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times more per capita on the arts than the American government.
When the NEA takes a 50 percent budget cut-a cut which is pro–
portionately greater than for any other agency - the principle of the
arts as an integral part of the public good, never securely grounded
in America to begin with , looks decidedly shaky.
It's not just a question of finding alternative money for the arts.
Despite its woes , the American economy contains more sources of
sponsorship and philanthropy than does Great Britain's. But, with–
out significant "pump priming" of federal funds, the arts lose a vital
sanction and justification . Federal funding has, in fact, never been
more than symbolic, averaging around 5 percent of the subsidy
needs of its clients as against the 50 percent or more provided by
most British and European government grants . Yet, U .S. federal
funding has been important just for being a symbol of the nation's
belief that the arts matter, a signal to other sectors of the community
with resources to deploy that America's center of authority acknowl–
edges the arts as a public need.
Now that sanction is going to be undermined . The savage per–
centage reduction in the NEA budget symbolically redefines the arts
as a consumer want, a special interest whose enthusiasts can fend for
themselves. Much the same attitudes underlie the pruning of public
broadcasting, and the suggestion that privately purchased cable tele–
vision can make up the deficiency in public provision.
The truly needy will not suffer, say the pundits of the new eco–
nomic order. But when it comes to the arts, who are the truly needy?
We all are, perhaps now more than ever. In times of trouble, as the
British found out during World War II when the foundation of its
Arts Council was laid, people certainly want escape. But they also
want the truth, the deep reality and the fortification that art can
give. "Oh , reason not the need," cries King Lear in the storm. What
he says applies to the need for the arts . It is not blatant, like the need
for health or roads or literacy. It is latent; once awakened, it grows
by what it feeds on.
Perhaps such ideas go against the American grain. America's
ancestors were the Puritans who shut Shakespeare's theatre, and
ancestral Puritan negation runs close beneath contemporary permis–
siveness. America's immense practicality may be uneasy with
nonutilitarian things like the arts , and rushes to turn them into
something that counts , like business or property or social status.
Conversely, the religious , nonconformist side of the American char–
acter, again Puritan and Protestant in origin, is ever ready to make
