Why public funding for the arts?

A personal view

I wrote a book looking at how different ways of moral and political theorizing drew different conclusions regarding whether the state should, or should not, subsidize the arts. At the very end of the book I give something of a personal view. There is a review circulating that is terribly confused about this (I won’t link - I read it so you don’t have to), and so I thought it would be worthwhile to just put out there what I wrote in this short conclusion, edited for brevity.

First, to make a claim for public funding for the arts it is necessary, as it was for Keynes, to assert there is an intrinsic value to the appreciation of art. Sociologists and economists who study cultural goods in society generally, as an aspect of their methods, do not make judgements over people’s cultural preferences. The economist takes consumer preferences, not only for private goods but also over public goods and externalities, as data, imposing no evaluation over whether an individual is interested or relatively uninterested in aesthetic contemplation, or, if they are interested, as to whether they have directed their contemplation to works that are worthy of such contemplation. Through the economists’ method, public funding is warranted only for those public goods or externalities that are valued (in terms of their benefits being greater than their costs) by the general public. It is conceptually possible to fund the arts this way, though it will have the practical difficulty of trying to discover precisely what those consumer valuations of non-market goods are, and whether it is worth the process at all regarding genres of art that are only loved by a minority. That this method has never been the basis of a public arts funding system is telling. … Public funding for the arts requires a turn away from economists’ consumer sovereignty, and contractarian state strict neutrality. …

One can insist on a neutral state regarding the good, but it is not how the Arts Council (and all the subsequent arts councils) were founded, and the rationale for public spending on the arts quickly withers without the guiding assumption that there is something intrinsically good in appreciating beauty and the arts (these not being the only intrinsic goods) and that people are better off with encouragement and subsidy that connects them to the arts. Further, the point of arts funding is to promote the intrinsic value of aesthetic appreciation, which means that there must be judgments in the funding body as to what artists and presenters rise to the level of artistic excellence where such appreciation is warranted. It is not simply a matter of “more art”, but art that enhances people’s well-being beyond the cultural goods that are easily and cheaply obtained in commercial markets.

…Our cultural lives are not a function of the sheer number of artists, and the quality of art depends not upon sheer volume, but on the ability of great artists to connect with, and move, those people who form her audience. If quantity were all that mattered, we would hardly need public funding of the arts; we are overwhelmed with cultural options without any arts council grants. The goal is something different – a capacity for engagement – that requires something more of the public funding scheme than simply increasing the number of books published in a year, or the number of songs uploaded to Spotify. …

Second, caution must be exercised in any motives for public funding of the arts that go beyond the intrinsic good of aesthetic engagement.  …

If the decision has been made to provide state subsidies to the arts, the immediate question is: what sort of art? How will allocation decisions be made, whether the decision is made by an arm’s length arts council, or more directly through a Minister of Culture? Artists, and arts presenting organizations, will naturally want to know the criteria used in funding decisions, and to at least some degree will be influenced by them. When the funding criteria are determined, that is exactly what the funders hope for: “we are going to reward this sort of thing, in the hopes you will do more of it.” 

If it is made clear in the criteria for funding that non-arts, instrumental benefits are the justification for the subsidy, perhaps because there is a perceived positive externality through the arts for “community development”, or “national unity”, or for political messaging of a particular type (though careful not to offend community standards), or for increasing “arts participation,” then arts organizations and artists will respond. That is the point.   

But the pursuit of any of these goals distracts artists from focusing on their art as art. And that is a genuine loss. It is not that community development, or people feeling a sense of national unity, are bad things. But they are being achieved at a cost. The effects of artists pursuing these “instrumental goals” might in fact have very minimal impact on their targets, but we will have lost what would have been the outcome of the artist’s pursuit of her artistic goals and vision. There are other policies that can contribute to community development, or better public health outcomes – and if advocates for public arts spending base their argument on instrumental benefits, it is only natural that the government will ask whether there are more effective means of achieving those benefits other than through the arts – but there is no substitute for art proper. …

In any government program involving a small amount of funds, and that characterizes arts funding, it makes sense to ask where those funds could have the most impact, where they could do the most good, in ways that other programs could not do better. Lowering inequalities between people is a very worthy goal, but there is not much that a public arts budget will be able to do about that, relative to simple redistribution of income. The same is true for improvements in public health, and for the economic prospects of a region. There are other types of infrastructure and spending that can be activated that more directly targets the problem to be solved. What arts funding can do is affect the arts – encouraging artists and presenters to produce great work, and presenting it to audiences. If one is convinced that there is a moral foundation for public funding for the arts, and is willing to allow the state some leeway to encourage our having a richer cultural life, then the focus is best place on the art itself. 

That’s it. I don’t see this as a radically conservative position, nor one that takes an “economistic” approach, or that insists De gustibus non est disputandum; quite the opposite. But there you have it.