Philistines and Philanthropists

Last week I learned a lot about arts funding. What we're seeing world wide is a trend in philanthropy that shorts the arts in favor of social and health care causes. What's happening? Why? Who's getting the money we need to fund the music, the theater, the visual arts? Well, if you read the headlines, these endeavors can take care of themselves. High ticket prices, big Broadway hits, record auction prices. So why give scarce dollars to the arts?

Give them, instead, to the needy, the hungry, the homeless, and the ill. But wait, aren't the arts the soul of a nation. And if you don't believe in "soul," how about this: the arts are the basis of all human endeavor, the basis for the will to struggle, to hope, to aspire.

"A true artist reveals the mystical truths" said Bruce Nauman.

The arts express our values, our dreams, our truest ambitions. A healthy artisitic culture means that the society which supports it is healthy - it knows itself and it wants dialog among its citizens.

At this time, without the arts, we would all be nothing more than consumers led around by our noses by commercial interests, with no way to discriminate between beautiful and ugly, or even right and wrong. These things rely on a dialog that exists because of artistic expression.

"Artists are the unelected legislators of our minds." Without them, our expression would quickly disintegrate; we would have no mirror to hold up to ourselves, to see who we are and what we are becoming.