[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 13 (Monday, January 23, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1299-S1302]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL FOUNDATION ON THE ARTS AND THE HUMANITIES
Mr. PELL. Mr. President, this year marks the 30 year anniversary of
the establishment of the National Foundation on the Arts and the
Humanities. In 1965 Senator Jacob Javits and I sponsored this
legislation to foster the development of excellence in American art and
culture. After a long and distinguished history of nurturing the arts
in our Nation, the National Endowment for the Arts has in recent years
become the subject of some controversy concerning the funding of
certain works which many of our citizens consider offensive. In light
of this, I would like to explain why I believe that the National
Endowment for the Arts has been a tremendous boon to our Nation and
should continue as a viable entity for the support of American culture.
Our Nation's Arts Endowment provides critical assistance for cultural
works and presentations in music, theater, literature, dance, design
arts, and folk arts around the country. This year, in my own State of
Rhode Island, the Endowment provided funds to renovate painting and
sculpture facilities in the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of
Design, supported an after-school arts education program for minority
neighborhood youth in the fourth and fifth grades, and funded the
Trinity Repertory Theater, one of the Nation's premier theaters. In
other areas, the NEA funded a Music in our Schools program in
Providence and aided a folk arts apprenticeship program. Without this
funding, Mr. President, many of these programs would simply not exist.
In this context, I ask unanimous consent that these editorials from the
Providence Journal and others from around the country in support of the
National Endowment be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Providence Journal, Jan. 15, 1995]
We Need the NEA
The Newt Congress has cast a cold eye on the National
Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency that provides
grants to arts organizations and individual artists.
As federal budget items go, the NEA is no behemoth. Its
allotment this year is $167.4 million, nearly $3 million less
than the endowment had to work with a year ago, and an annual
outlay of roughly 65 cents for every man, woman and child in
America. (When was the last time you could get into
[[Page S1300]] even a neighborhood puppet show at that
price?) Compared with governments in most Western European
nations, ours expends a pittance on art. And the NEA budget
is dwarfed by the $9 billion Americans give privately to the
arts each year.
Yet despite its modest draw on federal revenues, the NEA
has for some time been a favorite target of some
conservatives, who like to focus on the few projects they
consider obscene, and an offense to family values, while
ignoring the much greater sums that help keep small
orchestras, ballet troupes and less controversial artists
going.
In Rhode Island, $829,700 in NEA money went to 15 artists
and arts groups in the fiscal year that ended last September.
The bulk went to the Rhode Island Council on the Arts, which
distributes support to a variety of projects. Other stipends
went to four individual artists (in visual arts, dance,
literature and translation), and to such groups as the Rhode
Island Philharmonic, Trinity Repertory Theater, RISD, Brown
and the Langston Hughes Center for the Arts.
Massachusetts, during the same cycle, garnered 153 grants
worth $4.9 million.
A legitimate philosophical question lies beneath the often
vituperative attacks on the NEA. That is, should the federal
government play any role at all--however small--in supporting
the arts? In an era of deficits and taxpayer discontent, the
question has new urgency. Certainly no program should be
shielded from a rigorous appraisal of cost-effectiveness; and
all agencies must share in overdue federal fiscal discipline.
In the 1960s, when the NEA was conceived, the rationale
seemed simple. Most popular forms of entertainment (movies;
TV; recordings) paid for themselves. But what about the
artistic and cultural experiences that many people had less
contact with?
Who would make opera accessible to more than just the
wealthy; assure that painters received training and a chance
to paint; and help keep classical musicians playing? The
government saw a role for itself in nourishing work that
might not instantly withstand the judgment of the marketplace
but might enrich culture over time.
Minus certain Cold War distortions, the rationale for
subsidizing the arts was little different from that for
supporting academic and scientific research. Not every
American should have to agree with the worth of each
individual project; it was the idea that the general category
was a good to an advanced society.
But why not imply turn all of this over to the private
sector--nonprofit institutions supported by business and
individuals? First, such institutions are simply not equipped
now to shoulder what for them would be such a heavy transfer
of obligation. Many arts organizations would be left
foundering during the interim. Additionally, federal arts
dollars function as seed money, attracting extra financing
from local governments and the private sector. The federal
imprimatur lends legitimacy, and helps to guide private
involvement. As a result, it is easier for artists and arts
groups to raise the money they need than if they had to
appeal solely to the private sector.
But finally, a federal arts program has important symbolic
value. Merely by existing, it makes a statement about what we
as a nation vlaue--in this case, something beyond getting and
spending. If values truly are the fundamental crisis in this
country, as conservatives suggest, eliminating the NEA would
send exactly the wrong message. Congress should spare it.
____
[From The New York Times, Jan. 13, 1995]
Don't Ax Federal Support for Art
The National Endowment for the Arts, now in its 30th year,
has been a brilliant though sometimes controversial success.
At a modest cost to the taxpayers, $167 million this year, it
has helped channel private donations to an impressive variety
of nonprofit arts institutions across the country.
Institutions report that each dollar granted by the Endowment
generates an average of $11 in matching private funds. As a
result, many more Americans have been able to experience
original art firsthand, and talented artists have been
encouraged to pursue their work.
This is just what the Endowment was created to do. But now,
for a variety of reasons, some conservative Republicans want
to use their new Congressional majorities to cut off funds
for the Endowment and shut it down. They should not be
allowed to succeed.
The Endowment has some devoted conservative Republican
defenders, for example Senators Orrin Hatch and Alan Simpson.
But other conservatives remain ideologically opposed to
public subsidies for the arts. Yet subsidies by governments
and wealthy patrons are an ancient and necessary tradition.
Even artists whose greatness has been acknowledged by
posterity have had to struggle to support themselves during
their lifetimes, particularly if their originality consisted
in challenging received tastes. Enlightened societies all
over the world recognize that there is a clear public
interest in supporting such talents and to sustaining the
traditions represented by an museums, libraries, symphonies
and dance, opera and theatrical companies and making them
available to wider audiences.
This is a wise and historically validated role for
governments. The real risk of government subsidies lies not
in overgenerous use of the taxpayers' money but in the the
potential for political interference or censorship. The
Endowment's designers wisely guarded against this danger by
leaving initial grant-making decisions to panels of people
knowledgeable about the arts. The awards are then subject to
two higher levels of expert review. Most grants are awarded
not to individual artists or productions but to institutions
with a good track record. But a good track record in the arts
includes a willingness to take the occasional risks on a
promising new or controversial talent.
It is these risks that have gotten the Endowment in trouble
with demagogic politicians like Jesse Helms who will seize on
provocative aspects of particular exhibits or performances
put on by institutions receiving some Endowment support to
caricature the whole of the Endowment's work. The most recent
controversy, for example, centered on a bloodied paper towel
flung by a performance artist, Ron Athey, at the Walker Arts
Center in Minneapolis. The Endowment had awarded some
$100,000 to the Walker to help support its entire season. The
Walker in turn awarded about $150 of this money to Mr. Athey.
Not all great art is controversial and not all
controversial art is great. But themes like eroticism,
homosexuality and the provocative use of religious imagery
that so upset the Endowment's critics have been entwined with
great art for centuries. In recent years, the Endowment has
tried to play it safe on these issues to appease its
Congressional critics. But excessive caution shortchanges an
important part of the Endowment's mission.
The zealous and small-minded are always willing to attack
art and artists. But there is no reason to elevate their
attacks to general Government policy. To do so would be a
distortion of the mandate of the November election. To be
blunt about it, prominent New York Republicans with ties to
the city's extraordinary cultural institutions have an
obligation to see that their more rambunctious members of
Congress do not destroy the National Endowment for the Arts.
____
[From the Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 13, 1995]
Maintain Subsidies To Support the Arts.
American voters say they want a leaner, more effective
government. And like most federal programs, the National
Endowment for the Arts could survive with less. But it would
be a mistake to eliminate the NEA and its $167 million
budget.
Attacking the NEA has become good symbolism for political
conservatives. They believe the federal government has no
business subsidizing the arts and they object to the choices
the NEA makes in choosing which artists to subsidize.
We disagree on both counts. In our view, government can
play a legitimate role in subsidizing the arts, and political
disagreement over which artists to subsidize is both
inevitable and worth it.
By any definition, the arts are important to the nation's
quality of life. There is no evidence that self-interested
consumers, corporations and foundations can adequately meet
funding needs.
Since the NEA was founded in 1965, grants have been awarded
to traditional as well as avant-garde artists. These grants
often serve as vital seed money for artists, projects and
arts organizations. For every $1 individual artists and
groups get from the NEA another $11 in private donations is
raised.
The arts also have positive economic impact. Museums, art
galleries and theaters attract tourists and conventions. On
an annual basis, the arts generate $37 billion in revenues,
employ 1.3 million people and pay $3.4 billion in various
taxes.
Eliminating federal subsidies also would cripple state and
local arts programs which get 35 percent of their funds from
the NEA. The Illinois Arts Council for example, will get
$896,000 or 11.7 percent of its $7.6 million budget, from the
NEA.
The world would not come to an end if the NEA were
eliminated. But all that would be satisfied are the political
aims of today's congressional leadership. In the real world,
the federal government is running an annual budget deficit of
$203 billion. Cutting $167 million for the arts would do much
more harm than good.
____
[From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 13, 1995]
Shunning the Yahoo Point of View
(By Raymond Sokolov)
As the new Congress starts to debate whether to zero out
the pitifully small ($176 million) budget of the National
Endowment for the Arts, everyone should take a look at the
section of ``Gulliver's Travels'' where Gulliver visits the
Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. The Houyhnhnms are equine
intellectuals, the Yahoos hairy, uncouth louts in human form.
In our day, while the cultivated Houyhnhnms whinny and prance
in futile protest, we are well on the road to becoming a
nation of Yahoos.
Christina Jeffrey's appointment as historian of the House
of Representatives was a warning. Speaker Gingrich was
rewarding her because in 1993 she had supported his attempt
to keep his course at Georgia's Kennesaw State College alive
while other faculty there were protesting it as improperly
contaminated with politics. But Ms. Jeffrey, an associate
professor of political science, was not just a complaisant
right-winger at a Podunk college. She was already on record
in
[[Page S1301]] 1986 denouncing a federal history program
about genocide because it did not include the Nazi point of
view on the Holocaust. When this statement resurfaced a few
days ago, Speaker Gingrich said he hadn't connected Ms.
Jeffrey with its author because she had used her maiden name
back then (before he met her). So, to stem the tidal wave of
furious public outrage, he up and canned the lady.
This flaplet raises several interesting questions, but the
most interesting is, What kind of intellectual milieu could
bring Speaker Gingrich and Ms. Jeffrey into contact as
historians?
Wishing to believe in the good faith of all parties, I
accept that the speaker did not know about the Nazi memo,
that he agrees with the angry protesters, and that the
intellectual milieu in Georgia where this odd couple found
common cause is exactly the kind of unenlightened backwater
in which the Holocaust can be blithely dismissed by a
professional historian as a subject primarily of interest for
religious discussion (as Ms. Jeffrey argued to the federal
government).
Anyone who thinks that way is an unreconstructed anti-
Semite, of course, but, worse still, such a person has
managed to remain completely untouched by the over-whelming
facts of history as they have been documented, discussed and
accepted by historians and others in the overwhelming
majority of mainstream America and the rest of the world. It
is one thing to hate Jews. Any moral dwarf can do that. But
it takes an especially ignorant and fact-resistant sort of
historian to believe that there is a viable Nazi point of
view on the subject.
But let's stop for a moment and try to take Ms. Jeffrey
seriously. What would the Nazi point of view on the Holocaust
be? Why obviously it would be a positive point of view.
Unlike most of us who think the sadistic incineration of six
million people because they had at least one Jewish
grandparent was among the great crimes of history, the Nazis
believed it was a great and necessary achievement. The Nazi
point of view must have been that annihilating Jews was a
social good for Nazi Germany and the world. And, on
reflection, I agree with Ms. Jeffrey that any good course on
the dynamics of genocide would have to include this point of
view, expressed as vividly as possible with documents and
photographs. This is actually the approach that the Holocaust
Museum on the Mall in Washington takes, and it is an
extremely effective method of discrediting the Nazi point of
view.
The trouble with Ms. Jeffrey's point of view about the Nazi
point of view is that she thinks the Nazi point of view has
real merit worth airing in a classroom. Ms. Jeffrey has
obviously not considered the unusual facts of the Nazi
record, or she wasn't interested in them. She is therefore a
historian outside history. She is a Yahoo.
Does that sound like the harrumph of a member of the
cultural elite? I certainly hope so, because I think that the
Jeffrey affair obliges people committed to the preservation
of our heritage to defend the idea of cultural elitism
against the Yahoos. If we who speak for culture retreat from
the fray now, we really are an effete corps of impudent
snobs, in Spiro Agnew's immortal phrase.
What we should be saying, as the fight for the National
Endowment budgets and their survival begins, is that the arts
are everybody's province, that their health is a matter of
highest national interest.
Speaker Gingrich, no doubt trying to look like a non-Yahoo
in an effort to assume presidential stature, recently
expressed his admiration for the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York and for Atlanta Opera. He should go further, if
he wants to shake off the hairy mantle of Georgia Yahoo. He
should put his (our) money where his mouth is.
Newt, get down and support the arts. Don't zero out the NEA
budget. Increase it manyfold under wise and stringent
supervision, to put our cultural heritage in museums,
libraries and concert halls on a solid footing for the
future. Help America join the rest of the world in making
sure that the treasures of the past--and the arts education
system that makes that possible--will prosper. Otherwise, we
will all be provincial Yahoos with no point of view worth
having.
____
[From the Atlanta Constitution, Jan. 10, 1995]
Making a Case for the Arts
Chairwoman Jane Alexander of the National Endowment for the
Arts believes House Speaker Newt Gingrich is crusading to
abolish her agency--a sandbox for the cultural elite, he
calls it--because he doesn't understand how it works.
And so, much in the same manner as first lady Hillary
Clinton, Alexander has invited the Georgia Republican to a
get-acquainted meeting to answer his questions and, she
hopes, to dispel his misgivings.
The opportunity to enlighten is narrowing. The tentative
date for hearings on reauthorizing the endowment is Jan. 20,
and the 104th Congress is loaded with newcomers eager to cut
government spending who look to Gingrich for guidance.
First, Alexander ought to disabuse Gingrich and his
following of the misconception that a significant blow can be
struck for deficit reduction with the demise of the
endowment. As vital as its support is to needy arts groups,
its budget--$167 million or about one ten-thousandth of all
federal spending in fiscal '94--is minuscule by comparison
with the billions in cuts required to restore fiscal sanity
in Washington.
Second, Alexander needs to counter the fiction that the
endowment is a plaything of the affluent and the avant-garde.
True, some cultural colossi, like New York's Metropolitan
Opera, receive funding from the endowment and have enough
wealthy patrons that they might be weaned without great
sacrifice. True, too, a few experimental artworks funded by
the endowment have turned out to be highly offensive, but the
chances of recurrences should be minimized thanks to new
accountability procedures instituted by Alexander.
The point for Alexander to stress is that if the endowment
were terminated, the real victims would be medium-size and
smaller arts organizations scattered throughout the country,
too little appreciated except in their own back yards. In
Gingrich's bailiwick, that would include Marietta's splendid
Theatre on the Square and by extension a host of Atlanta
assets--the Symphony, the Opera, the Ballet, the Center for
Puppetry Arts, the High Museum, the Alliance Theatre and so
on.
What these institutions have managed to do ought to be
celebrated by the GOP cost-cutters as a triumph of public-
private partnerships--leveraging each dollar of endowment
funding into $11 from private and other public sources. They
are able to attract that support mainly because recognition
by the endowment is widely viewed as a national seal of
artistic merit.
There are other good reasons to save the endowment--its
youth education mission, its anti-crime programs, even the
beneficial economic spinoffs from the arts attractions it
supports. But the clincher ought to focus on this
generation's legacy to posterity.
John Boehner of Ohio, chairman of the House GOP conference,
opposes the endowment because he calls it ``living high off
the hog and passing on the bills to our kids and grandkids.''
But what kind of country will our kids and grandkids inherit
if the quality of our serious music, art and drama is
diminished and concert halls, theaters and galleries go dark
for want of the endowment's precious seed money?
No one disputes that the endowment must maximize its
efficiency. But above all, the NEA deserves to survive.
____
[From the Washington Edition--Los Angeles Times, Jan. 11, 1995]
GOP Has a Song for NEA: Taps--Some Congressional Republicans Seek To
Abolish Federal Arts Endowment
What kind of art should our hard-earned tax dollars go to
support, traditional American folk art or sexually explicit
avant-garde art? ``Neither,'' the new Republican majority in
the House seems poised to answer. That's a shame.
Two years ago, the arts-funding question was shaped by the
scandal of Andres Serrano's ``Piss Christ,'' Robert
Mapplethorpe's homoerotic photographs and Karen Finley's nude
performance art, all of which had enjoyed some degree of
support from the National Endowment for the Arts. But even
though the Supreme Court struck down a ``decency clause''
that the NEA imposed under pressure, the entire controversy
subsided as the federal agency, under the leadership of Jane
Alexander, simply exercised better discretion in selecting
artworks to endow.
This year, however, the philosophical ground has shifted.
The House Republican leadership wants to abolish the NEA on
principle. Its claim, a familiar conservative one, is that,
in the words of House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.),
``there is no constitutional authority for this agency to
exist.'' This year, as a result, federal funding for all art
is in equal jeopardy, including funding for such mainstream,
old-fashioned arts festivals as ``Masters of the Folk
Violin'' and ``Masters of the Steel String Guitar,'' both
sponsored by the National Council for Traditional Arts.
Plain-folks art does not cost as much money as fancy-folks
art. Putting together an evening of ``Sacred Harp Singing,''
another NCTA effort, or the annual ``Cowboy Poetry
Gathering'' does not cost as much as mounting a great
classical ballet. But it doesn't come free, either, and the
NEA has spent much of its modest appropriation as seed money:
small matching grants and other sensible efforts to help
groups like the NCTA, Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music
and Los Angeles' Craft and Folk Art Museum find their way to
private support.
The argument that there is no constitutional authority for
an educational agency such as the NEA rests on the truth that
the Constitution makes no provision for public education of
any kind. If from that fact we must infer that there can be
no funding for an arts endowment, then there can also be none
for a National Endowment for the Humanities, a National
Science Foundation or any other federal initiative in higher
education.
Armey and the Republican majority can argue against funding
the NEA even if the constitutional authority for the agency
exists. But if and when they do so, we hope they will not
pretend that only a wealthy elite has been served by the NEA,
for the opposite is the case. Through the NEA, the spirits of
millions of ordinary Americans have been lifted through the
traditional craft, song and story of their native land. Those
Americans will be spiritually poorer, and the American
tradition weaker, if the
[[Page S1302]] budget line of the NEA is spitefully reduced
to zero.
____
[From the Boston Globe, Dec. 17, 1994]
America's Art and Soul
Conservatives looking for Government fat to trim say they
can't wait to take a cleaver to the National Endowment for
the Arts--That naughty, left-wing frill in the federal
budget. They should look and think before they chop, because
the NEA is hardly a luxury. It's American bedrock, as solid
as the summer concerts on the town green, or dance programs
at the local high school, or the puppet shows at the
community center.
While the NEA has hit the headlines for controversies, most
notably the funding for photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, the
endowment's primary business is supporting family-oriented
entertainment, about which it has received little publicity
since it was founded in 1965.
In Boston the NEA money goes to such places as the Handel
and Haydn Society, the Berklee College of Music, the
Huntington Theater Company, the Boston Ballet, the Chinese
Culture Institute, the Boston Center for the Arts and Boston
Dance Umbrella, to name a few. The list reflects a national
portrait of community involvement and grass-roots culture
that is as vitial to a country's strength as the defense
budget or a jobs program.
The NEA's budget is $167 million--approximately 65 cents
for every American. This investment provides 5,000 grants,
which put up seed money to be matched by local funding. It
also stimulates the economy, for the arts put 3.2 million
people to work and provide $3.4 billion in federal income
taxes. According to the NEA one study showed that the arts
generated $37 billion to local businesses around the country.
A wise investment, not only for the psyche but also for the
bottom line. Members of Congress eager to wield the axe
should consider the real work and economics of the NEA rather
than the aberrations that have made news. Since 1965 it has
provided 11,000 individual artists with fellowships--42
Pulitzer Prize winners, 47 MacArthur grant recipients and 28
National Book Awards authors. The grants came to people as
they were struggling to create their art. A country that
fails to encourage this loses its genius and its soul.
Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I fully understand that many Americans are
troubled when they hear of works distasteful to them that are funded in
part with their tax dollars. Nevertheless, while the Endowment has
awarded well over 100,000 grants, fewer than 40 have resulted in any
controversy whatsoever--a success rate of 99.96 percent. Over the last
year Chairman Jane Alexander has instituted a series of most valuable
changes in the agency's procedures. The agency will no longer accept
applications from organizations, other than the State arts councils,
which subgrant Endowment funds out to other projects. In addition, the
Endowment will now require that progress reports be submitted before
the release of the final third of a grant award. Permission from the
agency will be necessary before a grantee can modify its activities
from those approved by the Endowment. These changes give the chairman
greater oversight over Endowment grants and I believe they will go a
long way toward addressing the concerns of many of our citizens.
Chairman Jane Alexander has increased the Endowment's focus on rural
communities and the inner cities. The Underserved Communities Program
grants $8.7 million specifically to broaden public access to the arts.
Even the very limited funds appropriated for the Endowment help keep
ticket prices reasonable, thus enabling lower income citizens, young
people, the elderly, and the disabled to gain access to our common
culture.
Nothing could be further from the truth than the suggestion that
support for the arts provided by the National Endowment constitutes a
subsidy for the wealthy. One of the primary missions of the Arts
Endowment has been to encourage the spread of American culture beyond
those individuals, communities, and regions affluent enough to afford
it on their own. Uncharacteristically among Federal programs, Endowment
dollars multiply and foster national support for the arts. Yearly
Endowment grants draw matching grants of approximately $1.4 billion
from private, State, and local patrons. Thus, before the National
Endowment for the Arts came into existence, there were only 22
professional theaters in the entire country and 1 million people
attended each year. Today, our Nation boasts 420 and 55 million attend.
There were 58 orchestras before the agency, today, there are over a
1,000. Fifteen million more Americans attend symphony performances each
year.
I think it is rather unfair to our citizens for some individuals to
assert that only wealthy Americans are interested in the development of
the arts. I firmly believe and the evidence supports the fact that
Americans from every walk of life, from every economic level, strongly
desire and seek access to cultural events in their communities for
themselves and for their children. The National Endowment for the Arts
is a testament to the continuing development of our unique culture, to
our enduring faith in our own creativity and to our world leadership in
artistic achievement.
From an economic point of view, the dollars sent by the Arts
Endowment to communities around the Nation have been an extraordinarily
successful investment. For every dollar the Endowment invests, there is
created a tenfold return in jobs, services, and contracts. The arts
fostered by the National Endowment encourage national and international
tourism, attract and retain businesses in our communities,
stimulate real estate development, increase production of exportable
copyrighted materials and contribute to the tax base. Governors and
mayors from around the country can attest to the manner in which
Endowment-supported projects have breathed new life into the downtown
areas of their towns and cities. New businesses and tourists congregate
in those areas which have a developed cultural life. San Antonio, TX;
Cleveland, OH; Greenville, MS; Oklahoma City, OK; and Birmingham, AL
are among the cities whose studies have shown the enormous economic
contribution of the arts.
Mr. President, every parent knows that the arts are crucial in our
school curricula because they teach young people creativity, increase
self-discipline, and are a critical means of passing on an
understanding of American culture and civilization to the next
generation. Study of even a single artistic discipline is of immense
value to a child, who may go on to become an avid amateur or patron.
Last year, the Arts in Education Program distributed millions of
dollars in partnership grants to the States to pay for artist
residencies in schools and art teacher training.
I am most gratified that Chairman Kassebaum and Chairman Jeffords
will be holding hearings over the next few weeks on authorization of
the Endowments. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to
share with those of us on the committee their concerns and ideas so
that we can work together to shape the Endowment's future role in our
society as effectively as possible. This tiny investment in our
Nation's culture makes a statement to ourselves and to the world that
we view the development of American culture and its availability to our
citizens as of significant importance. We must not become the only
Western industrialized nation to declare that our Government cares
nothing for the development of our culture. National support for the
arts fosters the creation of community--locally and on the national
level. Regardless of our differences of wealth, race, religion, and
political belief, our cultural development binds us together, develops
our character as Americans, and establishes our common heritage. As
President John F. Kennedy once said:
Art and the encouragement of art is political in the most
profound sense, not as a weapon in the struggle, but as an
instrument of understanding the futility of the struggle
between those who share man's faith. Aeschylus and Plato are
remembered today long after the triumphs of imperial Athens
are gone. I am certain that after the dust of centuries has
passed over our cities, we too will be remembered not for
victories or defeats in battle or politics, but for our
contributions to the human spirit.
____________________