Those Crazy Art Dollars

Understanding Arts Funding and a Modest Proposal: a "Painting in Every House"

The annual budget battle over federal funding of the arts has swung from apocalyptic to apologetic in recent weeks, but a middle path will be the likely outcome. While some art advocates have warned that the Republican-controlled House seeks “elimination” of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), others have avoided such doomsaying, conceding that some cuts in funding will be part of a “shared sacrifice” to lower the federal deficit.

            Next week (Feb. 28) the U.S. Senate weighs in. The final budget for the NEA is likely to come in somewhere between the Obama administration’s request for $146 million and House cuts that push it down to $124 million. NEA funding is clearly not what it used to be, having reached around $190 million in the early 1990s. For ordinary people, however, the numbers—these millions and millions—are a blur. The NEA has instead become a vivid political symbol. Each year the question is whether its fortunes are rising or falling and who is to blame. Who is pro-art and who is anti-art?

            What gets obscured is that NAE funding is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the arts. As advocacy groups such as Americans for the Arts attest, the federal government spends about $1.4 billion every year on “nonprofit arts,” a very broad category (from museums and symphonies to education and culture). The nonprofit art sector generates $166.2 billion in annual “economic activity,” according to Americans for the Arts. The activity underwrites 5.7 million jobs, which produce $12.6 billion in federal income taxes. In short, federal investment in arts has a good return.

            Now that we are in the billions, it is always difficult to understand how in the "art industry" (the term everyone uses now) the nonprofit efforts are distinct from the real engine of America’s art economy: the commercial music, movie, advertising, and entertainment industries. Compared to this vast sector of profit-making corporate arts, what is the financial impact of nonproftt arts, which include the fine arts funded by the NEA? (I provide no answer).

            At this point, it is helpful to recognize that most arts funding comes from the private sector, the world of philanthropies and public investment motivated very often by tax exemptions (as well as love of art). That is why groups such as the National Association of Schools of Art and Design feel the battle to keep pro-art tax policy may be more important than NEA budgets. The success of “indirect” funding of art, often by tax incentives, is pointed to by economist Tyler Cowen in Good and Plenty, a book that elaborates on how well the American system seems to work (compared to Europe’s direct state-funding system). Although the new head of the NEA, the arts businessman Rocco Landesman, is surely fighting for the best NEA funding, he also has taken a distinctly “supply and demand” market approach in his leadership. He wants to show with “facts” how art investments improve urban communities; he is seeking incentives for why people will put their money into the arts.

            At a moment like this, I offer a simple and utopian version of art economics. It stems from my observations of the grass-roots art markets—from the star-studded art fairs of Art Basel/Miami to street craft festivals and art student gallery shows.

            What if every middle-income household in America went to one of these and bought a painting or two to ennoble (i.e. decorate) the house? The numbers would look like this: half of all U.S. households make at least $50,000 a year, adding up to 85 million households (half the total in America). If in the next decade, each of these households bought a painting, sculpture, or craft for $200, that would infuse $11.6 billion into art world pockets (nearly three times more than the NEA has spent in its forty-five-year existence).

            This visionary calculation, of course, is irrelevant to the way art culture and careers really operate. For a start, where would we find 58 million paintings and sculptures? More to the point, only a few artists get rich or do well in the art system. The vast majority struggle through. Nevertheless, this “a painting in every house” logic puts a focus on public support of the arts. In this equation, many artists will have to swallow a bitter pill, however. They will have to produce attractive “couch paintings,” because as art sales since the Impressionists (and even with Picasso) have shown, people buy attractive works, not “difficult” art. To make a living and still be an artist, there’s another pill that often has to be swallowed. Individuals who have stable families and live sober lives, sociologically speaking, are more financially stable. On the other hand, those who chose the “bohemian” life tend to have less financial security. So today’s artist has a choice: to become bourgeois, pay the bills, and continue making art, or to be bohemian, celebrate that mystique, but risk a long-term ability to make art.

            This is a “lifestyle” debate not heard at art schools or during the annual NEA contest.