In 1940, with France having fallen to the Nazis, England found herself standing alone against Hitler. That was also the year that the British government formed the “Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts,” the forerunner of today’s Arts Council of England. Some were baffled by the timing, but in the face of the war, the Council said, it was essential to show that the government cared about the cultural life of the nation. “This country is supposed to be fighting for civilization,” it added.
High stakes indeed. And for that matter, language quite alien to our contemporary ears. These days, arts organizations shy away from such sweeping pronouncements and seek more practical justifications for their spending.
Using the arts to promote “livability” in our communities is a hot topic; everyone from the NEA chairman on down to local mayors, arts councils, and newspaper columnists are talking about it. Another common argument in support of public funding is that the arts are a good investment—that money a city spends on the arts will eventually come back in greater tax returns. These days one also hears claims that the arts combat poverty, promote child welfare, and confer numerous other social benefits.
At one point or another the Arts Council of England adopted each of these as its legitimization. But there is risk in making such tangential justifications: In the words of Robert Hewison, professor of cultural policy at City University London, the Council eventually found itself “having to meet targets for health, education, employment, and the reduction of crime—not truth, beauty or a sense of the sublime.” That’s a pretty good example of what we condemn as “mission creep” when the Pentagon does it.
Still, the impulse to provide quantifiable results as a means of legitimizing the outlay of public money is understandable for the most part. Citizens want to know that the government isn’t wasting the money we give them.
The problem is that measurable, results-based efficiency is a tricky concept when you’re talking about the arts. There’s a very good reason we go see a play as opposed to watching it on TV, or go hear a symphony instead of listening to it at home, and it has nothing at all to do with practicality. As Hewison puts it, “a symphony played on a synthesizer is not an efficiency gain.”
The importance of the arts does not lie in child welfare, community-building, or economic growth, although they can contribute to all these things. The real value and contribution of the arts “is that they help a society make sense of itself. They generate the symbols and rituals that create a common identity.” That’s pretty well unmeasurable, but crucial nonetheless.
As it turns out, fighting a war–whether against Nazi Germany in the 1940s that sought to destroy “degenerate” like that of Kandinsky, or against ISIS in the second decade of the 21st Century that uses explosives to destroy treasures that are thousands of years old–is a perfect time to reflect on government programs that spend money on the arts. One hopes that the points are obvious. In peacetime, however, such programs may necessitate a more complex argument. In the long run, the way to make them understandable is through better arts education. When the arts disappear from the list of elements we consider fundamental to a good education, the next generation grows up not understanding their importance, let alone why a practical and results-oriented people should want their tax dollars spent in their support.
