera, ballet and modern dance companies is subsidizing the elite, and live theater is rapidly falling into the same category if it isn’t there already.
- Government bureaucrats are not qualified to decide what arts groups deserve funding and how much they should be allotted. They want to back “winners,” meaning that they tend to favor more popular, bigger, well-known entities when it is the struggling, smaller groups that need the funding more.
The more I think about it, the more that it is apparent that the reasons for no government funding vastly outnumber the arguments for it. However, the negatives also risk “making the perfect the enemy of the good.” Culture and art are important, and successful, vibrant communities nurture them. I think government has a legitimate role in that; the problem is that the people who tend to end up running governments tend to muck up, indeed corrupt, everything they touch. I am genuinely torn on this issue, but I am glad DeSantis has drawn attention to it.
Ethics Alarms 
Jack, as usual you make very good points. It’s troubling that DeSantis would decide to cut the Arts funding, though in the grand scheme of things I don’t know how it all fits together. As so much in the Arts has drifted(?) leftwards, and tended towards “navel-gazing”, it has become less interesting or of importance to anyone not closely involved. Coming from a conservative Protestant religious background, which began decades ago needing to attach a statement (usually long) to any work of religious art, it is now de regeur to append a similar statement to any current artwork and explain in detail the political, social, ethnic, and other aspects, roots, etc. of a work of art, as if the piece on the wall, or floor, doesn’t speak for itself. The question becomes, why not just have written the treatise, and avoided all the work of making the “art”, which oftentimes is also not very interesting or enjoyable or decipherable as a work of art or social commentary.
Additionally, government funding of anything is always a double-edged sword; but so is outside funding from independent donors. Believe me, I know only too well from personal experience. But this has been true for as long as there have been patrons of the arts. I can’t say I know of a solution, other than to fund one’s work independently, or find similar-minded patrons who are also interested in fostering artistic freedom and creativity. They’re not impossible to find, but it does take work and developing of long-term relationships, and compromise, which is not always what artists want to be doing — some would rather stick their fingers in the eyes of those who might otherwise be supportive of their endeavors. Don’t know how to fix that, either.
“Ethics Hero or Ethics Dunce?”
I don’t think this is a situation where ethics comes into play, it’s simply a choice.
I look at this as a loose loose situation for DeSantis, he’s damned if he does and he’s damned if he doesn’t. Completely cutting off dollars for the arts might be an extreme measure but as Jack points out it’s reasonably justifiable, the problem is that there are consequences and those consequences may not be very obvious for a few years.
As far as government grants for the arts goes, I’m of the opinion that government grants should not be given to individuals or groups that are considered “professional”, professionals should be self-sufficient in a free market or go the way of the dodo just like any other business, it’s not the government’s place to pick winners and losers in this regard.
Since I firmly believe that the arts are a very important segment of our culture and promoting them is a necessity if some of the core aspects of our rich history and culture are to be shared in the future. So where should the government focus their dollars for the arts, they should focus them on High Schools, Colleges, and non-profit organizations that promote the arts. I know of a non-profit Community Theater company that has enough support in their community that they no longer apply for public grants, they are 100% self-sufficient, they are a solid source for theatrical education and performance for all age groups, and they are a real asset to their community – it’s been my experience that this is really rare for a community theater company.
What is a loose loose situation? Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Must be when both of your shoes are untied and you have a loose loose situation.
ROFLMFAO!!!!!
I didn’t even notice that when I proof read.
Duh Steve. 🙂
My cocncern is that arts funding often mirrors what we get via Public Television and NPR. It becomes a propaganda tool rahter than a medium for art.
There use to be “Arts from Lincoln Centeer. I do not know if it still exists as free or behind a pay wall.
Jack wrote:
The more I think about it, the more that it is apparent that the reasons for no government funding vastly outnumber the arguments for it.
I agree, although somewhat regretfully. I have never been a consistent consumer of “the arts” as generally understood, although I have held memberships to our local theater and go occasionally to shows and concerts.
Unfortunately, I think we have to acknowledge at some point that arts funding is not what the government should be doing with public funds, basically for all the reasons you mention. Those of use who enjoy them should be the ones funding them.
There are attractive aspects of living in a state that doesn’t seek to tax its citizens to death in support of everybody’s pet projects. Jeff Bezos moved to Florida in anticipation of selling off more Amazon stock, and avoiding Washington state’s new 7% tax on capital gains. He’s saving over $600 million on that alone. No personal income tax in Florida, either.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/12/jeff-bezos-move-to-miami-will-save-him-over-600-million-in-taxes.html#:~:text=Jeff%20Bezos%20will%20save%20over%20%24600%20million%20in%20taxes%20by%20moving%20to%20Miami,-Published%20Mon%2C%20Feb&text=Last%20year%2C%20Bezos%20announced%20on,years%20to%20move%20to%20Miami.