Arts Outposts Stung by Cuts in State Aid

It’s a sad day for Kansas.

And for all rural and avant-garde arts organizations.

Arts Outposts Stung by Cuts in State Aid:

“Financial aid to local arts groups has dropped 42 percent in the last decade, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback vetoed the entire budget for arts grants. Texas cut its aid to the arts by 50 percent. New Jersey cut its budget by 23 percent.”

What does this mean (also from the NYTimes article)?

‘(M)uch of America’s artistic activity does not happen in major recital halls and theaters; instead it occurs in places like Lucas, population 407, where the cultural attractions include S. P. Dinsmoor’s Garden of Eden historic folk art site and where smaller arts organizations are highly dependent on state grants.

“When any form of government funding is cut, the organizations that tend to get hit the most are rural, organizations of color, avant-garde institutions — those that have a harder time raising individual and corporate money,” said Michael M. Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.’

This is a disaster for our American culture. This is why artists in every state need to be organized to sound the alarms when legislators callously disregard the contributions the arts make to both the quality of life of its citizens and the state’s bottom line.

In Massachusetts, every dollar invested via the Massachusetts Cultural Council returns five dollars to the state’s General Fund. Don’t other states know they are robbing their own pockets by killing arts funding?