In the wake of the recession and steep governmental budget cuts, many states are cutting arts funding. Both Michigan and Texas are looking to zero out arts budgets, but Kansas may be the first state which has succeeded. On February 7, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback killed the Kansas Arts Commission. Before the cuts, the Commission funded music, theater and art education for groups all across the state. Now Kansas is one of few in the nation without a state organization promoting the arts. The KAC had a decidedly modest budget of $600,000 and received support from the NEA. Listeners to Studio 360 may have heard Kansas State Senator Roger Reitz (R) discuss the issue with Kurt Andersen. If you missed the heart-wrenching conversation, you can listen to it here:
So why should it matter to Americans in the other 49 states if Kansas loses a few arts programs? Can we imagine a country without a cultural heritage? What exactly is under threat as the government encroaches on the personal liberties inherent in art making? Just as we passionately defend more abused rights, like our ability to carry a gun and our freedom of speech, so too must we vehemently speak out against the persecution of the arts and the liberties they provide. In 1945, Henry Miller wrote "There's no real life for an artist in America." Sadly, Mr. Miller might be right.
At the celebrations of the MoMA's 25th anniversary, President Eisenhower spoke of the arts the bastion of freedom and democracy: "As long as artists are at liberty to feel with high personal intensity, as long as our artists are free to create with sincerity and conviction, there will be a healthy controversy and progress in art….How different it is in tyranny, when artists are made the slaves and tools of the state; when artists become chief propagandists of a cause, progress is arrested and creation and genius are destroyed." Eisenhower wisely viewed arts as the "pillar of liberty" that they are.
In the wake of the censorship of the Hide/Seek exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, these cuts sting even more. The government has no place in the arts, and as conservative leadership cuts, censors, and radicalizes this "pillar of liberty," nothing may be safe. Politicians have no right to shape cultural products by discarding questionable content or by cutting supportive budgets.
When viewed through the lens of current cuts to state budgets, our American future looks bleak. We are looking at the promise of a nation with a weak educational foundation, a negligible system for cultural support, and the demise of the arts across the entire country. It is not difficult to fathom a near-Apocalyptic desecration of any remaining institutions and programs within our lifetime.
This crisis is by no means solely domestic. The UK has been fighting a similar battle, mostly through the group Save The Arts. In September, Scottish artist David Shrigley made a provocative, accessible, and humorous film illustrating exactly why we all should care about arts funding:
