The budget request for the National Endowment for the Arts for FY 2008 is roughly $128 million. Additionally, the budget request for the National Endowment for the Humanities is $141 million. Those numbers seem pretty hefty on the surface, but when compared to other expenditures, we do gain some perspective. One item, the new, and very much needed, F-22 Raptor fighter has an additional unit cost of roughly $120 million. When development costs for the aircraft are figured into the cost of the entire fleet, the actual cost of each fighter is over $300 million.
Hello:
Need some information on issues affecting the arts. Go to this link
www.artsjournal.com
and sign up for a daily or weekly e-mail compilation of arts stories published in newspapers worldwide. The site also offers several blogs and is required reading of anyone interested in the largest industry in America.
Doug
Welcome
If you took a look at the group profile, you will find this group was created to start a dialogue on the importance of art to the national identity. As this long campaign season starts, many important issues are vying for space on the agenda. This is one of the most important. If you do not think so, just ask yourself why the right wing has spent so much political capital on marginalizing artists and arts organizations. They marginalize it because it is a threat to their power base. Their power base lives on distortions instead of truth - and art has as its mission a search for the truth.
When culture is not understood, mistakes happen. Mistakes such as the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad. It sent a message that the American occupation did not value the institutions of a people with a rich history. Protecting it would have been simple. It was not an overt ommission, it was simply that the decision makers did not understand the role the arts played in the fabric of a society. It was something that was taken for granted, and something that set the stage for the long and protracted mess which is the Iraq conflict.
I have a belief that funding for artists and arts organizations must be unrestricted. I have worked as an arts administrator with an organization that benefited from governmental support. I would rather free the government of their duty to support culture than run the risk of government approved art. The result can be debated, but it cannot be censored on any level. The threat of censorship is in fact, defacto censorship.
I have a belief in God and was raised in the midwest with Christian values. The God I believe in values creativity as the highest form of human expression. Therefore, my belief in God demands that I value creativity and must strive to understand all forms of expression. It means that I must strive to understand Piss Christ and fight for the right of any artist to enjoy unencumbered creative freedom. My God and my country have, and always will, survive any type of creative expression.
For America, artistic freedom is important to the national identity. More importantly, our national identity is a global identity. So much of the world sees America through the lens of the for-profit media industry. The arts work as an alternative to those views . . . . a more focused lens on what it means to be American. It must be supported by all.
Those are the values I believe in. They may not be yours, but that is what this group is for. There are no absolutes about governmental support of artists or arts organizations, so let's start a discussion on what form that support should take, if any.
