The new Arts Council funding levels in England, earmarked for 2005-2006, total $639 million. The current NEA budget, pending Senate approval: $126 million. America is a rather larger country than England. Why does it think so much less of itself as a cultural entity?
Playwright Arthur Miller's early career involved a stint as a Works Progress Administration-funded writer in the waning Depression years. Then as now, for practical and philosophical reasons, he believes in his government spending seed money for the arts, and for artists.
"When the cannons have stopped firing, and the great victories of finance are reduced to surmise and are long forgotten," Miller said recently, accepting an award, "it is the art of the people that will confront future generations."
"The arts can do more to sustain the peace than all the wars, the armaments and the threats and the warnings of the politicians."