Perspective on American arts policy
Whilst one appreciates that the article by J Dennis Rich (AP216) is “an edited extract” from a paper presented to the Chicago Conference on ‘Creative Entrepreneurship in Cultural Life’, it contains a number of misleading arguments. This may be partly due to his comparing American philanthropy with support for the arts in Europe as a whole, which assumes that the financial systems are similar in Germany, France, Scandinavia, Italy and the United Kingdom. Certainly, the Arts Council of Great Britain never “relieved nor even minimised the pressure on institutions to fundraise”. Nor was there ever any “government power over arts policy”. Thirdly, the relationship between the arts and its audiences is as close as any American organisation relying on the good will of wealthy commercial organisations.
These three principles alone go a long way to undermine the arguments put forward by J Dennis Rich. His opening sentence explains that “in America “we have no cultural policy”, and I should emphasise that in the UK we spent the first exciting decades under a successful Arts Council which had a “policy of response”. Thus, it responded to the demands of creative artists and performers and the demands of audiences. Your Editor has already taken issue under “Last Word” with the paper by J Dennis Rich, but this whole subject also needs to deal with the different taxation systems in each country. No doubt many other readers may want to expand on my response but it behoves ArtsProfessional to ensure that ‘America and the Arts’ is set in proper perspective and does not remain the last word.
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