As the Internet recently discovered, Mitt Romney has decided that it would be a good idea to eliminate all federal arts funding. When asked in an interview with Fortune Magazine where he would cut to make his budget plan viable, Lil’ Mittens responded:
[F]irst there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs — the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of these things, like those endowment efforts and PBS I very much appreciate and like what they do in many cases, but I just think they have to stand on their own rather than receiving money borrowed from other countries, as our government does on their behalf.
Perhaps the most prominent federal arts funding organization, The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), has had its tussles with Washington in the past, and conservative politicians often object to certain types of work getting the federal stamp of approval (see Robert Mapplethorpe’s obscenity trial, the NEA 4, and David Wojnarowicz’s getting kicked out of the Smithsonian in 2010). But the government/artist relationship hasn’t always been that way. Read more…
