RALEIGH – Max Borders has written a fascinating new paper for the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy about the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. He examines the history, finances, and performance of the institution, which was founded by former Gov. Terry Sanford.
In fact, Max Borders has written such an interesting and well-reasoned study of the School of the Arts that I refuse to tell you anything more about it.
Why? Because I’d like as many of my readers as possible to attend the Thursday luncheon in Raleigh where Max will present his findings and recommendations. I don’t want to step on his toes – though as a member of the panel at Thursday’s meeting, I do plan to express my own opinions on the School of the Arts. I guess you’ll have to come to the meeting to find out what they are.
In the meantime, here are a couple of teasers on the broader subject of taxpayer funding of the arts and arts education. First, I wrote a Daily Journal column some years ago about the tendency for boosters of the arts to overstate their case in rather silly ways:
Arts advocates in North Carolina and around the country have for years devoted significant time and resources trying to make the case for government subsidy by proclaiming big economic or academic benefits. I vividly recall a “study” released about 15 years ago by an arts group in Wake County that claimed every dollar “invested” in local arts organizations would return $9 in net economic growth, as dollars circulated among patrons, artists, vendors, and institutions. This is old-fashioned, idiotic Keynesianism, dressed up in stylish new threads (probably all-black). But some local news media fell for it then, and continue to buy similar claims today.
On the academic side, well-meaning supporters of arts education, worried about the declining importance placed on subjects for which there is no standardized-testing program, have claimed that immersion in the arts helps students do well in their other studies. Unfortunately, the evidence is rather thin for this proposition, too, as a recent RAND Corporation study of the issue reveals.
The RAND report, in fact, offers the best argument for arts funding (though not necessarily for coercive funding from government): that the arts are intrinsically valuable, that cultivating artistic expression among young people is the key to maintaining a thriving arts community. Why care about this? Because appreciating art is an end in itself. It is fundamental to the human experience. It broadens the mind and opens the heart.
As a lifelong consumer of – and sometime practitioner of – the arts in various forms, I find this argument noble and persuasive. But others don’t, primarily because they continue to see government as a necessary funder of arts programs. So they’re attacking the RAND report for getting the economics and academics wrong. “It’s confusing. I’m not exactly sure what the motivation is for this,” Robert Lynch, president of Americans for the Arts, told a Sante Fe newspaper. His group claims that the nonprofit arts sector injected $134 billion a year into the national economy and spawned nearly 5 million jobs.
Mr. Lynch, the motivation here is to save the case for the arts from being adulterated by embarrassing fools like you.
The other thought I’ll offer today is this one, from a blog post I did a while back for National Review’s The Corner:
The Boston Globe celebrates today the creation of an innovative new $20 million program of foundation grants to nurture individual American artists. But it can’t help taking a swipe at conservatives for “political disputes over controversial art” and at Congress for “federal spending cuts” at the National Endowment for the Arts. Oddly, the Globe describes the new grants program — funded by the Ford, Rockefeller, Prudential, and Rasmuson foundations — as “armed with private money that frees it from congressional budget axes.”
I’m not saying that it’s odd to see private funding for the arts as liberating. That’s always been the best consequentialist argument for eliminating government largesse for artists — that private funding protects them from oversight by politicians. Forcing taxpayers to fund obscenity and stupidity is bad enough, but more common is that government funding distorts the arts by favoring some trends, subjects, and personalities over others. That’s obscene and stupid enough.
What’s odd is that the Globe finally gets this. It predicts that the results of the new initiative could include “a great play or a new building” but “also a sound, unapologetic investment in the nation’s artist soul.” Yes, made privately and voluntarily.
Does all this mean that I’m against all government funding for arts education? Nope. If I see you Thursday at the North Hills Renaissance in Raleigh, I’ll tell you why.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation