With Kickstarter, Who Needs the National Endowment for the Arts? | Hacker News Reader

With Kickstarter, Who Needs the National Endowment for the Arts?

theatlantic.com

22 pointsjalanco34 comments

I'm sure this will get down voted but why, in the last 30 years, have we needed the National Endowment for the Arts at all?

Art is massively funded. The Motion Picture Arts, The Musical Arts, The Art of Literature, The Art of Architecture, The Popular Arts (as San Diego calls comics and graphic novels), The Video Game Arts

Kickstarter will help fund more art. That's great. I doubt it will get rid of NEA. The NEA is about funding things nobody wants. If people wanted them they'd already fund them directly.

> The NEA is about funding things nobody wants.

That's an interesting perspective. I see it more as a tragedy of the commons situation. It's possible to make important and influential art which is not commercially viable. NEA is great for funding art that wouldn't look good on a T-Shirt, but is beneficial to the culture as a whole.

Is it?

The majority of art created today isn't founded because it doesn't look good on a T-shirt. It is because it is crap.

And you art doesn't have to fit on a T-shirt to be founded. Stories could be printed in beautiful books, movies and documentaries made available as high quality downloads, paintings as posters, etc.

The only art you couldn't found this way would be art that didn't say anything to anybody. §100/year from 10 thousand people is a pretty good wage. If you can't get 10 thousand people to see something in you art, then it is properly because your art is crap.

Is it?

You equate financial viability with artistic value. But, there was Vincent van Gogh; large swaths of what we consider art today was commissioned by kings and popes and presidents on their dime, not sold or traded; it is virtually impossible, in the Kickstarter model, to fundraise sculptures and installations.

I certainly don't think art needs an erudite committee approving it for 'value' (in a non-financial sense), but neither does it need to be subjected to the tyranny of the majority, lest we want to limit ourselves to bazaar kitsch dolls and whatever else can be easily mass-made and sold. So while Kickstarter can certainly replace entities like NEA for many artists (many projects seem easier, logistically, to fund through KS) I don't know this says NEA is no longer needed.

But that is the key issue, you are not subject to the tyranny of the majority. Your quest is just to find a few people who like your art. The majority can hate it, consider you a witch and attempt to burn you at the stakes.

All of that doesn't matter. Just that a few people like you.

The problem is that the people who would loses out if NEA was closed would lose a lot, whereas those who would benefit would benefit only a little bit.

Art may be massively funded, but I generally evaluate art based on two criteria:

- Skill (how much skill did it take to produce?) - Expressiveness (how well does it convey something or evoke emotions?)

Neither of those criteria will necessarily make something popular, which is why I think a completely crowdsourced approach to funding art may not give us the best results.

Not to say that the NEA is the best solution by any means, but I do think there is some value to funding art that "nobody wants" because that is the same art that has the potential to be priceless in the future.

Additionally, art is very different from business. The quality/originality of the work and its popularity/commercial success are almost completely unrelated. You just have to look at the same industries you pointed out earlier. How many of the works of art those industries produced were made for the purpose of capitalizing on an opportunity to make money? How many were made to be truly expressive of ideas?

There's a difference between getting funding from the NEA for the purpose of pursuing your work and starting a Kickstarter campaign for designing consumables. Yes, artists "make great T-shirts," but how is that the same as receiving a grant to pursue your work?

Let's say I have some large sculpture I'd like to create, but it requires more money than I have. I could find someone privately to fund it (and likely own it when I am finished), I could apply for an NEA grant, or, could I create a Kickstarter project? Maybe, but at that point, it's just a donation service, right?

Related, as far as "art no one wants": can you back up assertions that every dollar the NEA gives out is to hacks that no one cares about?

http://www.nea.gov/grants/recent/12grants/12AAE.php?CAT=Art%...

Certainly we can all find some recipients in that list who think aren't worthy (art is subjective, right?), but no one cares about jazz performances at the Lincoln Center?

> Art is massively funded.

No it's not. Not compared to the military or sports.

> The NEA is about funding things nobody wants.

Really?! There are so many incredible projects funded in my state alone [1]. I find this argument similar to the narrow minded view "What's the point of going into space?".

[1] http://www.nea.gov/grants/recent/12grants/states1/12_states1...

Note that you didn't discuss the fine arts, the one category that actually is heavily funded through grants and sponsors. Free and cheap access to the masters work is about education.

If all art is popularly funded, you'd only get pop.

There are certain types of investments that are very long-term and tend to have high risk. These sort of investments tend to fair poorly in a free market system--markets tend to only look at the short/medium term and shy away from certain kinds of risk.

A perfect parallel is basic research. A significant amount of basic research in a bunch of fields (like cosmology and more abstract mathematics) is done on public funding. Why? It's simple: companies and individuals rarely want to invest in such ventures because there is no guarantee they will be useful in any reasonable time frame. And yet this is doubtless a good investment for the future--we are much better off thanks to mathematical developments that most people would have thought too abstract initially.

If you asked the people on the street to fund research in category theory (before it got all popular :P), nobody would have done it. So basic research is exactly the same--it's funding something nobody wants. And yet it is patently useful.

Basic research is exactly one of the things that I do want even a minimal government to fund. The exact same logic applies to art. After all, I certainly don't know what sort of art will have cultural significance in the future, and don't see any reason to exclusively trust the public at large either--just the same as I don't know what mathematical research will yield useful advancements and wouldn't trust the public there either.

> If all art is popularly funded, you'd only get pop.

I'm going to go ahead and yell, "False!" on this. Music is almost entirely popularly funded (i.e.-no government grants). Pop is not the only music that exists. There are many niches and genres of music, for good reason--there's a lot of money out there. It's not an American election--more than one party can win.

Your other points are moot. Research and art are two very different things. Art is an expression, research is the seeking of knowledge. That knowledge may or may not be valuable to us in the future (and may or may not be worth the cost), but we're willing to take those risks because the reward can be fantastic. Art has its importance, but scientific research has practical and valuable applications, and there lies all the difference.

I cannot think of what art could possibly require a long-term and high-risk investment (long-term being on the order of a decade) that is currently not supported by the private market.

I will make a slightly more controversial claim: With Kickstarter, who needs government granted monopolies for the arts? (ie., copyright)

One should realize that most of the greatest artworks in history were created without the "benefits" of copyright (and in many cases would have required infringing on copyright, writers and painters have borrowed from each others works all through history).

I don't think you can argue that at all. Until very recently (on an historical time scale), mechanical copying wasn't possible at all, so copyright isn't some new thing, practically, it's just that in ye olde days it wasn't a relevant concept because you couldn't copy art - there were no CDs or records, lithography, etc.

If you wanted to hear a Beethoven symphony, you had to find an orchestra that was playing, and travel to see it.

Even duplicating printed work was much more work, since the type would have to be reset by hand.

While the funding model was certainly different, the era was much more different. Using the romantic era or earlier as proof that (in modern society) culture could flourish without copyright is ludicrous.

Your distinction is an important one, but I think it amounts to the same effect in the end.

Back then, you couldn't make money by selling many copies of your art because making copies was too difficult.

Now, you can't make money by selling copies of your art because making copies is too easy.

But in both cases, the effect on the artist is the same: he cannot sell many copies, so he must find other ways. Like concerts and patronage.

Cervantes had to deal with a ripoff of Don Quixote while he was writing the second part of Don Quixote, after publishing part I. It even makes up part of the plot of part II.

Another author published what they claimed to be part II.

It's a different form of IP infringement than simple unauthorized duplication of a work, but it's been around for a long time.

Shakespeare and many others also "stole" from many other authors, both classic and contemporaries.

Art, by its own nature, tends to infringe so called "intellectual property" rules.

From the article: In 2012, Kickstarter has provided over $150 million in arts funding, more than the NEA.

The best part of that is that every drop of that kickstarter money was voluntary. That is to say that the donors gave their money up willfully without the application of compulsive force. The same cannot be said about the NEA.

Regardless, the article hints at the primary problem with the replacement suggestion: this would effectively replace the current, centralized, political decision making with a distributed form of decision making. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Could we please cite some facts in this mounting tirade against public funding of the Arts?

To what extent are facts necessary? Public funding of the arts is in a large part a philosophical issue. Either you believe that it should be done or you don't. That's primarily a question of what you think the role of government should be.

It's only if you agree that public funding of art is a good thing that then facts can come into play. What is the best, most effective way of doing it?

The criteria the NEA uses for funding work is unusually absent from this discussion.

And the comparative question, are differences in the results between kickstarter and the NEA significant? If so, are the NEA's results valuable?

The NEA is a grant-maker. Kickstarter is a platform for a capital campaign. These are two incredibly different types of "unearned income."

I have never seen an organization have a successful annual campaign through something like Kickstarter. Kickstarter itself makes it very clear it is to be used for capital campaigns with very specific purposes.

Take a look at the 2012 NEA grants and think about how many of them would thrive on Kickstarter. The BSO for example, the Tanglewood grant miiiight be able to be funded but the general grant almost certainly would not. These arts organizations are modeled around an in person annual campaign through their development offices, and large-scale grants from charitable foundations (or the NEA). The entire model would break down if all funding came direct from patrons.

Whether or not that model should be broken down and disrupted is a different story, but almost none of the arts organizations that are receiving MAJOR grants from the NEA are set (or may ever be set) to deal with it.

The only problem I have with the NEA is I'm being forced to pay for something I don't want. I don't care if you make a painting of the Virgin Mary out of elephant poo or put Jesus in a jar of your own piss but I do care if I'm forced upon pain of imprisonment to pay for it. I will never understand the "Greater Good" argument and the "Tragedy of the Commons" argument is just stupid in this case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Ofili

EDIT: The Virgin Mary painting was not, according to wiki, paid for by the NEA.

National funding is for things that can't get done by themselves. If kickstarter works for you, you don't need NEA there are plenty of valuable art undertakings that do not have public appeal. that is what the NEA should be doing.

I don't mean this as snark. When it comes to art, if nobody wants it, why is it valuable?

Some aspect of the national zeitgeist wants an egalitarian approach to elitism? Since "elite" artists that only appeal to the very few are seldom market winners, we (politically) recognize they are the "little guy" and desire to given them a hand against the torrent of the commercial art market.

I admit, it all sounds so strange; we tell ourselves that just because we don't admire their product, the problem must be with us, and we can overcome our unworthiness by public support.

Or maybe they just have good lobbyists?

Same reason basic research is mostly funded by the state - there are things that are valuable to a society that no one individual will pay for.

Other than the claim that perhaps radical or unpopular art might inspire further art creation or bring joy to a small group who desire this kind of art, which I suppose has some value, what value does NEA funded art have to society as a whole? I certainly don't know anyone who benefits from it, which makes it nothing at all like research.

You should have just gone with the snark, it would have made your comment less dumbfounding.

It's possible that the art in question is ahead of its time, or expresses radically unpopular ideas.

I'm not saying that a piece of art that no one ever cares about after it's created is valuable, but it's hard to judge the value of art based on current popularity. Plus, the judgement of popularity is influenced by the culture at a given time, and the existence of a given work or works might have a pretty big impact on the course of that culture's evolution -- regardless of its initial ability to gain funding.

There are also the practical difficulties of making sure that the funding request gets in front of the people who'd appreciate the work in question, and that they have the money to be able to afford to donate, and that they're not disinclined from donating for reasons that have nothing to do with the artwork in question (e.g. they think kickstarter is some phishing site, or think there's no point since they can only give a very little bit).

You would have to express an idea that you couldn't get 10 thousand people to support with 100 usd. In the entire world.

That seams a pretty damming statement against your art, from my point of view.

Two words: educational programming.

So, we can't judge art by whether it's popular, we can't judge it by whether it's aesthetic, we can't judge it by X... at what point does the NEA simply become indistinguishable from handing money to whomever it wants for whatever reason it wants as long as the recipient does something or other?

This is the government. Men with guns come and take bits of my life that I have traded for money away to fund this. If you're willing to go to that length, I'd appreciate some sort of metric whereby the NEA can tell whether or not they're even getting anything for their money, let alone whether it's worth it. I know it's really tempting to just deny any metric of worth can be applied to art, but if you nail art down to the point where only .01% of the population can appreciate it and we have to fund it because the plebians won't.... where's the public interest in this?

(Also, I'm not claiming the NEA has no such standards. Actually I quite believe it does, and in the end those standards are what people actually object to. I'm saying that it isn't viable to continuously keep falling back, saying "No, that's not what art is, no, that's not what art is, no, that's not what art is". This is something taxpayers are funding with their sweat and blood... if they aren't getting anything that can even be vaguely defined without someone challenging that vague definition, then it should just be shut down.)

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