Who Should Pay for the Arts in America?

ATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By Any Hortwitz

At 50, the National Endowment for the Arts is still fighting to make the performing arts available to everyone, while the influence of wealthy donors increasingly tilts the balance. Half a century later, the ethos upon which the NEA was founded—inclusion and community—has been eroded by consistent political attack. As the NEA’s budget has been slashed, private donors and foundations have jumped in to fill the gap, but the institutions they support, and that receive the bulk of arts funding in this country, aren’t reaching the people the NEA was founded to help serve. The arts aren’t dead, but the system by which they are funded is increasingly becoming as unequal as America itself. [link]