In these difficult financial times for so many of our districts, as our local leaders strive to balance their budgets by cutting services, we would be irresponsible not to invest in the arts.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
That's the reason support for the National Endowment of the Arts is so important. It enables those ventures that aren't viable commercially to be done.
I never want to discourage anyone who chooses the arts as a path because it's hard enough to make it in this business or even get ahead.
I'm a great candidate for why arts funding shouldn't be cut, because I had no experience other than what was at school, I'm from a working-class town, there were no theaters, and the cinema closed when I was a kid. Anything that gave me a voice or a way to express myself I went running headlong toward.
The present government is very insistent that business sponsorship should replace government sponsorship of the arts. Business sponsorship won't happen unless you make tax concessions, which they won't.
I think the problem with the arts in America is how unimportant it seems to be in our educational system.
I want to promote the introduction of art history in primary schools and to convince the general public that, even in a period of economic crisis, arts funding is an absolute necessity at the federal, state, and local levels.
Unfortunately, the boards of art institutions tend to be populated with well-meaning supporters of the arts who often lack any business background or appetite for imposing appropriate discipline.
When I think how art education is eliminated whenever we get a budget crunch in the schools, I have to stand up and say that even when there was dire poverty ten blocks away from Tiffany Studios in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, there was art and creativity within.
The arts are part of the fiber of American society and should get Federal support.
There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.