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Over the past quarter-century, NEA seed money has been a boon and a blessing to America's myriad cultural outlets. It is easy to think of scores, and possible to find hundreds, of museum exhibitions, dance and drama projects, concerts and arts- education programs of real cultural value that would not have had private underwriting without the spur of public money. Corporations need reassurance and are reluctant to disgorge without it.
Some Republicans argue that since corporate and foundation support for the arts outweighs federal support--$16 to $1--the NEA and NEH would not be missed. This is an illusion. Some American businesses, like Philip Morris, have been very generous in their support of the arts. But this generosity depends on their public relations needs. (If there were no lung cancer or emphysema, the arts would get much less.) Increasingly, these needs are defined as social rather than artistic. Hence the shift, in private philanthropy, to race- and gender-based programs, meant to make art what theatrical director Robert Brustein calls "a conduit for social justice" rather than art as art. As the newsletter Corporate Philanthropy Report recently noted, "We no longer 'support' the arts. We use the arts in innovative ways to support the social causes chosen by our company."
That's exactly what Republican critics accuse the NEA and the NEH of doing. Moreover, if the flat-tax enthusiasts in the G.O.P. have their way, private and corporate arts subsidies--especially gifts to museums--will vanish as tax-deduction inducements evaporate. This will destroy the mechanism that made American museum collections great. There is no sign that anyone in Congress has thought this through. And why? Because frankly, my dear, we don't give a damn.
America's federal stinginess with the arts and humanities does it immense discredit. By contrast, every candidate in the last French election, from the socialist Lionel Jospin to the conservative victor Jacques Chirac, agreed that fully 1% of France's state budget should be set aside for culture. This will cost each taxpayer about $50 a year and is wholly uncontroversial. Nobody complains in Germany either, though federal cultural subsidies cost each taxpayer $38 and city ones even more: Berlin, for instance, will spend 1.1 billion marks ($800 million) in fiscal 1995, 2.6% of its total municipal budget, on art and culture--$225 for each of its 3.5 million residents. Berliners like this. They are proud of it.
Many people do feel they have a right to expect their government to spend some of their tax money in preserving and amplifying their culture and their history, even if this effort works with less than 75% efficiency--which would still be better than the rate of the Pentagon's extravaganza. Some would argue that this is one of the criteria of political enlightenment. Why not in America?