|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Introduction: Does Public Funding Require Funding of All Art?
| Article
# : |
20071 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1992 |
347 Words |
| Author
: |
Editor
|
The following point/counterpoint presents two sides on the noisy and increasingly intemperate public controversy over public funding of the arts.
John Frohnmayer, the recently dismissed chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, argues that government should fund the arts, and that it should even fund art that some people find "dangerous, radical, blasphemous, or crude." Frohnmayer bases his argument on the democracy and the First Amendment. If the state funds any art, then it must provide a level playing field, he says, and fund all. Moreover, he maintains, the state should fund art, so this means that citizens can be compelled to pay for thing they dislike.
Morton Kaplan, the publisher of THE WORLD & I, argues that governmental arts-funding agencies can and should discriminate against some claimants. He begins by responding to arguments put forth by Kathleen Sullivan, a law professor at Harvard, in a New York Times op-ed piece [May 18, 1990].
Sullivan argued an analogy between funding or outlawing political expression and funding or outlawing art; she claimed that to make something possible is not to condone it, and she stated that any prior restraints against an artist producing obscenity with his grant constitutes an improper chilling effect. The only control the government may exercise, she stated, was to hold recipients to accountability for using the money for its stated purpose.
Kaplan argues that the analogy between funding political expression and art is a bad one. Public policy arguments would exclude equal treatment of some
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
