The Trump administration’s reported cuts to domestic programs have renewed talk about funding for the cultural endowments. Those are the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The arts lobby already has ginned up a calling campaign to pressure lawmakers over the issue.
Most of the heat has gone out of this debate since the endowments stopped funding in-your-face works designed to provoke the ire of the people compelled to pay for them. Nowadays the federal government usually funds small-town theater companies and the like — although you can still find plenty of examples of federally funded nonsense, like poetry about climate change and plays that try to create “social awareness” about “society’s complex relationship with guns.”
Endowment supporters always had a tough case to make. On the one hand, they wanted to convey the idea that eliminating the federal subsidies would be a terrible blow to the arts, even though art somehow managed to thrive before the endowments were established in 1965. On the other hand, they wanted to downplay the significance of the endowments. As The New York Times recently reported: “Today, supporters say, the agencies cost so little that killing them would be empty symbolism.”
Not really. The NEH, for instance, gets about $150 million annually. If Republican congressmen chose to give a similar sum to the Southern Baptist Convention, they would no doubt provoke a furor of protest. Important principles can loom large even when the sums involved are small.
In all likelihood Congress and the Trump administration will not zero out the endowments. Doing so just isn’t worth the hassle. But even if they did, the arts would continue to thrive. For that matter, even public art would continue to thrive. Just look at the City of Richmond, which is seeking local artists for a sculpture to grace the Hull Street branch of the public library. Richmond also spent $200,000 for an art installation at the T. Tyler Potterfield Memorial Bridge, and it is shelling out another $300,000 for a sculpture of Maggie Walker. America has always had public works of art. Some of them are just more worthy than others.