Author: Kostelanetz, Richard

Publication Year: 1981

Media Type: Report

Summary:

When government funding of the arts began, the liberal and libertarian fear was that government money would have deleterious political effects upon the creation and dissemination of the arts in America. This was the kind of malfeasance that the American press was prepared to expose, and one reason why the arts agencies have generally escaped critical scrutiny is that malfeasance of this kind has scarcely happened. Indeed, only within a certain period at the National Endowment for the Humanities was there any attempt to discriminate against applicants for their political politics. Indeed, one could say, in retrospect, the pervasiveness of this fear of political interference, coupled with a Civil Rights Act that insured the representation on the selection committees of minorities (and thus of likely radicals) has deflected the possible influence of conservative politicians.

Abstract:

When government funding of the arts began, the liberal and libertarian fear was that government money would have deleterious political effects upon the creation and dissemination of the arts in America. This was the kind of malfeasance that the American press was prepared to expose, and one reason why the arts agencies have generally escaped critical scrutiny is that malfeasance of this kind has scarcely happened. Indeed, only within a certain period at the National Endowment for the Humanities was there any attempt to discriminate against applicants for their political politics. Indeed, one could say, in retrospect, the pervasiveness of this fear of political interference, coupled with a Civil Rights Act that insured the representation on the selection committees of minorities (and thus of likely radicals) has deflected the possible influence of conservative politicians.

In truth, however, government funding can have deleterious effects within the politics of an art - by consistently funding some strains of work, while totally neglecting others; and this generally has less to do with elected public officials than the tastes and professional politics of the people appointed to be in charge of the funding programs. Precisely because liberal journals were relieved to discover that arts funding had not been politicized, they failed to see other problems. Even as late as 1980, a prominent Washington magazine asked me to do an expose on political meddling in the arts endowment. When I told the editor that the real problems were internal, he lost interest. One practical, journalistic reason for this disinterest, I must admit, would be that I would necessarily talk not about Congresspeople whose affiliations and perhaps monikers would be familiar to his readers, but bureaucrats whose names and titles would be completely unknown. In the end, this journalistic neglect remains a principal reason for continuing public ignorance of the federal and state cultural agencies.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Funding