The Guthrie Theater had to cancel its entire Spring and Summer run of
performances because of the deadliest virus known to mankind. They need
help to keep the doors open. Their state grants and corporate sponsors
aren’t enough.Won’t you considering digging deep to support the Arts?
Um…
Well…
No.
Joe Doakes
Hard pass.
Same with you, NPR.
Simple question: if we are expected to support the arts, shouldn’t the arts be expected to support us?
It has been decades since that was the case.
When we talk about “the Arts,” we are talking about a very few people — maybe a few dozen — who are active members of boards of private foundations and public agencies. They control the money spigots.
In popular, for-profit entertainment, like film distributors and publishing houses, a few people make all of the decisions about what shall and shall not be funded. The result is that the arts have become the propaganda arm of the upper bourgeois.
Art has always depended upon wealthy patrons. Wealthy nobles in olden days loved having their likenesses painted into scenes of the Nativity, or the life of Christ, and tried to outdo each other by commissioning work from the latest “hot” sculptor. It was all patronage for the privileged, and the masses were just supposed to ooh and ahhh.