Attention Washington: Show us the money

The Washington Monument is pretty tall--555 feet and 5.125 inches to be exact. If that monstrous obelisk symbolized the federal budget, then less than half of a blade of grass would represent how much is currently allocated to the National Endowment for the Arts. Ironic, considering Washington himself repeatedly stressed the importance of arts support in a democracy. He once eloquently declared, "To promote literature in this rising empire, and to encourage the arts, have ever been amongst the warmest wishes of my heart." Unfortunately, that warm wish was never translated into legislation, and today the federal government only tosses a few pennies in the direction of NEA arts support each year--40 cents per capita to be exact.

President Lyndon Johnson created the NEA in 1965, arguing that direct government arts support should be an integral component of national ideology. Under the leadership of chair Nancy Hanks, who graduated from Duke in 1949, the NEA grew exponentially and experienced the largest budget increases in its history. But these glory years of the NEA would soon come to a screeching halt. The agency came under fire in the early 1990s when it funded several controversial artists and exhibitions.

What followed was a series of passionate debates fueled by the fervor of the notorious Senator Jesse Helms who argued that the NEA should be annihilated, labeling the art as immoral and blasphemous. In 1995, funding was cut almost in half and the NEA was banned from funding any controversial or "obscene" art.

Arts organizations were financially devastated and began to rely more on state and local funding. Yet in the wake of economic recession and September 11, state funding has been cut by 40 percent since 2001. Last summer, the California Arts Council was threatened with complete elimination. Determined arts advocates ultimately saved the council, but the budget was slashed 75 percent and eradicated nearly all of the existing grants to community arts organizations. The North Carolina Arts Council also suffered from these cuts with a $3 million decline over the past three years.

At a moment when local and state budgets are rapidly disappearing, it is of extreme importance that the federal government increases the NEA budget to account for this loss. Despite President Bush's recently proposed an $18 million increase to the NEA, the majority of Americans think that the NEA is over-funded and unnecessary. But let us take pause for a moment and compare what we consider excessive to European norms. The current NEA budget is $121 million, still below its 1979 total. The current arts and cultural budget of the city of Berlin is $600 million. Including state and local budgets, the United States spends about $5 annually per capita. Germany spends almost $100 per capita, and France comes in with a lofty $70 per capita. The state of arts funding in this country has nothing to do with federal deficit concerns; it has everything to do with priority. Artists are supposed to be starving... aren't they?