Money for Art
by David A. Smith
Summary
Government funding of the arts in America has never followed an easy course. Whether on a local or national scale, political support for the arts carries with it a sense of exchange—the expectation that in return for money the community will benefit. But this concept is fraught with potential difficulties that touch upon basic tensions between individual creativity and community standards. In Money for Art, David Smith traces the history of government funding of the arts in America, with emphasis on developments since the founding of the National Endowment of the Arts in 1965. …Mr. Smith uses [the] clash between funding and freedom of speech as a prism through which to view the broad disagreement in America over the meaning, purpose, and place of art in a democracy. Money for Art tells how this outlook evolved and what its consequences are for art in America.
Excerpt
Introduction
“Art inflames people,” the New York art dealer Paula Cooper said dismissively, speaking in response to a violent attack in October 2007 on an art gallery in Sweden. Four masked individuals brandishing crowbars and axes had destroyed seven sexually explicit photographs by the New York artist Andres Serrano. The exhibition, of which these pictures were a part, was entitled “The History of Sex,” and Cooper announced that her gallery in Manhattan, which had shown many of the same photographs a decade earlier, would replace those that had been destroyed so that the show could continue its run.1
Cooper’s attitude toward the affair exemplified that of many artists and their supporters in the face of controversy over a work of art. Art was supposed to be challenging, they said. Controversy and resistance only proved that art was asking the right questions or pushing the right buttons in a society that would prefer to avoid confronting attitudes or beliefs that, in the judgment of some artists, sorely demanded confrontation. But this assumption raises a broader and more difficult question. Ought art to inflame people? Is it part of art’s function to provoke community outrage and even violent protest?
Although each of us judges art by subjective and highly personal criteria, few would disagree that all the arts possess an almost unique ability to transform, inspire, and elevate. Because of this their wellbeing and vitality is usually regarded as a central element in measuring the elusive notion of “quality of life.” The more lively and vital are the arts, so it goes, the more lively and vital is the community. An expertise in art is not necessary to appreciate its potential for substantive contribution, even if that contribution is often difficult to put into words.
Cities, it seems, have come to know this. As the United States entered the twenty-fi rst century, one of its persistent problems was the declining fortunes of downtown areas in many larger cities. A notable decay in what was broadly referred to as civic engagement was said to be threatening the very existence of urban life. In cities as varied as Cleveland, Dallas, and Greensboro, North Carolina, city leaders debated new downtown ballparks, pedestrian malls, farmers’ markets, new hi-tech libraries, and light-rail systems as means by which people might again be brought downtown. Amidst all the different proposals, the one recurring element in all these plans for civic renewal was the arts. “The arts can be a magnet for the center city,” enthused a
Greensboro newspaper, as a local theater company was busily transforming an old retail building into a three-hundred-seat auditorium.
Other cities had “used the arts to revitalize their downtowns, which now bustle with big-city activity at night,” so why not here? In Ohio the Cleveland Public Art organization took the lead in planning a new pedestrian and bicycle path, insisting that the construction incorporate artwork. Its intention, said one observer, was “to show that public art plays an indispensable role in the life of Cleveland.” As Dallas developers converted a mammoth thirty-acre warehouses into new housing and retail space, artists who moved in and agreed to develop and donate works of art were given discounts on rent. The lead developer explained that “artists were a way to bring the soul back to this area.” It was all about “urban renewal, art and community.”2
Reviews
"David A. Smith has written a thoughtful, informed, and non-partisan history of one of the most tortuous areas of American cultural life: the proper place of government support of the arts. “—Roger Kimball, author of Counterpoints
"David Smith’s deft and penetrating study of the National Endowment for the Arts places the turbulent history of that agency in the larger context of precisely these fundamental questions. In the process, he helps us to think more clearly about an even more fundamental and contested question: the place of art in modern American life."—Wilfred M. McClay, SunTrust Chair of Excellence in Humanities, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Author's Biography
David A. Smith teaches American cultural history at Baylor University. He lives in Waco, Texas.