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Adil Sayeed's avatar

I had thought the expression "will it play in Peoria?" Was from politics by way of market-testing maybe. But, it turns out to go back to vaudeville days. If an act was successful in Peoria, the act could make it anywhere was the meaning. Peoria was a riverboat town famous for taverns and other establishments of ill repute. Source: Wikipedia. So, it was certainly possible to imagine great popular culture at least coming from government funding of Peoria theatre in those days had there been government funding of vaudeville. I haven,t kept up. NEA is on elon- Vivek chopping block? Will any Republican Congress member speak up? Or will funding of big city organizations take brunt of cuts?

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Theodore Whitfield's avatar

I think the issue here is: what is the purpose of arts funding? If it's to produce the greatest art, then sure, just fund the "best" institutions, and hope that they create great art, with the understanding that only a small fraction of the country will have access to that. On the other hand, if the purpose of the arts funding is to bring the arts to all citizens, then it *does* make sense to provide funds to small groups that might not be producing the highest-quality creations. If Peoria has a small theater company that can't compete with the best of New York or Chicago, well, there are still a lot of taxpayers in Peoria -- don't they deserve some arts funding as well?

The real problem with funding "elite" cultural institutions is that the money often results in insulating the management from their bad decisions, so they can develop weird unappealing productions without having to worry about public pushback. Also, there is a vast oversupply of artists, and so the theater company in Peoria might actually be pretty good, so perhaps sending tax dollars to them might not be so futile as you might think at first.

Ultimately, the real issue is why we engage with arts funding at all. Taylor Swift seems to be connecting with a lot more fans than any symphony orchestra, and as far as I know she doesn't get any federal arts funding.

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