Author: Urice, John K.

Publication Year:

Media Type: Periodical (article)

Summary:

Abstract:

"Urice discusses how three seminal reports influenced the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts. He believed that those who led the political process to establish the NEA were significantly challenged by the lack of a documented problem to solve or a concerned and vocal constituency demanding government assistance."

"[The author] contends that an overreliance by the Endowment's creators on three documents ﾝthe 1963 Report to the President on the Arts and the National Government by August Heckscher; Baumol and Bowen's The Performing Arts: An Economic Dilemma; and the Rockefeller Panel report The Performing Arts: Problems and Prospects (both 1966) ﾝled to inevitable flaws in the endowment's original structure and functioning. Are the current problems of the National Endowment for the Arts results of these early missteps?" (from the Introduction by Valerie B. Morris)

"Long before congressional debate started, the concept of a national arts agency was controversial. Most reservations related to constitutional and artistic control concerns. Some who opposed the creation of a federal arts bureaucracy were not against assisting cultural and arts organizations. Those opposed also recognized that some cultural organizations would not survive in a market economy with limited subsidies. The core philosophical and political questions were, is the demise of some arts organizations a federal problem, and if so, what would be the sources and nature of future subsidies. There were, of course, strong arguments based on a conservative vision of the appropriate role of the federal goverment as delineated in the Constitution. Nonetheless, in 1965 a federal arts funding agency ﾝmodeled after a state agency (New York) was created with hope, but also with the ambiguity and uncertainties that are natural products of political compromise and hazy language. It was a tentative step in arts support, avoiding the European ministerial model, yet shaped with multiple and difficult goals that could only be resolved ﾝif they could be ﾝover time and with practice."

CONTENTSﾝ
The National Endowment for the Arts as Policymaker.
Before the National Endowment for the Arts: From John Adams to the Heckscher Report.
The Baumol and Bowen and Rockefeller Panel Reports.
Conclusions.
Notes.
References.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Funding