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P: OK, last class we were talking about government support for the arts. Who can sum up some of the main points?
S1: Well, I guess there wasn’t any really offical support for the arts until the 20th century. But the first attempt the United States made to, government support the arts, was Federal Art Project.
P: Right, so what can you say about the project?
S1: It was starting during the despression in the 1930s, to employee the out of work artists.
P: So was it successful?
S2: Yeah, it was successful. I mean, for one thing, the project established a lot of like community art centers, and galleries in places like rural areas where people hadn’t really access to the arts.
S1: Didn’t the government end up wasting a lot of money for art that wasn’t even very good?
P: Some people might say that. But was the primary objective of Federal Art Project to provide jobs?
S1: That’s ture, I mean it did provide jobs for thousand of unemployed artists.
P: Right. But then when the United States became involved the WWII, umemployment was down, it seems that these programs weren’t really necessary any longer.
So, moving on. We don’t actually see any real government involvement in the art again until the early 1960s when President K and other politicians started to push for major funding to support and promoted the arts. It was felt by a number politicians that the government had the responsibility to support the arts as sort of the soul or the spirit of the country. The idea was there be a federal subsidy financial assistance to artist and artistic or culture institution. For just those reasons in 1965, the national endowment for the arts was created. So it was through the NEA, the national endowment for the arts, the arts would develop, would be promoted throughout the nation. And then individual states throughout the country started to estabilish their own state arts councils to help support their arts. There was a kind of culture explosion. And by the mid 1970s, by 1974 I think, all 50 states have their own arts agencies, their own state arts councils that work with the federal government with corporations, artist, performers, you name it.
S1: Did you just say corporations? How are they involved?
P: You see, corporations aren’t always altruistic. They might not support the arts unless the government made it attactive for them to do so, by offering corporations tax incentives to support the arts, that is, by letting corporation pay less in taxes if they were patrons of the arts. The K center in Washington DC, you may have been there, or Lincon Center in New York, both of these were built with substantial financial support from corporations. And the K and L centers aren’t the only examples. Many of the culture establishments in the United States will have a plague somewhere acknowledging the support - money they received from whatever corporation.
S2: But aren’t there a lot of people who don’t think it’s the government’s role to support the arts?
P: As a matter of fact a lot of politicians who didn’t believe in government support for the arts, they want to do away with agency entirely, for that very reason, to get rid of governmental support. But they only succeed in taking away about half the annual bedget. And as far as the public goes, they are as about many individuals who disagree with the government supports as they are those who agree. In fact, with artists in paticular, you have lots of artists who support and who have benefit from this agency. Although it seems that just as many artists oppose government agency being involved in the arts for many different reasons like they don’t want the government to control what they create. In other words, the arguement both for and against the government funding of the arts are as many and as varied as individual styles that artists hold them.