What is public funding of the arts for?

Some Adam Smith as an appetizer…

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident, that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it.

Now to the present. Nashville’s WPLN public radio reports on a dispute at the city’s Metro Arts agency:

The debate can be summed up like this: should Metro Arts focus its grantmaking on individual artists or arts nonprofits? …

Former Executive Director Daniel Singh publicly sided with those who preferred funding individual artists. Compared with arts nonprofits, individuals are less likely to have previously received public funding, and more likely to be people of color. It was part of his larger plan to create a new, antiracist model for arts funding.

“What we know as the arts is a very Eurocentric approach, right, universal neutral, and all of those things are not how the global majority communities practice it, right?” Singh said in an interview with Nashville Public Television. “It’s very place based, it’s based on a practice, it’s for harvest festival, it’s for naming a child, it’s your grandmother’s recipe, it’s your uncle weaving.”

To accomplish his goal, Singh expanded the Thrive program, which funds independent artists and projects.

But doing this meant taking funds away from large, established organizations like the symphony and the Frist Art Museum, which have traditionally gotten the lion’s share of the Metro Arts budget. Some in the arts community felt that was a mistake. Large organizations support smaller ones and hire local artists. Some of the pushback even came from members of Singh’s own staff, including former grants manager Jonathan Saad.

“Is it a better use of funds to take, say, $20,000 and give it directly to an artist, or is it better to take that $20,000 and give it to an organization who is funding 100 artists and serving thousands?” Saad said.

But this is not the right way to frame the question.

Think of something a little more boring: public funding on roads. When the DoT considers various projects it might undertake – upgrade this avenue? Build a new road there? Make these two streets one-way? Put a bike lane here? – they don’t, or certainly shouldn’t, frame the question in terms of which contractors will be able to place bids, or whether they ought to choose transportation policies according to which firms would be most likely to win the contract. Instead, they would think about the outcomes: where would residents most benefit from spending? What projects would keep costs down and most improve transportation outcomes in terms of speed, safety, and environmental concerns?

Does this outcome-based approach to government spending sometimes get corrupted by the interests of contracting firms? Of course it does – nobody who studies US defense policy could ever think otherwise. But at least we recognize it as wrong to allocate our funds on defense in terms of how it benefits Lockheed Martin rather than serving the public interest in national defense.

And so to arts funding through public agencies. The value of public funding of the arts is that more good art is available to the public to contemplate and enjoy. People differ on the specifics: does it matter if the supported art is only enjoyed and contemplated by a small number of people (who might value it very deeply)? Or should the goal be to bring more art that has a wider audience, even if that means the art is not awfully deep? Are there groups of people who have not, as a group, had the same opportunities to experience art as others, and so attention ought to be devoted to them? (Mr. Singh goes off a little bit using the lazy term “Eurocentric” – there might well be minority populations who quite like art forms that have developed through Europe, but have not had a fair go at being included in them).

But it is those specific questions that matter. Whether funds ought to go to individual artists or to nonprofit arts presenters is a question of means, not ends. Once you know what outcomes you want to aim at in terms of art and audience, then you can ask what sort of allocation of funds would best achieve that. It is not about whether individuals or firms are more deserving of arts funding. It is about what outcomes you would get in terms of art.

Cross-posted at Substack: https://michaelrushton.substack.com/

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