To Be Placing Money Where Mouth Is Plz.

May 19, 2009

Last night Mrs. Obama was in NYC for the ballet and for the reopening of the MET’s American wing which I have missed rather sorely in my time of unemployment.   She paid the usual lipservice to the arts using a phrase we’ve all heard 1000 times before, that arts “define who we are as a people.”

In past articles in the Times there have been signals that the NEA is being taken more seriously as an organization by being moved out of the first lady’s office into the west wing.   Not to demean past first ladies which include the current Secretary of State and Eleanor Roosevelt but especially with the last administration being confined to that section of the white house does paint the arts as a bit of classy frivolity.   If nothing else I personally feel a little better knowing that the current administration’s chief of staff has a background in dance.    There is some hope that the new director of the NEA, Rocco Landesman can breathe some revelence into the agency but I don’t suggest holding your breath.

In some ways I almost hope for a Piss Christ or Self Portrait With Bullwhip scale meltdown over the NEA.  If nothing else people were talking about public funding for culture and what that should entail.   Its easy to say that art defines us and is one of the few things our brief time on this earth will leave to history.   What’s not easy is to ask someone to pay for something that will never pay for itself.  At least not while the people who make it draw breath.

Its hard enough to justify basic scientific research which doesn’t have an immediate economic or practical application.   Even if you’re reading this on the entity that came out of one of the more far fetched ideas DARPA sponsored.

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