Stay With the Status Quo for Arts Support, Author Says

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Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding
by Tyler Cowen

Other countries should admire the American way of supporting arts organizations through small direct federal subsidies and public policies that spur charitable giving to arts organizations, writes Tyler Cowen, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va.

Mr. Cowen says there are two prevailing perspectives on arts support: the belief that the National Endowment for the Arts has little purpose, and the belief that arts organizations deserve even more federal subsidies.

European arts policies call for more government money for creative causes than the United States provides, Mr. Cowen writes, but he says research shows that the American system of combining government and private support for cultural institutions produces art that remains competitive around the world.

Mr. Cowen argues, on one hand, that government subsidies for arts programs should not be abolished, but acknowledges, on the other, that the federal budget cannot accommodate increases in spending on such programs. Rather, the current system works, he says, and even helps artists produce some of the best art by any measure.

“The American model encourages artistic creativity, keeps the politicization of art to a minimum, and brings economics and aesthetics into a symbiotic relationship,” he writes.

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, N.J. 08540; (609) 258-5714; fax (609) 258-1335; http://www.pupress.princeton.edu; 206 pages; $27.95; ISBN 0-691-12042-0.