Saturday, January 24, 2009

bailout for the arts? don't hold your breath

Michael Kaiser, President of the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts tells that arts organizations are endangered by the current economy, but the government is unlikely to do anything about it. We can save Merrill Lynch and its greedy and morally bankrupt CEO, but what about the arts that express the heart and soul of our nation? Michael Kaiser asks, "As we print billions of dollars in bailout money, isn't it time to ensure that we are saving our soul as well as our economy?"

2 comments:

  1. Artists should befriend Barney Frank and kick some points back to his campaign maybe. Then they'd get a cut too.

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  2. This isn't such a funny idea. I had a conversation with an artist friend yesterday who told me that galleries are folding and craft artists through out the US are suffering. He is trying to adapt by offering more practical, less expensive objects.

    Artists and craftsmen tend to be the very smallest of small businessmen, and it would be easy to discount them entirely from government planning. A recent example is the new government regulation to protect children from faulty manufactured good... it threatened to put every craft artist making children's toys out of business. Compliance was completely unaffordable except for those producing huge volumes of products.

    So surely there are ways to support artists that have nothing to do with your comment.

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