Our Government's Support for the Arts: Nourishment or Drought

1984 ◽  
Vol 471 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-101
Author(s):  
LIVINGSTON BIDDLE
Keyword(s):  
National Endowment ◽  
Arts Organizations ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Federal Support ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Private Citizens ◽  
Private Support

The National Endowment for the Arts, coming into existence in a period when federal support of the arts was not a popular cause in Congress, has survived and prospered with bipartisan support. From its beginnings the Endowment has operated under the principle that private support of the arts is of primary importance, and that the agency should be guided by the advice of private citizens. Endowment grants have supported artists and cultural institutions and companies, increased education in the arts, improved the aesthetics of city living, and encouraged development of ethnic projects. Challenge Grants, which bolster arts organizations, have been an immense success. The article presents the author's views regarding the essential and precedent-setting nature of the Arts Endowment, its meaning to Americans and the arts at the very core of life. The author discusses the catalytic impact of the Endowment since 1965, and expresses deep concern that a time of exceptional nourishment may give way to a time of drought.

Supporting the Arts in the Eighties: The View from the National Endowment for the Arts

1984 ◽  
Vol 471 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANCIS S.M. HODSOLL
Keyword(s):  
Active Role ◽  
National Endowment ◽  
Arts Organizations ◽  
Private Giving ◽  
Highly Active ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Private Citizens ◽  
Private Support ◽  
Development Of Partnership

The federal government's direct involvement in funding the arts has come relatively recently in our nation's history. The National Endowment for the Arts was established to this end in 1965. Local private giving to support the arts preceded the Endowment and continues as the principal factor. The federal government's role, intended to complement the highly active role of private citizens, provides national recognition that the arts are vital to the nation. Within the context of America's private giving, the National Endowment for the Arts has a number of specific tasks in support of the arts, which will be particularly important in this decade—a time of major economic and demographic change. The Endowment's six-part strategy for the 1980s encourages (1) longer-term institutional support for arts organizations; (2) projects that advance the art forms or bring a diversity of arts to broader audiences; (3) better management and planning by arts institutions; (4) development of partnership among public arts agencies; (5) greater private support; and (6) linkages among systems of arts information.

Federal Support for the Arts has a Future

1984 ◽  
Vol 471 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLAIBORNE deB. PELL
Keyword(s):  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Government Support ◽  
National Endowment ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Federal Programs ◽  
Arts Policy ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Government Role ◽  
The Sixties

As one who has been intimately involved for 23 years with the federal programs that support the arts in this country, I have been particularly concerned about recent Reagan administration efforts to reduce the budgets of the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities and to lessen their impact on our cultural scene. The administration's approach to federal arts policy began with some basic misconceptions about the sources of the impressive growth that took place in the sixties and seventies in both the number and quality of American cultural institutions. Moreover the administration contended that as government support for the arts increased, there was a decrease in moneys from the private sector. Statistics seem to indicate that the opposite is true. The federal government through the National Endowment for the Arts has had a major impact in aiding and expanding our nation's cultural institutions. Much of this effect has been achieved in partnership with private resources. This critical government role as catalyst and facilitator must continue to spark increased nonfederal support for the arts.

Does the NEA Need Saving?

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 96-106
Author(s):  
Sarah Wilbur
Keyword(s):  
Performance Analysis ◽  
National Endowment ◽  
National Council ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Federal Support ◽  
The Arts

What are the stakes in saving the NEA, today? Departing from the recent legislative back-and-forth between President Donald Trump and Congress over the budgetary future of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), this performance analysis of the NEA’s 31 March 2017 meeting of the National Council on the Arts reveals the complex political posturing that undergirds federal support for the arts in US culture.

Notes on the Presidential Task Force on the Arts and Humanities and President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities

1984 ◽  
Vol 471 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-116
Author(s):  
BARNABAS McHENRY
Keyword(s):  
Information System ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Federal Funding ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
Community Foundations ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Private Support ◽  
Matching Grants

Created in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan, the Presidential Task Force on the Arts and Humanities produced a series of resolutions including a recommendation leading to the formation of the President's Committee. The Task Force did not question federal funding of the arts or the humanities, but it did suggest encouragement of federal matching grants and increases in private support. The President's Committee began its deliberations where the Task Force ended: the investigation of ways to further private support of the arts and humanities. Among the items on its agenda are the encouragement of community foundations to enter the area of cultural funding; presidential fellowships in the arts and humanities; development of an information system for the collection of data on funding; recognition awards; city pairing and sharing for cultural institutions; and various tax proposals.

Culture in a Cold Climate

1984 ◽  
Vol 471 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-122
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER PRICE
Keyword(s):  
Cold Climate ◽  
Arts Organizations ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Parliamentary Committee ◽  
The Government ◽  
Traditional Arts ◽  
Private Support

Culture has been seen in Britain as a national institution worthy of public expenditure since the nineteenth century, but recent cutbacks in British government spending on the arts have forced the British to reexamine the place of culture in their society. The government wants the arts to raise income from private companies and individuals, but it has not provided any tax incentives for such private support. Private support of the arts in Britain poses several problems. It would blur what has been a clear distinction in the English establishment's mind between the public world of service to the community and the private world of commercial gain; and it tends to encourage popular or traditional arts ventures over innovative ones. In general, British politicians fear the economics of the arts because of its left-wing political potential. The author's parliamentary committee advocates the establishment of a ministry of culture, with national companies obtaining funds directly from the ministry, and with regional arts organizations taking responsibility for the remaining 60 percent of public cultural funding.

Arts and The City: Policy and Its Implementation

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Ann Markusen ◽  
Anne Gadwa Nicodemus
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
National Endowment ◽  
Arts Organizations ◽  
Policy Initiative ◽  
Place Making ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
City Policy ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

The United States off ers a decade-long illustration of the implementation of a major policy initiative for art and culture across the nation's cities and towns. In this article, we focus on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and its companion ArtPlace and Our Town initiative around place-making, as they have developed since 2009. We describe the challenges that almost eliminated the NEA in the 1990s, the subsequent advocacy shift towards the economic impact of the arts, and the emergence of the Our Town initiative in 2011. We analyse the policy initiatives, their rationales and implementation. We conclude with lessons and ways to improve practice in relation to the roles of artists and arts organizations covering issues of displacement, gentrification and racism (often unanticipated challenges for communities and funders); the impact of the arts in economic terms; and evaluative challenges for funders and place-makers, especially given cultural diversity and 'place-keeping' priorities.

scholarly journals Beyond Darwinian Distance: Situating Distant Reading in a Feminist Ut Pictura Poesis Tradition

PMLA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 132 (3) ◽  
pp. 659-667 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Marie Rhody
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
National Endowment ◽  
Distant Reading ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Reading Methods ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Sister Arts ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Ut Pictura Poesis

The challenge facing “distant reading” has less to do with Franco Moretti's assertion that we must learn “how not to read” than with his implication that looking should take the place of reading. Not reading is the dirty open secret of all literary critics-there will always be that book (or those books) that you should have read, have not read, and probably won't read. Moretti is not endorsing a disinterest in reading either, like that reported in the 2004 National Endowment for the Arts' Reading at Risk, which notes that less than half the adult public in the United States read a work of literature in 2002 (3). In his “little pact with the devil” that substitutes patterns of devices, themes, tropes, styles, and parts of speech for thousands or millions of texts at a time, the devil is the image: trees, networks, and maps-spatial rather than verbal forms representing a textual corpus that disappears from view. In what follows, I consider Distant Reading as participating in the ut pictura poesis tradition-that is, the Western tradition of viewing poetry and painting as sister arts-to explain how ingrained our resistances are to Moretti's formalist approach. I turn to more recent interart examples to suggest interpretive alternatives to formalism for distant-reading methods.

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