The thing for me here is to imagine what a wealthy society ought to do, and post Thatcher and Reagan, it became incredibly hard to imagine ourselves as "wealthy societies", especially when our conception of wealth was filtered through post-Keynesian economics, which somehow imagines simultaneously that wealth grows (e.g., we're not zero-sum) and that we live in perpetual scarcity (e.g., that wealth somehow vanishes a millisecond after it grows). Whereas I think one thing you can say for the postwar boom is that the West broadly speaking thought of itself as wealthy and saw wealth as something that obliged it to a kind of generalized beneficence. In that window, public goods weren't something that the middle-class had to wrench out of the nation-state through some kind of political mobilization, but a general obligation, a rising tide that floated all boats. To me that's still a great vision, and it's especially central to imagining what public funding for the arts could look like--especially to reject what you underscore in this excerpt, that it shouldn't be about selecting for the best of the best or driven by the pursuit of quality.
Here is what President Johnson said, March 10, 1965, that I think underscores what you say:
At the request of the subcommittee chairmen, I have today transmitted the administration's recommendations for a National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities to the Special Subcommittee on Labor of the House of Representatives, and the Special Subcommittee on Arts and Humanities of the Senate.
In the State of the Union address I said, "We must also recognize and encourage those who can be pathfinders for the Nation's imagination and understanding."
These recommendations are designed to secure such recognition and encouragement for those who extend the frontiers of understanding in the arts and in humanistic studies.
The humanities are an effort to explore the nature of man's culture and to deepen understanding of the sources and goals of human activity. Our recommendations recognize this effort as a central part of the American national purpose, and provide modest support to those whose work offers promise of extending the boundaries of understanding.
Pursuit of artistic achievement, and making the fruits of that achievement available to all its people, is also among the hallmarks of a Great Society.
We fully recognize that no government can call artistic excellence into existence. It must flow from the quality of the society and the good fortune of the Nation. Nor should any government seek to restrict the freedom of the artist to pursue his calling in his own way. Freedom is an essential condition for the artist, and in proportion as freedom is diminished so is the prospect of artistic achievement.
But government can seek to create conditions under which the arts can flourish; through recognition of achievements, through helping those who seek to enlarge creative understanding, through increasing the access of our people to the works of our artists, and through recognizing the arts as part of the pursuit of American greatness. That is the goal of this legislation.
In so doing we follow the example of many other nations where government sympathy and support have helped to shape great and influential artistic traditions.
This Congress will consider many programs which will leave an enduring mark on American life. But it may well be that passage of this legislation, modest as it is, will help secure for this Congress a sure and honored place in the story of the advance of our civilization.
There's a counterfactual that I can readily see where LBJ and his advisors had the good sense to wind down their involvement in Vietnam and focused exclusively on the Great Society programs, looking to solidify the U.S. as a successful social democracy.
It's a bit of a tangent, but I want to take this opportunity to mention a political memoir that I found surprisingly interesting -- Jane Alexander's _Command Performance: An Actress in the Theater of Politics)_ ( https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781891620065 )
I found the book interesting for her focus on the concrete bureaucratic and political tasks rather than arguments about ideas, and the book convinced me of the value, both politically and culturally, of having the bulk of NEA funding going to regional arts production as, essentially, a public good.
Yes, I enjoyed that book, though it has been years. A reminder from her to students of administration that, as many college leaders are finding out about now, it can hit the fan, so to speak, when you least expect it, and you better have a clear sense of mission and values ready to present to the public and to elected officials.
That's an interesting approach. I'm less mystical.
To me, art is about ways of seeing, and governments in particular need to explore new ways of seeing as a means of advancing their civilization. The arts are in some ways like mathematics. There is a frontier which is all about new ways of seeing whether it involves aspects of humanity, our artifacts, our means of thought or our comprehension of the universe. There are only a handful of practitioners at the frontier but there are schools around them, and as one moves away from the frontier there are countless others integrated with the quotidian worlds of family, commerce, law, the military, politics and religion.
One of the big differences between our modern societies and more traditional societies is that our societies have to adapt to change or become marginalized. Our technology changes too rapidly for static solutions. Leaving art to the marketplace or to politics is a sure path to stagnation and irrelevance.
The thing for me here is to imagine what a wealthy society ought to do, and post Thatcher and Reagan, it became incredibly hard to imagine ourselves as "wealthy societies", especially when our conception of wealth was filtered through post-Keynesian economics, which somehow imagines simultaneously that wealth grows (e.g., we're not zero-sum) and that we live in perpetual scarcity (e.g., that wealth somehow vanishes a millisecond after it grows). Whereas I think one thing you can say for the postwar boom is that the West broadly speaking thought of itself as wealthy and saw wealth as something that obliged it to a kind of generalized beneficence. In that window, public goods weren't something that the middle-class had to wrench out of the nation-state through some kind of political mobilization, but a general obligation, a rising tide that floated all boats. To me that's still a great vision, and it's especially central to imagining what public funding for the arts could look like--especially to reject what you underscore in this excerpt, that it shouldn't be about selecting for the best of the best or driven by the pursuit of quality.
Here is what President Johnson said, March 10, 1965, that I think underscores what you say:
At the request of the subcommittee chairmen, I have today transmitted the administration's recommendations for a National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities to the Special Subcommittee on Labor of the House of Representatives, and the Special Subcommittee on Arts and Humanities of the Senate.
In the State of the Union address I said, "We must also recognize and encourage those who can be pathfinders for the Nation's imagination and understanding."
These recommendations are designed to secure such recognition and encouragement for those who extend the frontiers of understanding in the arts and in humanistic studies.
The humanities are an effort to explore the nature of man's culture and to deepen understanding of the sources and goals of human activity. Our recommendations recognize this effort as a central part of the American national purpose, and provide modest support to those whose work offers promise of extending the boundaries of understanding.
Pursuit of artistic achievement, and making the fruits of that achievement available to all its people, is also among the hallmarks of a Great Society.
We fully recognize that no government can call artistic excellence into existence. It must flow from the quality of the society and the good fortune of the Nation. Nor should any government seek to restrict the freedom of the artist to pursue his calling in his own way. Freedom is an essential condition for the artist, and in proportion as freedom is diminished so is the prospect of artistic achievement.
But government can seek to create conditions under which the arts can flourish; through recognition of achievements, through helping those who seek to enlarge creative understanding, through increasing the access of our people to the works of our artists, and through recognizing the arts as part of the pursuit of American greatness. That is the goal of this legislation.
In so doing we follow the example of many other nations where government sympathy and support have helped to shape great and influential artistic traditions.
This Congress will consider many programs which will leave an enduring mark on American life. But it may well be that passage of this legislation, modest as it is, will help secure for this Congress a sure and honored place in the story of the advance of our civilization.
There's a counterfactual that I can readily see where LBJ and his advisors had the good sense to wind down their involvement in Vietnam and focused exclusively on the Great Society programs, looking to solidify the U.S. as a successful social democracy.
It's a bit of a tangent, but I want to take this opportunity to mention a political memoir that I found surprisingly interesting -- Jane Alexander's _Command Performance: An Actress in the Theater of Politics)_ ( https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781891620065 )
I found the book interesting for her focus on the concrete bureaucratic and political tasks rather than arguments about ideas, and the book convinced me of the value, both politically and culturally, of having the bulk of NEA funding going to regional arts production as, essentially, a public good.
Yes, I enjoyed that book, though it has been years. A reminder from her to students of administration that, as many college leaders are finding out about now, it can hit the fan, so to speak, when you least expect it, and you better have a clear sense of mission and values ready to present to the public and to elected officials.
That's an interesting approach. I'm less mystical.
To me, art is about ways of seeing, and governments in particular need to explore new ways of seeing as a means of advancing their civilization. The arts are in some ways like mathematics. There is a frontier which is all about new ways of seeing whether it involves aspects of humanity, our artifacts, our means of thought or our comprehension of the universe. There are only a handful of practitioners at the frontier but there are schools around them, and as one moves away from the frontier there are countless others integrated with the quotidian worlds of family, commerce, law, the military, politics and religion.
One of the big differences between our modern societies and more traditional societies is that our societies have to adapt to change or become marginalized. Our technology changes too rapidly for static solutions. Leaving art to the marketplace or to politics is a sure path to stagnation and irrelevance.