RALEIGH – Because most Americans don’t consider the arts to be a bare necessity, they tend to cut back expenditures on the arts when the economy sours. They go to fewer shows, they buy fewer artworks, and they make fewer charitable contributions to arts organizations.
That’s the two-sentence summary of the challenge facing arts groups during recessions. It should suffice. Alas, it typically takes reporters 10 to 20 times as many words to tell the story – in part because they thrown in a lot of extraneous hand-wringing and foolish economics.
Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal published a piece with all of the above. “Museums, theaters and operas, already reeling from the recession, are having a tough time attracting support amid perceptions that vital services like soup kitchens and homeless shelters should receive funds first,” writes reporter Mike Spector.
Well, that hardly sounds like a bizarre set of priorities in communities where the unemployment rate is soaring, and in many places is already in the double-digits. I happen to be giving more to arts charities this year than last, but I’m not surprised to learn that I’m in the minority. I believe that the performing arts in particular can be an effective means of giving needy students a leg up (so to speak). Not everyone agrees, or has found a local program with a proven track record to support.
These issues ought to be hashed out among private individuals, making decisions about their own resources or banding together freely with like-mind individuals to address their community’s problems. These issues shouldn’t become matters of public policy, to be decided by politicians and imposed on all taxpayers via government expenditure regardless of their personal views.
Nor should fundraisers for the arts resort to the old, silly notion that spending public dollars on arts organizations creates an economic bonanza, employing a multiplier effect that even the Obama administration couldn’t stand behind. From the Journal:
In their bid to rally support, arts leaders have focused most on economic arguments. Cultural institutions generate $166.2 billion in annual economic activity through spending by organizations and consumers patronizing their events, says Americans for the Arts. The sector accounts for 5.7 million jobs and nearly $30 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue.
Ugh. If this “economic argument” is truly what they’re focusing on, the arts groups deserve to be de-funded as a clear and present danger to common sense. Unfamiliar with the basic economic principle of opportunity cost, they seem to believe that when governments or philanthropies give dollars to arts organizations, there is no corresponding loss of expenditure somewhere else in the economy. The money is apparently conjured out of thin air, perhaps through a “think system” of the sort that Professor Harold Hill might be able to explain if you have half an hour and a trusting nature.
What arts boosters should be saying is simply this: the arts are intrinsically valuable, and 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.
When times are tough, people may very well find this argument alluring but still conclude that they can’t afford to give right now. Maybe next year, they will say. And artists and administrators should respond by thanking them for their consideration, adjusting their budgets according, and trying again next year.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation