Cultural commitments: rethinking arts funding policy

As the thirtieth anniversary of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) came and went, uncelebrated, last September, the agency was hunkered down, dispirited, trying to stay out of the Congressional crossfire. The NEA's funding levels - and its existence - have been threatened in the past, but its future has probably never been in such jeopardy. Last December Congress voted to fund the NEA at $99.5 million for Fiscal Year 1996 (ending September 1996), reflecting a 40% reduction in funding levels from the previous year. In the last year the agency has trimmed its staff by 90 people, rewritten its funding guidelines to reflect four broad categories (narrowed from 17) and mandated that arts organizations submit only one application in any of the categories per year. Also, grants will no longer be given to individual artists (with the exception of literature, Jazz Masters and Folk Heritage Awards). A series of "continuing resolutions" is allowing for budgeted money to be released through March 18. At that time, a Presidential budget will be released for all government agencies. It is expected that Congress will continue to release budgeted NEA funds for FY 96. Ultimately, though, the NEA's future remains unclear: reauthorization hearings remain pending, but may not come up in this election year.

Arts advocates can only feel sadness at what is happening, and not least because of the loss of vital funds. Even more disheartening is the realization that the arts are being wiped off the national agenda. By contrast, the NEA was founded on widely held, positive beliefs about the arts: that they are a mark of civilization, a source of pride for the citizens of a nation and a responsibility worthy of public support. "We stand," wrote presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in 1960, "on the verge of a period of sustained cultural brilliance."(1) Was he right? Has America's cultural moment come and gone? Or does it yet lay before us?

These larger questions haunt four recently published books discussed here: Art Lessons: Learning from the Rise and Fall of Public Arts Funding (1995), Arts in Crisis: The National Endowment for the Arts versus America (1994), The Arts in the World Economy: Public Policy and Private Philanthropy for a Global Cultural Community (1994), and America's Commitment to Culture: Government and the Arts (1995). Appearing in the wake of one tumultuous arts-related crisis after another, these publications are to varying degrees shaped by raucous debates over public funding. The authors fret about the well-being of the arts even as they search for answers to questions about what went wrong, whether the current outcome could or should have been avoided and what can be done now.

Joseph Wesley Zeigler's Arts in Crisis: The National Endowment for the Arts versus America is the only book devoted specifically to the NEA, as opposed to public arts funding in general. An independent arts consultant, Zeigler tells a straightforward story emphasizing the controversial years since 1989. Writer Garrison Keillor provides a delightful foreword, "Thanks for Attacking the NEA," adapted from remarks he delivered at a 1990 Senate subcommittee hearing. Among other important points, he drolly observes: "The Endowment has changed the way we think about the arts. Today, no American family can be secure against the danger that one of its children may decide to become an artist."(2)

Zeigler begins with a brief history of federal arts policy before the 1960s, followed by an overview of the NEA'S founding and subsequent history through the 1980s. He then recounts in greater detail what has happened since the current crisis began with the hullabaloo over Andres Serrano's photograph, Piss Christ (1987). Subsequent controversies, most notably over Robert Mapplethorpe and the so-called NEA Four (Karen Finley, John Fleck, Holly Hughes and Tim Miller), are also recounted, as is the unwilling departure of hapless John Frohnmayer, NEA chair from 1989 to early 1992. Confirmed to his post just after the names Serrano and Mapplethorpe had become household words, Frohnmayer lacked the political sensitivities, art-world experience and sense of history required for success in directing the agency. A caretaker acting chair, Anne-Imelda Radice, did her best to resolve the controversy, but the Endowment remained without a clear direction or policy for handling such crises. After the 1992 election, in which Bill Clinton received strong support from the arts community, the administration was expected to provide new leadership to turn the situation around, but Alexander was not nominated to the NEA chair until months later. Arts supporters were further dispirited by Leon Panetta's suggestion early in 1993, as director of the Office of Management and Budget, that the NEA be "defunded" as a cost-saving measure.(3) Zeigler does a fine job of connecting the NEA narrative to significant factors in the larger political context of recent years. Among these are the religious right, the political agendas of members of Congress, the limited response of arts advocacy organizations, free speech issues and media coverage as they affect the arts.

In two final chapters Zeigler examines "what the story means, and its deeper significance for American life," emphasizing his theme that in politics, "balance" is most important. No policy, he points out, can succeed if competing interests are not acknowledged. In addition, Zeigler specifically examines the "censorship" issue involved in denying grants, the advisability of continuing programs that fund individual artists, the inherent potential conflict of purpose within the NEA mandate between serving the arts and serving the public and proposals for financing the arts in the future. Although Zeigler finds fault, he concludes: "the NEA has been a noble, honorable, and effective supporter of the arts .... Any civilized nation should have a national government that recognizes the importance and value of the arts, and helps to pay their way."(4)

As the most prominent component of federal arts funding, the NEA is very nearly the exclusive subject of Alice Goldfarb Marquis's Art Lessons: Learning from the Rise and Fall of Public Arts Funding. A lengthier book than Zeigler's, it covers the history of the NEA in considerable detail, including but not emphasizing the recent controversies. The two books differ in tone and perspective. Zeigler is much more objective as he clearly and thoughtfully addresses the tempestuous events that have bedeviled the recent NEA. The reader may or may not agree with assessments and recommendations made in the final two chapters, but the logical exploration of the issues makes it possible to learn much from his analysis. In contrast to Zeigler's conclusions, Marquis advocates that the NEA be abolished. Although historian and journalist Marquis would support some forms of public funding, by contrast she seems determined on almost every page to expose the NEA's worthlessness as a federal agency and the ineptitude of its staff and supporters. Her negative attitude so permeates her recounting of the NEA's history that she undermines her credibility. This is a loss, for the book reflects much research and puts forth many valid criticisms, and in fact incorporates a more detailed and current account of the NEA than is available elsewhere.

Marquis's bitterness about the NEA as a failed experiment - indeed, one doomed from the outset by weaknesses in its mandate - does not seem to spring from an ideological base. She clearly distrusts attempts to evaluate quality in art, and much of her criticism might be understood as an aversion to bureaucracy. Her exposition of disagreements, mistakes, misjudgments and other human frailties repeatedly implies nefarious intent, when what she describes is largely just the process of political negotiation and compromise that occurs in any organization. Her enthusiasm for attack is indiscriminate: she offers no coherent vision of what is wrong, or what would make it right. Moreover, many of her criticisms are contradictory. For example, she complains that opera and dance are elite, but sneers at performance companies for pandering to popularity by offering financially remunerative performances of Madama Butterfly or The Nutcracker.

In the final chapter, Marquis, like Zeigler, examines alternative proposals for arts funding and summarizes her assessment of the NEA. She says of the organization:

It purveys a multitude of fictions that Americans do not contribute generously to the arts; that a bureaucratic process can discover and foster creative talent; that nonprofit arts deserve support while commercial arts do not; that there exists a distinct cultural realm worthy of subsidy, a realm easily distinguished from simple entertainment; and, worst of all, that the arts in America would perish without federal intervention.(5)

Although each of these "fictions" deserves scrutiny, Marquis does not do the hard work of disproving them with well-organized arguments. The contentious, overwrought nature of this volume was prefigured in The Art Biz: The Covert World of Collectors, Dealers, Auction Houses, Museums, and Critics (1991), in which she chastises the art world for venality, corruption and self-promotion. She concludes that "art is too marvelous" to be left in the "coarse embrace of commercialism," leaving the reader of both books to wonder how art is to survive if neither government nor the private sector can nurture it.

With Mapplethorpe's male nudes adorning both the front and back covers, Art Lessons offers the only eye-catching dust jacket among the four books under review. By contrast, America's Commitment to Culture: Government and the Arts, devoted to the same topic as Art Lessons, comes with a particularly drab and uninviting cover, hinting at the sober analysis and uninflated style of its extremely rewarding text. Its compilation of essays, edited by Kevin V. Mulcahy and Margaret Jane Wyszomirski, employs public policy analysis to provide many striking insights into the NEA and other government arts programs.

The two editors, both of whom are political scientists, contributed two individual essays to this volume and co-authored a third. Mulcahy, who teaches at Louisiana State University, is a specialist in cultural policy. Wyszomirski, who is both professor of political science and director of the Arts Management Program at Case Western Reserve University, worked at the Endowment in the early 1990s. Most of the other authors also come from a background in the social sciences. As one might expect, the editors of America's Commitment to Culture are less interested in aesthetic questions than in social processes - how public policy is made, implemented and altered. As a result, this book is informative about the very matters that Art Lessons treats inadequately. America's Commitment to Culture is consistently grounded in history and the perspective that the NEA is an institution whose policy' is constantly evolving with administrative, political, cultural and economic fluctuations.

Wyszomirski provides the opening essays. The first essay covers events that rocked the agency from 1989 onward. Following the brief overview, she explores what happened and why by examining several "myths and misconceptions that reigned among the arts policy community,"(6) some explicit, others unstated. She ends with a discussion of the probable need to situate arts policy within a larger cultural policy in the future. In the second chapter, devoted to the politics of arts policy, Wyszomirski illuminates the structure of American arts policy (mostly as realized through the NEA) by separating content from the way policy is constructed and implemented. By setting aside the specific issues fueling various controversies, she is able to show what actually occurred in terms of political debate and the exercise of power. Specifically, she demonstrates that "the decade of the 1990s finds the formerly stable, cooperative arts policy subgovernment transformed into a loose, volatile and conflictual issue network." As this quote hints, she (like other writers in this book) speaks a different language from that in which the art community generally converses; nevertheless, because she defines terms and writes dearly, her compelling analysis is easy to follow.

With the basis for discussion established in these two chapters, the remainder of the book turns to specific aspects of arts policy - with individual essays treating early developments, public involvement and procedural workings of the NEA - before concluding with a final essay considering general issues. Two essays examine aspects of arts policy before the modern era of federal involvement through the Endowment. Lawrence Mankin, a professor of public affairs and university administrator at Arizona State University, writes about New Deal patronage, the only previous large-scale government arts program in the United States. He provides a solid, brief overview, foregrounding the political realities that accompanied this venture in arts support. Milton C. Cummings, Jr., professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, gives a valuable analysis of the development of Washington's interest in the arts during the three years of John Kennedy's presidency. Crediting Kennedy with articulating "a vision of an expanded relationship between government and the arts," Cummings shows how "the seeds of future federal government policy towards the arts were planted" during his administration."(7)

Two essays focus explicitly on involvement of the public in federal patronage. In "The Organization of Public Support for the Arts," Mulcahy and Wyszomirski describe the NEA's organizational structure and demonstrate that "with the NEA's leadership, an intergovernmental arts support system has developed that helps service and sustain a truly national artistic infrastructure of artists and arts organizations throughout the country." State, local and regional advocacy and support organizations can "further promote aesthetic pluralism and cultural democratization" in their areas. "In this sense," the authors conclude, "the administrative construction of America's commitment to the arts resonates with the political culture in which it is rooted: limited, segmented, intergovernmental, pluralistic, and evolving."(8) Judith Huggins Balfe, who teaches sociology at the City University of New York, takes on the subject of public sculpture. She contrasts the operational models developed under the NEA's Art-in-Public-Places program and the General Services Administration's Art-in-Architecture program, briefly surveys some contested artworks and finally holds up the Cambridge, Massachusetts method of commissioning art for subway stations as an exemplary instance of cooperation between artists and the public.

Two other essays analyze specific aspects of the NEA's operation. David B. Pankratz, an arts consultant and author, and Carla Hanzal, an artist and arts manager, offer a valuable look at "Leadership and the NEA: The Roles of the Chairperson and the National Council on the Arts." They investigate the statutory and historical functions of these two entities and inspect the relationship between each of the Endowment's five successive chairpersons and the 26-member advisory board that supervises the agency. They conclude with a discussion of dilemmas inherent in this partnership and endorse the importance of decisive but sensitive leadership from the chairperson. In another dose look at Endowment procedures, Mulcahy gives a detailed history of the Congressional reauthorization procedures that have repeatedly forced the NEA to defend itself with respect to several difficult issues, but have had the value of serving as "a forum for debating the nature of public arts policy." Without explaining why, Mulcahy covers the reauthorization history only through 1985. It is instructive to see how contentious the hearings have been historically, but the last 10 years have so altered the situation that it is frustrating to be deprived of the benefit of Mulcahy's research and experience concerning more recent events.

Mulcahy also contributes the final essay, "The Public Interest and Arts Policy," in which he concentrates on the public nature of the NEA as an aspect of a national cultural policy. In the end, what we are aiming for, he claims, is "a public culture that is not an official culture," suggesting that the NEA might "undertake as its cultural mission the task of persuading the public that there is a societal obligation" to safeguard the artistic patrimony and to "provide opportunities for artistic participation by as large a number of people and in as many different ways as feasible." He concludes with the hope that a result might be to "mitigate the political parochialism that has failed to appreciate the central role that the National Endowment for the Arts has played, and should continue to play, in fostering the country's cultural condition."(9)

A more diverse collection of essays, The Arts in the World Economy: Public Policy and Private Philanthropy for a Global Cultural Community, edited by Olin Robison, Robert Freeman and Charles A. Riley II, also provides thought-provoking perspectives on government arts funding. This anthology is an aftereffect of the December 1993 Salzburg Seminar. Riley, a freelance arts journalist who teaches English at Baruch College of the City University of New York, actually edited the volume, according to a preface by Robison, a former president of Middlebury College, who is now president of the Salzburg Seminar. Freeman, director of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, was co-chair, along with Robison, of the particular session that spawned the book.

In his preface, Robison explains that the Salzburg Seminar is devoted to "public issues with a particular emphasis on areas where work of the academic and public policy communities intersect." In order to obtain a wide range of views for the arts seminar, the organizers "enhanced the mix by involving artists, arts educators, civil servants, politicians, and arts administrators" from 33 countries. The topic was chosen in response to "a persistent sense that the arts are in crisis in most parts of the world," as well as a growing recognition that "many arts organizations now transcend national boundaries and are global in their artistic concerns and in their audiences."(10) The essays included in the book are evidently based on papers given at the seminar, with some later editing and rewriting. The book includes a fine bibliography of sources on arts policy and funding, as well as a helpful list of international arts organizations, but, unfortunately, no index.

The 19 essays are divided into five groups: public policy; private philanthropy; the artist's perspective; arts in the community; and education. Despite the unusual opportunity provided here for international perspectives, few of the essays actually address globalism, comparative approaches to funding and policy or concern for the survival of multiculturalism. The American reader will find relatively little information about other countries' arts policies, ones that might provide positive models for the U.S. In fact, the flow of influence seems to be quite the reverse. In Europe, in particular, there is mounting enthusiasm for the U.S. model of courting private and corporate philanthropy to supplement public monies. Unfortunately, except for one or two offhanded comments, the book's discussion is limited entirely to the West. Perhaps opening the conversation to other major art-producing or art-conserving countries - such as Japan, Australia, India, Egypt and Israel - might have broadened the discussion beyond any hope of useful connections. (The seminar apparently did include some non-Western representatives.)

The introduction and six essays collected under the first category, those concerned with public policy, offer the most stimulating perspectives on the present discussion. In the introduction, Riley provides an overview of the international arts situation today. He points out that "this is the first book to address the economics of the arts since the global recession hit." He relays evidence of hard times in several countries, and meditates on the consequences of varied reactions to the new reality.

In "Changing Philosophies for the Arts in the Century Ahead," Freeman covers a great deal of ground from a well-informed, perceptive, well-intentioned and rather personal point of view. Most of his remarks have to do with music and the way it is taught, presented and paid for, but in nearly every instance they could be made to apply to visual and performing arts. His main point is that musicians - and by extension other arts workers - need to broaden their perspectives beyond narrow specialization, find new ways of interacting with and producing for an audience and be concerned with building a future through education and the cultivation of a political constituency - all while maintaining excellence in their individual disciplines.

The British freelance writer Robert Hewison offers a provocative, even brilliant, fast-paced defense of government responsibility for the arts. Viewing the issues from the left, he argues that "in all modern states, 'culture' has become a matter of public policy." He refutes those who extol the role of private philanthropy in the U.S. by pointing out that "the dominance of private patronage through corporations, foundations, and individual giving is possible only because public policy encourages it," mainly through our system of tax incentives. He goes on to analyze public culture as it exists today, countering the criticism from the right that state-sponsored culture is a form of propaganda with his own belief that "with the spread of business sponsorship, culture is another name for advertising."(11) He speaks compellingly of culture as a collective responsibility; of the state's need to preserve the infrastructure of the arts, just as it maintains trade, transport and education; and of the role of art in addressing national identity at the level of imagination and truth-telling.

J. Mark Davidson Schuster offers a closely-argued case for government arts support. A professor of urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he comes at his subject from cultural economics. By identifying the elements that will constitute a strong argument for arts support, analyzing the various rationales for it and considering the nature of arguments used against arts support, he provides a specific and useful blueprint for justifying public expenditure on the arts.

The other essays in this section are interesting but less compelling. John Brademas, one-time Congressman and president emeritus of New York University, describes and endorses the American way of arts funding under the pointed title "The New Philanthropy for the New Europe." Current NEA chairperson Jane Alexander speaks eloquently from personal experience about the value of the arts and the NEA's accomplishments. Karla Simon, a professor of law at Catholic University of America, writes rather dryly and technically about "Tax Legislation and Funding." It is not clear what her recommendations would be, if any, for changes in the American tax law.

The second group of essays presents three authors involved with private philanthropy. Marilyn Laurie, senior vice president for public relations at AT&T and chairperson of the AT&T Foundation, speaks frankly about corporate funding. The bottom line is, of course, the bottom line. Corporate philanthropy, she reminds us, is never disinterested. Nevertheless, as she takes pains to convey, it is also true that "thoughtful philanthropy will meet pressing social needs" and will enrich "the quality of life in the communities where we do business." Marilyn Perry, president of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in New York, contributes an eloquent essay on the consolations of art, but has virtually nothing to say about her organization's policies nor the uses of philanthropy in meeting current needs. George Soros describes what he has done with his megabucks in eastern Europe. His methods might offer procedural models for some other organizations, but his one-man show is in many respects the antithesis of a public agency.

The other essays in The Arts in the World Economy are of varied interest, but in general they bear only peripherally on the question of public funding. The two makers included Hans Haacke, a visual artist, and Matthias Kreisberg, composer-in-residence at MIT's Experimental Music Studio, who offer spirited defenses of the purposes of art and the desirability of public funding. "Abandoning" the arts "to market forces would subject them to the rationale that governs mass entertainment and would thus destroy them," Haacke points out.(12) "The marketplace has one set of values; art has another," Kreisberg says.(13) The remaining eight essays are concerned with aspects of art's relation to individual communities or with educational initiatives related to art. As such, several provide possible models for individual or community action to help support arts activities.

As we ruminate over the issues discussed in these books, what can we take away that will be useful in the future? First, we must be aware of mistakes made in the past in order not to repeat them. Second, we should be open to new ideas for reorganizing the Endowment in order to increase its effectiveness or, possibly, to do away with the organization as it is now constituted in favor of other government interventions to serve the same ends.

The mistakes of the past cannot simply be dumped at the door of the NEA. Arts advocates and artists must also take responsibility. However, the NEA could have been more successful with respect to several issues. It has often failed to present itself as a government agency with the same accountability restraints as any other federal organization. inherent conflicts between equally worthy policy objectives of excellence and access must be more clearly acknowledged, along with the mechanisms for achieving them. The NEA administration must be able to explain to Congress exactly why the agency exists, and what it does with its money. This may not be easy for those who believe that the arts are inherently worthwhile and that meaning in the arts transcends not only bureaucratic imperatives but even rational exposition. However, the task is politically necessary. It is unrealistic to think that without this effort in an economy of dwindling resources the arts will continue to be funded. The NEA's chairperson, Jane Alexander, is hopeful that the agency's recent efforts at restructuring will reward the organization with survival - beyond the life span of two years that most freshman House Republicans have recommended.

The NEA has also been scandalously indifferent to issues of conflict of interest. There are infamous stories about insider dealing in review panels, and the problem extends even to the National Council. Although effort has been made in recent years to curb the worst abuses, the agency must take every measure to foster a culture of honesty and openness, in which self-interest plays no part in the grant-awarding process. This is a more difficult area to address than it might appear at first glance. The universe of top professionals in each of the arts is quite small. If the agency wants to make use of the best people, it will inevitably have to deal with the fact that they have inherent interests. However, strict rules, full disclosure and principled leadership could enhance the NEA's credibility.

The NEA has become too entrenched in bureaucratic thinking. This is not to say that it should devolve into formlessness ruled by whimsy. Accountability must be expressed in the structure of the organization, through lines of responsibility and authority. That said, the agency wastes too much of its own and other's time on elaborate procedures, multiple copies and incomprehensible directives that give the impression that the forces of pomposity are in charge. As Marquis writes in Art Lessons, after citing several passages from NEA application instructions, "The reader who does not yet weep for a nation whose arts are said to be nourished by the authors of such text may turn to the NEA's other publications for more reasons to grieve."(14) We probably cannot return to the days when Twyla Tharp, in the 1960s, could successfully apply for a grant from the New York State Arts Commission with a letter that read, "I write dances, not applications. Send money. Love, Twyla."(15) But the agency certainly should get away from its heavy-handed ways by making a commitment to clear language and flexible thought.

Two additional NEA shortcomings are also shared by arts advocates. The NEA itself has apparently not maintained the kind of documentation it could now use to justify its existence, nor has any private agency helped out in this regard. It would be helpful to know, on a more than anecdotal basis, what individuals and organizations have received grants and how they have spent the money. Without NEA funding, what works of art would not have been created, what performances would never have reached a theater, what exhibitions would never have been staged at museums? The NEA should have this information at its fingertips. It should also make a point of asking some recipients who benefited from grants 10 or 20 years ago to comment on what those grants meant to their lives as creative artists or to the survival and development of their organizations. This sort of information should be widely distributed to law makers and the public, who would hopefully understand that these monies make a difference. For purposes of analysis, the NEA should also keep information on what happens when grants are denied to organizations. (It would probably be very difficult to assess the impact of grant denial over the lifetime of an individual.) The agency would then have some basis for evaluating its own programs with respect to whether other funding is obtained or projects are abandoned.

Additionally, both the NEA and arts advocates have failed to insulate the arts against an array of claims from special interests. Marquis speaks of "the rush to harness the arts to tourism, to downtown redevelopment, to the alleviation of social problems, and to the delivery of political messages."(16) If the arts are given too large a load - or an inappropriate load - to bear, the continuation of these problems may resonate as a failure of art. The arts do interconnect with many other enterprises, and it would be foolish to ignore such practical effects as stimulating local economies or enriching the environment. But the agency must avoid the temptation to debase the art it exists to serve by trying to spread its benefits indiscriminately. Ultimately, the NEA and its supporters must safeguard the essential fact that the strength of the arts lies in their ability to speak to people as individuals about their inner lives.

Like the agency itself, arts advocacy groups have been remiss in developing a hard-headed policy to justify spending. They have also tended to be slow to react to recent crises, thereby allowing the opposition to define the issues. Moreover, it is also shameful that some potentially powerful voices are seldom heard. Where have the major figures in allied commercial fields been? Those in theater, film and music, for example, who benefit directly from NEA support of neophyte artists and noncommercial training venues (such as non-profit theater) should speak out for the arts. Likewise, the well-connected and well-to-do board members of major institutions have rarely spoken up publicly on such concerns, even when the arts have been viciously attacked. Arts advocates need to mobilize such influential voices.

Artists, as a special subgroup of advocates, have also created problems by not thinking through their relationships to public funding. Only a minuscule number have in any way abused the public trust implied by a government grant, but during several highly publicized incidents many artists rallied around their own who were denied grants, often by simply venting anger at the NEA for its "censorship." A more nuanced stance might have assisted everyone involved to get beyond the controversy. The right of artists to create as they please is not at issue here, but rather, what should be considered is what is at stake if they fail to use public money responsibly. As performance artist Laurie Anderson (hardly an establishment figure) said in an interview a number of years ago:

"If you are alone in your room making art without support, it's one thing. But as soon as you take public money for it . . . there is a responsibility to share it in some way . . . I'm talking about judgment. If you know the showing of a certain tape is going to drive people crazy, do you know why you want to show it?"(17)

If the NEA and its supporters have made costly mistakes, it is obvious that these should be rectified, if possible, in the future. But if funding can be found, is it best for the NEA to continue in more or less the same form, doing more or less the same things? There are some important considerations in favor of merely reforming and revitalizing the NEA. For one thing, any newfangled scheme may engender its own set of unintended consequences. The arts community could find itself dealing with a whole new set of problems, creating a situation that would be different but not necessarily better. The NEA does not exist in isolation. Over the years, an arts infrastructure of state, local and regional arts organizations has come into being, structured around the assumed presence of the NEA. If the NEA were to disappear or be drastically reshaped, other organizations and the programs they support would certainly be affected. Moreover, much private giving is stimulated by NEA leadership.

Whatever may be said for holding on to what we have, the books under consideration provide a number of alternative plans worthy of thought. Perhaps most realistic among them is a reorganization plan outlined by Mulcahy in America's Commitment to Culture. (It is endorsed by Zeigler in Arts in Crisis, on the basis of a 1991 article in which Mulcahy first proposed the idea.) In essence, Mulcahy proposes reorganizing the NEA along the lines of the National Endowment for the Humanities; that is, "functional objectives" would replace the disciplines as organizing principles for allocation of grants. He recommends four broad goals: support for major cultural institutions in the form of direct subsidies, arts development through a "comprehensive strategy for investment in cultural resources" in order to foster both access and excellence, expanded arts education and grants to individual artists in support of personal development.(18) Recently the NEA has indeed reorganized its discipline-based guidelines to four broad categories structured according to functional goals or strategies. This plan displays an attractive clarity and a common-sense attitude toward the allocation of resources. A subsidiary advantage of this plan might come from having interdisciplinary peer review panels, that might reduce, if not eliminate, the inbreeding that has plagued the NEA. Yet this raises the unnerving question of whether excellence in the arts can truly be served without the specialized knowledge of disciplinary panels.

In addition to presenting Mulcahy's plan, Zeigler reviews several other reform options at the end of his book. He discusses three of these only briefly: to "turn over most NEA money to state arts agencies"; to "give much more money to individuals" since it is artistic imagination and inquiry that produces art; and to "concentrate on the have-nots" among organizations because they have "the least appeal to private philanthropy." Finding these proposals wanting, he comes up with a more attractive idea in requiring the NEA "to devote all of its institutional grants to arts education," which he feels would benefit the arts while also emphasizing a service that is broadly supported by the public.(19)

Finally, Zeigler offers two ideas that "build upon the strengths of American philanthropy." The first, which he calls the "audit allowance," would provide automatic grants to institutions "based upon giving to them from non-NEA sources." His scheme takes a few paragraphs to explain in detail, but the basic idea is that the more funds institutions can raise from private, corporate or non-NEA public sources, the more they will get from the NEA. The most obvious objection to this plan is that it rewards fund raising rather than the quality of programs or service. His second idea, the "10 percent benefit," would allow an extra 10% deduction from taxes (beyond the 100% now allowed) for all contributions to arts organizations.(20) As his figures show, this plan would cost the federal government many times the current outlay for the NEA, yet the agency would have to continue to exist to serve organizations that do not attract much outside funding. In today's budget-slashing climate, this idea will not be supported in Washington. Incidentally, Zeigler considers both his ideas as potentially applicable to the entire non-profit sector.

Like Zeigler, Marquis ends her book with proposals for new approaches. She says flatly that "Congress should get out of the culture business," but she endorses a potentially viable idea that has been floated elsewhere: the creation of "a true endowment independent of further appropriations" that could be used for future arts support. She suggests that this endowment might provide support for another idea: "the hiring of a professional arts manager - a public impresario, if you will - for every locality or neighborhood." With staff aides, this person would be in charge of booking all the community spaces in the neighborhood for anyone who wanted to use them for arts events. The impresario's office would then distribute vouchers for free admission "as widely as possible." "In many ways," she thinks, this reform "would replicate the incredibly rich and varied culture of the nineteenth century."(21) It is impossible to evaluate her idea seriously, because Marquis provides no analysis of the plan's financial burdens, nor of the functional implications of such hot-potato questions as who appoints the impresarios and what prevents them from promoting their friends.

In addition to considering proposals that reconceptualize the NEA, the arts community should take a greater interest in other forms of government intervention. Tax incentives are the most obvious federal contribution. Couldn't this model be followed as well on state and local levels? Federal moneys also come to the arts through a number of programs, ranging from the General Services Administration's percent-for-art allocations for art in public buildings to provisions for art instruction embedded in educational funding. Arts advocates should keep a close eye on all such programs to make sure they work and to help increase or promote funding when possible.

Although these books stress that the arts are under attack, that government funding may disappear and the future looks uncertain, collectively they are nevertheless a source of optimism. The range and quality of thought they bring to bear on complex problems provide some hope that solutions do exist. Taken as a group, on the one hand they offer thoughtful and well-informed scrutiny of the history of government arts funding and its current travails. On the other, they offer a range of options for addressing the most serious problems. Whatever happens, before final decisions are made, Congress should direct a blue-ribbon panel to scrutinize and hold public hearings on the future of public arts funding.

The U.S. is still a wealthy country, and there is no reason to tear up the social contract in order to address the budget deficit. Nevertheless, much of the nation seems to have espoused what former New York State governor Mario Cuomo has called the "New Harshness,"(22) a mean-spirited affront to national well-being from which we can expect little sympathy for creative expression. But the arts will not go away. After all, the arts connect directly to every individual's search for harmony and self-realization, and the need to visualize a future.

NOTES

1. Quoted in Alice Goldfarb Marquis, Art Lessons from the Rise and Fall of Public Arts Funding, (New York: Basic Books, 1995), p. 52.

2. Garrison Keillor, "Foreword, "Joseph Wesley Zeigler, Arts in Crisis: The National Endowment for the Arts versus America, (Chicago: a capella books, 1994), p. x.

3. Ibid, p. 141.

4. lbid, pp. 175-76.

5. Marquis, p. 258.

6. Kevin W. Mulcahy and Margaret Jane Wyszomirski, eds., America's Commitment to Culture: Government and the Arts, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), p. 19.

7. Ibid, p. 117.

8. Ibid, p. 139.

9. Ibid, p. 225.

10. Olin Robison, Robert Freeman and Charles A. Riley II. eds., The Arts in the World Economy: Public Policy and Private Philanthropy for a Global Cultural Community, (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994), p. vii.

11. Ibid, pp. 27, 29.

12. Ibid, p. 98.

13. Ibid, p. 107.

14. Marquis, p. 241.

15. Ibid, p. 116.

16. Ibid, p. 127.

17. Zeigler, p. 164.

18. Mulcahy and Wyszomirski, pp. 214-215.

19. Zeigler, pp. 179-185.

20. Ibid, p. 186.

21. Marquis, p. 253.

22. Mario Cuomo, Reason to Believe, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 9-11.

ANN LEE MORGAN writes on modern and contemporary art from Princeton, NJ.

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