Nick Olson
Dr. Wendy L. Chrisman
Writing and the Arts
5/14/17
Persuasive Research Essay Draft #3
Trump to Dump the Arts:
Art is a commodity that has been valued for thousands of years as a way of life. Art is a commodity that is important to people. Fine artists, illustrators, animators, and other types of artists who go to school, or who are professional artists themselves, express concerns about this issue because it is their future. The decision to cut funding for the arts affects the current generation of creative thinkers and future ones. This is a national problem in the United States, with politicians, including the president Donald Trump, taking steps to defund art. Currently, if nothing is done about where money in the government is dispersed, then many schools will miss out on opportunities that will affect many future jobs.
Art is something that people all over the world have used to express themselves, and to boost their creativity. The ability to create artwork is one to marvel about. Imagine that funding for the arts were cut. This is the reality that our culture faces because of the way that things may change with the education system, and with the decisions of our new president, Donald Trump. Art has instead been something that has helped the economy and cultures around the world by creating diversity and innovation, which makes people interested to travel and move around the world. Cutting down on the commodity of art won’t help our culture, it will make it worse. This will only make any country, like the United States, less interesting and well-rounded, because art it isn’t valued as much anymore as a commodity. The NEH notes that its relative agency, The National Endowment for Humanities “funds programs for public television, makes grants to museums for exhibits and the preservation of art and artifacts, and supports scholarship on the humanities and history” (“How the United States Funds the Arts” 11). Defunding the arts would affect our culture, learning for schools, and people in general if these facilities were closed and other arts-related agencies were lost.
It is funny how Donald Trump wants to cut funding for the Arts. He has a pretty nice art collection for someone who has such a disfavor for the NEH and NEH. The discussion of his art collection is ample in an article from the Vanity Fair titled: DONALD TRUMP DOESN’T WANT ME TO TELL YOU THIS, BUT… Author Mark Bowden states: “I spent a long, awkward weekend with Donald Trump in November 1996, an experience I feel confident neither of us would like to repeat.” Many others would probably feel this same way. Bowden goes on to state:
He showed off the gilded interior of his plan—calling me over to inspect a Renoir on its walls, beckoning me to lean in closely to see . . . what? The luminosity of the brush strokes? The masterly use of color? No. The signature. “Worth 10 million,” he told me (Bowden, Vanity Fair).
Now isn’t it crazy to think that someone who once spent $10 million dollars on a painting would want to eliminate none other than the NEA and NEH?
The Federal Government of the United States of America provides funds for the National Endowment of the Arts. The amount of money that this organization receives from the government is very small, but very important. The Government is very powerful and has an impact on everyone because of the decisions that it makes. This agency is independent from the government and funded privately, either by charitable donations from wealthy people or by the states. The NEA is the only agency in the government that helps foster the arts. They also help communities around the country. According to the NEA in: How the United States Funds the Arts, the NEA was
Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the NEA is the designated arts organization of the U.S. government. The Arts Endowment is dedicated to advancing artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of American individuals and communities. (NEA 3)
The NEA and NEH are desperate for funding from the government. The NEA explains that “Congressional consideration of the agency’s annual funding occurs within the House and Senate Appropriations Committees—specifically, in the two subcommittees overseeing the U.S. Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies” (NEA 3). They need to be advocated in order to be successful to help other artists and communities to work.
The NEA saw a considerable amount of money from the government for a while before the government cut back. The NEA states: “Federal appropriations to the Arts Endowment exceeded state legislative appropriations to state agencies until the mid-1980s” (NEA 6). The NEA reports the most amount of funds in which the government funded the NEA: “In 1979, the NEA appropriation was nearly 90 percent greater than state appropriations to arts agencies” (NEA 6). The NEA states how funding for the arts started to be picked up more in the new millennium by the states by reporting, “State arts funding reached its peak year in 2001 when appropriations to state arts agencies exceeded federal appropriations to the NEA by 77 percent” (NEA 7). The data shown here explains the shift in when the states started to fund more for the arts than the federal government itself, which is sad. This would explain the start of the decline of the arts.
The NEA is an important staple in the United States. They are a crutch for the arts as a way of advocating and supporting different types of artists. There would be big effects to defunding the NEA that would not be beneficial by any means. As stated in a New York Times article, “What if Trump Really Does End Money for The Arts” Graham Bowley reports that: “Donald Trump may decide to defund the National Endowment for the arts” (Bowley, Grant nytimes.com). We know a lot from the people that work for Trump about issues regarding the arts. In a USA TODAY article by Donovan Slack, he speaks about how secretive Donald Trump is with the budget. He states that, “Press Secretary Sean Spicer said this week that Trump wants to ensure the federal government “spends money more responsibly,” but he declined to provide details because the budget is still being crafted” (Slack, Trump budget battle may be looming over National Endowment for the Arts, 2017).
In the article “For the Umpteenth Time, the National Endowment for the Arts Deserve Its Funding,” Dana Gioia notes that,” The NEA’s 2017 budget is $149.8 million” (2017). This is a relatively small amount of money that the government invests to make funding in the United States a priority. This is not enough to keep any kind of creative project, thinking or teaching among people working together to go very far. We know the NEA funds certain things to do with art in the U.S., and it’s important to know that the NEA doesn’t have to exist, but is something that the government has power over. The NEA states it does not fund “Individual elementary or secondary schools — charter, private, or public — directly” (arts.gov). They state however that, “Schools may participate as partners in projects for which another eligible organization applies” (arts.gov). Without the opportunity for people to get grants and for schools to collaborate with the NEA if they may wish, this would rob schools and other artists of the chance to learn and discover, along with being able to work on something bigger than they by themselves could do. They do state that they fund “big and small projects that could benefit a community” (arts.gov). Artists could use their skills to benefit the lobby of a performing arts center like in my hometown where the Niswonder Performing Arts Center is.
In a book by The US Government Publishing Office (GPO) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMP) titled: “America First: A budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again” they define The Department of Education stating: “The Department of Education promotes improving student achievement and access to opportunity in elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education.” (The GPO, OMP 17). It is also important to note how much is being spent on education in this country to know specifically how things will be changing for the current generation of students in public schools and how they will be impacted by the proposed budget by Donald Trump coming 2018. “The Department would refocus its mission on supporting States and school districts in their efforts to provide high quality education to all our students” (The GPO, OMP 17).
This denotes that the government will be putting more effort into more expensive schools to attend and less on public one’s which most students go to. The GPO and the OMP also state that: “The 2018 Budget places power in the hands of parents and families to choose schools that are best for their children by investing an additional $1.4 billion in school choice programs.” (The GPO, OMP 17) I know this will affect where I am from where there aren’t any private schools in the county township to attend where most students attend a public school. The GPO and OMP try to put the budget for education by formally stating: “The President’s 2018 Budget provides $59 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Education, a $9 billion or 13 percent reduction below the 2017 annualized CR level.” (The GPO, OMP 17). You know what this means? The funding will actually decrease for education by $9-billion-dollars! That’s a lot of money which could do wonders for the youth in America! I can imagine that Donald Trump would have that much money sitting in his piggy bank but why does education have to take even more of a backseat Mr. Trump? It’s dumbfounding. It’s important to know how the funding changes among other departments to see the amount of money taken away and added to other departments to see how the priorities shift. The CMOP and OMP state: “The Department of Defense (DOD) provides the military forces needed to deter war and to protect the security of the United States.” (GPO, OMP 15). The CMOP and OMP also state:
The President’s 2018 Budget requests $639 billion for DOD, a $52 billion increase from the 2017 annualized CR level. The total includes $574 billion for the base budget, a 10 percent increase from the 2017 annualized CR level (The GPO, OMP 15).
That is a considerably high amount of money being added to the budget for the DOD. $52 billion more dollars being spent on The Defense Department is almost the entire budget for the Department of Education. That’s crazy to think about. Another area where more money is being poured into is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The CMOP and OMP define it as: “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a vital mission: to secure the Nation from the many threats it faces” (CMOP, OMP, 23). So the amount of money being spent on security alone in the United States is out of this world. The CMOP and OMP state that:
The CMOP and OMP also state that: The President’s 2018 Budget requests $44.1 billion in net discretionary budget authority for DHS, a $2.8 billion or 6.8 percent increase from the 2017 annualized CR level. The Budget would allocate $4.5 billion in additional funding for programs to strengthen the security of the Nation’s borders and enhance the integrity of its immigration system. (CMOP, OMP, 23).
To put this in context, that’s $683,100,000,000 dollars spent on the Military and Homeland Security alone! How long can our country survive on defending itself if the majority of its people aren’t getting the education that they deserve? Building a big expensive wall won’t solve our problems, neither spending a conglomerate amount of money on the military.
For some reason, the president Donald Trump must not think that art is not valued enough to be funded any more as a commodity. In a Washington Post article by Philip Kennicott and Peggy McGlone, titled: “Trump wants to cut the NEA and NEH. This is the worst-case scenario for arts groups” they state:”
A community orchestra performance, a new work from an emerging playwright, art therapy for a returning veteran, local library classes in Braille, free standardized-test preparation, and Bert and Ernie. Thousands of such programs could be gutted under President Trump’s proposed budget.” (Kennicot & McGlone, the Washington Post 2017)
Donald Trump needs to come to a realization of what could happen around this country.
If places where there aren’t as many opportunities jobs, and where what hobbies and activities there are to participate in for people, are the ones underprivileged people have could be taken away. This should make us wonder how we got to where we are. Maybe our priorities have shifted and all we care about is what will benefit the people who already have the most money and power. Ian Callinan states in his essay, “Art as a commodity” that: “Because art is a commodity, it has just as much been the subject of disputation and litigation, as a cargo of corn or a used car” (Callinan 76). This is one example that leads people to debate whether funding for the arts should exist since it is subject to people thinking it is not important enough, when in the past, it was important until it changed over time leading up to our current situation with our new president.
In Modernist America by Richard H. Pells, he makes a great point about how artists have been a great asset to this country, and how we shouldn’t forget where our ancestors came from and what values they held. He states:
American artists and filmmakers have always depended on foreign innovations, and they benefited through-out the twentieth century from the presence in the United States of émi-gré and refugee painters, architects, composers, and movie directors. Americans have been as much an audience for foreign works of art as they have been molders of the world’s culture and values (Pells x preface).
This makes us think about how the United States is falling behind and getting farther away from its previous values. This explains how The United States has drifted more and more away from having an interest in culture and art in general. The United States’ influence on the rest of the world is significant since there are many people from around the world that look at our country as an ideal place to live and work.
People wonder if cutting funding for art would really help society. People would still create art, but would be less invested in it for sure. In the YouTube video “Art as Culture and Commodity,” executive producer Gary Pollard interviews Tim Marlow about art as culture and commodity, and asks him:
If artists do things to communicate, does that mean they very often will have an ambivalent attitude towards being collected by a private collector?” Tim Marlow replies “Artists want their work and certainly, the most ambitious of their work to be seen in the best context. (Pollard, Gary/Marlow, Tim)
Artists still need venues to show to other people to get noticed and cutting funding for the arts would also affect that. People would not be able to go out and see art for themselves, or learn to see art in its purest form, instead of only seeing pictures of things. Art is an experience, and taking away the availability of it for people to go and see would be a disgrace. It would be like bulldozing every movie theatre or theme park because people decided that they aren’t important anymore, or historical buildings and houses that many people have cherished for years.
If museums closed, then there would be no funding for preservation of artwork to be in museums, because there wouldn’t be any funds for it. In their Washington Post article Kennicott and McGlone, they state: “Federal dollars are used to leverage state, local and private funding that supports a complex network of arts organizations, educational entities, museums, libraries and public broadcasting affiliates” (Washington Post 2017). This tells us that the federal government is responsible for the power of regulating the way that we are educated in many ways, as stated, and are also wanting to slash it in many ways. If there aren’t enough people who think that all of the above is becoming outdated because of the technology now, then of-course places like museums will close.