ROBERT BRUSTEIN
Cultural Politics and
Coercive Philanthropy
Federal money for artistic projects, always pitifully inadequate in America
by comparison with other civi li zed countries, has been flat or diminishing
since 1980, and the National Endowment for the Arts is now threatened
with extinction every time it spends two hundred dollars on a contro–
versial grant. Increasingly , it is our nonprofit, private cultural institutions,
although staggering under massive deficits and teetering on the edge of
bankruptcy, whi ch are thus being pressed into compensatory service .
More and more, they are being asked to validate themselves not through
their creative contributi ons to civ ili zation but on the basis of their
community services. This condition was accurately predicted by Alexis de
Tocqueville ea rl y in the nineteenth centu ry when he expressed doubts
about the possibility of serious art in the United States: "Democratic
nations," he wrote in
Dell/ocracy ill All/erica,
"will habitually prefer the
useful to the beautiful, and they will require that the beautiful be useful."
Current pressures on the arts to be " usefu l" compel funders to mea–
sure their value by outreach programs, chi ldren 's projects, inner-city au–
dience development, access for the handicapped, artists in schools, etc., in
addition to demanding
proof~
of progress in achieving affirmative action
quotas alllong artistic personnel, board members, and audiences. This so–
cial utilitarian view of culture has sOllle unden iable virtues. Certainl y, few
people of goodwi ll would dispute the artisti c advantages of genuine
multiculturalism or interculturalism in the arts (as opposed to unicultural
programs primarily designed to empower single issue groups) . And there
are unquestionably deep humanitarian impulses governing the new
philanthropy. Given the limited resources avai lable for both socia l and
cultural programs, the civic-minded agencies that disburse grant money
no doubt sin cerely believe that a si n gle doll ar ca n fulfill a double
purpose, just as many contemporary arti sts would prefer their works to
function not only as a form of self-expression but also for the public
good.
Looked at in the long perspective, however, the push to transform
culture into an agency of social welfare is doomed to failure. To de-
Editor's Note: A shortened version of this article appeared in the Op-Ed section
of
Tile New York Times.
