I try to keep politics out of this blog but I think it is time to declare a revolutionary idea: kill the NEA.
The National Endowment for the Arts is a wonderful institution dedicated to promoting art in America, by Americans, and for Americans. It is also a whipping post for a rabid minority in this country who fear freedom of expression and believe to their core that government should not be supporting artistic expression, let alone any subgroup of the population who tend to lean towards the political left. Never you mind that every 1st world country continues to support and nurture their homegrown arts and artists on the federal level. Never mind that the USA would become the artistic laughing stock of the world by becoming the only industrialized nation to turn our collective backs to our own artistic legacy. That’s not the problem. The problem is that we have much bigger problems than the NEA and I, for one, am damn tired of these “politicians” using it as a whipping post to hide the fact that they haven’t the first clue what to do once they grab the reins of power. So kill the NEA.
Here’s why:
- Those of you who are musicians with jobs in well-paying orchestras – look around you. In any given city you probably represent less than 5% of the people making, or trying to make, a living at music. How much do you pay for health care? It’s probably covered in your contract, but I guarantee you that the rest of your colleagues out there are struggling to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars just to have the privilege to have access to a health care provider. If they don’t have a full-time faculty job then it’s out of pocket. I bet many, if not most, of them can’t afford it. That’s more important than the NEA.
- Those of you in theater with well-established companies – when you come out of rehearsal do you look at your environment? How many record years of temperatures, how many colossal oil spills, how many freak storms and upside-down weather patterns will it take to make you realize that we have a much bigger problem than the staging in Act 2, Scene 3 of The Scottish Play? And if we don’t, what about our children? That’s more important than the NEA.
- Visual artists everywhere – how are your retirement accounts doing? I hope you’re not planning on living off of Social Security because we know, and we have known for three decades, that the SSA cannot fund its mandate. The solution, according to those just elected, is to give your Social Security to the people who caused the biggest financial disaster this side of the Great Depression. Does that sound like a good idea? That’s more important than the NEA.
I could go on and on but there’s no need. The raw numbers are even more damning:
- NEA budget for 2010 is $161 million dollars.
- The total budget for the USA for fiscal year 2010 is $3.5 TRILLION dollars!!!
- The NEA’s budget is .046% of the overall Federal budget.
- The endowment for the Boston Symphony is over twice the amount of the NEA’s current fiscal budget.
- Current USA budget deficit – $1.4 trillion dollars.
- Mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and interest on the national debt this year – $1.5 trillion dollars.
- Defense budget this year – $660 billion dollars.
Everything else is in the multiple billions, whether it’s the Department of Labor, Education, Veterans Affairs, Energy, whatever. But the whipping post is the NEA! Ever since the early ’80s the NEA has served as a rallying cry for those people for whom freedom of thought is a scary idea. The cycle of scandals – remember Robert Mapplethorpe? – have served as wonderful distractions from infinitely larger issues that this country faces. And now, after these historic 2010 elections, I turned on the TV and one of the first things I heard from one of these “Tea Party” candidates was – “and we’re going to KILL THE NEA!!!” Needless to say there was a colossal roar from his rabid supporters.
So enough already. Kill it. Stop blaming the NEA for all the problems in this country. Save your .046% of the budget. So what if we become the artistic laughing stock of the 1st world? We’re already the laughing stock in so many ways. So what if huge orchestras lose a $400K grant? The NEA has been too gun shy to fund anything remotely interesting for almost three decades now, and funding another Mostly Mozart Festival at some orchestra isn’t going to make any difference. Maybe those humongous institutions will make a little room at the trough for the artists who don’t have that high paying union contract job.
And once the NEA is gone then those rabid politicians and their slavering wannabe supporters will be faced with the real questions: do we as a people deserve affordable health care, and if so how are we going to pay for it? Do we as a people deserve to retire like our parents did, or will we have to work until we go to our grave just to make ends meet? Do we as a people deserve to pass on a living viable planet to our children, or will we remain mired in a fossil fuel economy and planet warming denial? And, Mr. and Mrs. Deficit Hawk – how are you going to balance your budget?
These questions are infinitely more important than the NEA. These issues effect every artist everywhere. They impact every human being! These are our lives we’re talking about.
Kill the NEA. Kill it now. Take away the whipping post. Goodbye, and Rest In Peace.
Interesting and provocative post, but trust me, the Tea Party morons and the rest will find something else to distract the populace and cause them to vote against their own interests. Killing the NEA will change nothing.
On the other hand, if they turn down another one of my grant requests…
And do Tea Partiers react when they find out one of their secret major funders (David H. Koch) has his name on a theater which houses the New York Opera and New York City Ballet? That was his not-so-hidden donation of a major proportion in the last few years. Kind of like the Tea Party desire to get rid of social security for everyone else except themselves. The give and take is so egotistical that it is schizophrenic.
Hi Bill –
Bold and interesting post – but if the NEA goes down, almost our entire funding structure for the arts goes down with it. The State Arts Agencies will no longer have steady operating funding, and the thousands of local arts agencies that give out grants to organizations in their communities will likely lose their funding structure as well (unless they’re one of the 25% who are part of their city government).
NEA funds can also leverage funds from foundations and other grantmakers.
So, while the piece of the government’s pie is small, the millions/billions of dollars that the NEA leverages is worth fighting for.
I agree whole-heartedly with Stephanie. The NEA does not only give grants to large institutions, they also fund every State Arts Agency – which re-grants that money to organizations and artists, both large and small.
I also don’t think we should give in to the extremists. There are plenty of conservatives who believe in some level of arts funding.
You know I wrote a similar argument 8 years ago. You can find it in my book of poetry: Carnival of Filth.
XXX
BFN
So what if there is negative publicity towards the NEA? Remember there are positives to negative publicity. First – it creates dialogue, of which we worked our way through the 80s and 90s to recreate a robust NEA. The voices pro-NEA have overpowered the negative voices. Aren’t we better off with conflict to discuss what Americans want, versus letting the few dissenting opinions win?
Interesting blog post. I am an American theater director whose been based in Norway since 2008. I work often between both North America and Scandinavia, and I think killing the NEA would be a terrible idea–not just for the fiscal realities of how this federal support relates to State arts funding in the US, but also how morally it would be a terrible defeat. I get the provocation between the lines, but what I would advocate is…
Why aren´t more artists up in arms about demanding more renumeration from their professions?
I find it startling that so many artists blithely accept that “that´s just how it is”, to be a starving artist in the United States, when so many millions of us populate museums, concert halls, theaters (from Broadway to experimental to regional to community), dance halls, cinemas, etc…
In other words, culture is a driving force of the US economy. Because Americans do not travel to cities for just the scenery and to stand outside of a bank or at an airport (although banks and the travel industry have exorbitantly powerful influence in lobbying for emergency funds in the US). People stimulate the economy because they want to see a show, go see some art, listen to some music, etc. And this means that they also probably rent a hotel, rent a car, go out to dinner, buy a t-shirt or some other merch, buy a gift.
In other words, it is documented extensively that artists and their art tend to drive the economy in many ways outside of just the income they derive from their art.
And yet artists are regularly made into being the Hester Prynne´s of our neo-Puritanical country. What´s up with that?
What does it take to get ALL of the artists in the US to mobilize with the same organization, fervor, and power as the Tea Party?
For all of the “cultural elite´s” dismissal of the Tea Party as morons, THEY are the ones that are getting organized, gaining political cache, at an alarmingly rapid rate.
Aren´t American artists at least as savvy?
Why don´t we have a National Strike of the Arts–across every discipline, across every institution–for as long as it takes, so that we can be taken seriously as a segment of American society, and that we are a vital contributor to daily living in the country. Clearly, artistic value means nothing. It´s all about the numbers. So hit ´em where it hurts: the numbers.
Imagine if every Broadway house, every Off-Broadway house, every experimental and regional theater in the US, went on strike.
Simultaneously, all of the opera houses, ballet stages, modern dance stages, all of them closed.
No more television. No more cinema. No more bookstores. No more poetry readings.
Put netflix and Barnes and Noble on hold for a while. Have iTunes refuse to stream or sell any music. Turn off any broadcasts of music on the radio or on MTV.
I guarantee you that THEN, politicians would take artists much, MUCH more seriously.
But until then, until we can do something collectively? Then we have the real threat of being in a country where Tea Partyers have more power than our most brilliant writers, musicians, dancers, playwrights, actors, and filmmakers.
Let´s not let that happen.
Brendan McCall
Director, Ensemble Free Theater Norway
Give up art. Give up food.
Consider the two humanistic needs together. Or to borrow from Jean Dubuffet, we believe that “art is a source of enchantment. The need for art is as basic as the need for bread, perhaps even more so. Without bread, one dies of hunger. But without art, one dies of boredom.”
OXFAM asks us to give up a meal to raise awareness for world hunger.
The artistic community did something like this on Dec 1, 1987 with the Day Without Art. It wasn’t about Art – it was about the artists dying from AIDS – and what would our world look like without artists? The anniversary of this action returns but more for the cause of AIDS than for Art.
Both of these actions are CONSUMER CHOICES. The food is still available. Art is still present.
A complete artistic strike, INCLUDING the delivery methods for the consumption of art…? Excellent idea that no capitalist would ever embrace. But it’s an idea worth pursuing with sincerity. Considering one delivery service alone – iTunes: what would it take to convince the CFO to shut it down for a day. What loss of sales? What assurances that the gimmick would result in people really valuing the product?
Would radio present only talk radio?
Would HBO produce reality TV?
Would public libraries only let out reference material?
Would the birds stop singing?
Give up food. Give up art.
Is the entire artistic industry (artists, managers, sellers, television, radio, internet, etc.) brave enough to really do this?
Dear Sir: In case you hadn’t heard Jessie Helms killed the NEA a long time ago when he was successful in almost singlehandedly demolishing the Grants to Individuals Program of the NEA.These were much sought after grants by rich artists and not so rich artists. Your whole commentary seems specious to me! Have you made a painting, written a poem, drawn a picture lately? I have read the article and what would you replace the existing NEA with. Yeah I know you wrote this article lately?
Mr. Eddins,
I want you to know how moved I was by this and how much I think such a provocative set of thoughts belongs in the discourse right now. I wrote a post about this on my site, The Clyde Fitch Report, and wanted to let you know about it. I fear there’s a lot of orthodoxy out there and that’s not what we need right now. We need strategy, even counter-intuitive ones. So, thank you.
Leonard Jacobs
Editor, The Clyde Fitch Report
http://www.clydefitch.com
This is somewhat timely in that just last Friday in the On The Media show on NPR, Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason magazine says the Corporation for Public Broadcasting should be defunded as well so politicians don’t have something to decry as a waste of taxpayer monies.
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/11/05/01
I sympathize with your argument. But those on the “opposite” side of the culture wars from us are just using the NEA as a wedge issue to divide the electorate. Shouting about killing the NEA is a tactic, not a true goal. If they actually were to succeed at killing the NEA, then they’d put more shouting volume into defunding NPR.
Your hope that the Tea Party will actually have to face the hard questions of governance is one I share, but the NEA or lack of the NEA won’t get them there any faster.
There are those who believe that if they are not directly receiving a benefit, then they should not be required to subsidize it. This is an understandable position whether or not one agrees. However, anyone who has paid serious attention to the activities of the Tea Party movement know that it is decidedly not supportive of such blanket limitations. Therefore it is surprising to read comments by one who is an executive director of an orchestra (Andy Buelow) that show not only a lack of familiarity with that movement, but also no little anger (expressed in insulting terms) towards it. Putting it kindly, it is probably unwise for one in his position (one who is dependent upon private and public sources for funding) to publicly air such views in such ways, however strongly felt and oft expressed privately, as they only serve to buttress the arguments of those fringe elements who truly look askance upon (in)valuable aggregations like the NEA.
Ditto to Brittany.
I have felt this to be a sound plan for closer to 20 years. When Reagan butchered the budget and Jesse Helms and others turned the NEA into the whipping post you assert it to be, it should have been closed.
In its earliest incarnation, the NEA was a testament to a higher form of artistic philanthropy. It funded programs that were otherwise difficult to fund. It sought out the cutting edge and encouraged it buffered by the national platform it operated in. It was not assailed by local taste and censorship and it gave a certain national legitimacy to more experimental programs that had trouble finding local support. It elevated the artistic content conversation.
Once it forfeit that agenda under national political pressure, it turned 180 degrees and became, not a tool for supporting the arts, but a national focal point for assailing them. It was now okay to confront anything outside of the norm and deem it inappropriate. We let the arts be a national topic without a national investment.
This nation did not purchase, at fair market value, the right to assail individual efforts yet that didn’t stop Congressional firebrands from landing on artists in a manner closer to McCarthism than enlightened leadership.
I have always felt that if the NEA went away we wouldn’t notice its loss, but it would then enable some future enlightened politician to adopt supporting the arts as a “new” platform and that in today’s climate it would not start at $160 million but with a billion or more attached to it.
It would be a mercy killing and it has taken far too long to die.
Interesting article, but really, is the NEA a particular flash-point of controversy these days? I have only heard Tea Party comments (and many of them) about the *other* NEA–the National Educational Association–one of the vilified “teachers unions” apparently out to destroy learning, our youth, and apple pie. The National Endowment for the Arts, it seems to me, has become shockingly non-controversial in recent years, and I haven’t heard any of the Tea Party-ers, or other fear-purveyors focusing on it.
If you guys kill the NEA,where-I repeat-WHERE will we classical lovers get our music?Whut in the blazes is wrong with you?!
The vast majority of classical music ensembles do not receive significant funding from the NEA. Most of the funding for those organizations are from ticket sales, donations, and corporate sponsors. In addition, classical music stations receive funding, if any, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR, or MPR. The budget for the NEA is way too low to have a significant impact on the funding of classical music in this country.
I would support the NEA if actually supported American musicians and artists; however, it goes to support artist from other countries. Why is it that the other first world countries only support their own artists, with workshops, apprenticeships, funding for workshops, money for graduate programs, etc., but we give many of the slots in our workshops and apprenticeships (many funded by the NEA which funds the League) to people not from the USA. Our tax dollars should not be supporting musicians from Europe, Asia, and South America. We need to have programs (apprenticeships, workshops, funding) specified only for American musicians who are citizens. Then, and only then, should our tax dollars fund the arts.
Paying a reasonable level of progressive taxes is a good thing.
Corporate income is taxable income, not “double-taxed” income–that’s the natural moral consequence of limited liability.
Spread the word.
The NEA’s charter is for education, as you find out quickly the minute you request grant applications. As usual, a half-penny for education is on the chopping block to support billionaires. We’re at the point where the tax-cutting is bad for business, and we need to instead shift revenue from dead losses like unnecessary armaments and subsidies for billionaires to engines of prosperity, including education. But I’m ambivalent about the NEA’s potential role in that.