Author: Larson, Gary O.

Publication Year: 1982

Media Type: Report

Summary:

Abstract:

Review by Edward Arian of the book The Reluctant Patron: The Government and the Arts [Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983, 314 p.].

Gary O. Larson has given us a well documented and factually comprehensive account of the two decades from 1943 to 1965 from the final dismantling of the WPA-New Deal art programs to the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts and the first official recognition by the federal government that the arts (and the opportunity for citizens to experience them) had become a public responsibility. (The prior WPA arts programs had been only incidental to a larger effort whose purpose was simply to put people to work, whatever their skills).

Reservations aside, the book is a valuable contribution to a much-neglected area of scholarship, especially for those of us who teach in the field of arts administration. By furnishing us with a picture of the forces and ideas, pro and con,which preceded the founding of the NEA, Larson illustrates an important lesson for the arts community, which often views politics pejoratively and as having nothing to do with the arts. Benefits are distributed in our system through the arena of interest group politics. We in the arts ignore this at our own peril.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Funding