Island Voices
State help for the arts is critical
By David C. Farmer
Executive director, State Foundation on Culture and the Arts
Voices at the Legislature are asking new questions this session as they debate the funding for a State Art Museum: Why should government support the arts at all? Can't the private sector do the job better?
History teaches us the vital role of government as a patron for the arts, East and West: from the monuments of the cultures of the ancient world, to the medieval and Renaissance splendor created by a spiritually and worldly powerful Roman Catholic Church or by the successive Chinese dynasties.
In our particular democratic national life, government has played another important and unique function: enhanced access to contemporary and traditional arts and artists. When the job has been left to the private sector, all too often it has resulted in either neglect, crowding out by inaccessible empire arts, or products that pander to the baser tastes of humanity, disguised as popular entertainment.
In 1965, our Legislature led the nation in creating the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts as the official service and grants-making agency for the arts. We again served as a national model with the creation of the Art in Public Places program in 1967 that has built a comprehensive collection of the best of our local artists' work for the past 30-plus years.
In the 1990s, the foundation broadened its role as an active supporter and promoter of the arts in community life and arts education, a role it continues to provide despite suffering an 80 percent cut in its state-funding base since 1994.
The foundation is funded in part by state funds but also receives substantial funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency created in 1965 as a legacy of President Kennedy's vision. With these funds, the foundation provides financial support in the form of grants for eligible arts programs and individual artists, contemporary and traditional.
To serve as a catalyst for arts development at the local level, the foundation also fosters networks of local leaders, artists of all disciplines, arts volunteers and patrons; provides training in arts management, arts education planning, arts facilities planning, and community-wide cultural planning; and promotes broad-based public awareness of the importance of the arts in education and community life.
As with quality visitor destinations worldwide, our arts also attract visitors who are more likely to return, thanks to a strong, positive image of the diversity of our artistic and cultural resources.
