George Will on the NEA
Topics: FreeSpeech, Subsidy
23 Jul 1993
From:
>From this morning's editorial by George Will:
Van Gogh painted witout a subsidy
from the Dutch government. Today that
government, like ours, has discovered
the pork potential of handouts for the
arts "community," as that lobby calls it-
self. In The Culture of Complaint, the art
critic Robert Hughes says of the art sub-
sidized in the Netherlands: "So there it
all sits, democratic, non-hierarchical,
non-elitist, non-sexist, unsalable and, to
the great regret of the Dutch govern-
ment, only partially biodegradable"
[...]
Anyway, the exhibit, which features
such "abject materials" as dead ani-
mals, menstrual blood and rotten food,
includes a three-foot-high mound of syn-
thetic excrement, framed samples of an
infant's fecal stains,
[paid for by the U.S. taxpayers]
[...]
It is peculiar but true that many
people who preen about their love---
expressed in expenditures of other
people's money--- for the arts seem
to regard the arts as akin to say, soy-
beans: Subsidize them and they will
flourish.
Indeed it willl, with the help of seman-
tic fiat: Anything funded by an NEA
grant is, by definition, art.
Art, perhaps, but alas only partially
degradable.
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