The End Of Arts Funding?

Across America, government is getting out of the arts business. While states like Massachusetts, California, Florida and Michigan slash their arts budgets by half or more, lawmakers in Colorado, Oregon and New Jersey consider eliminating their arts agencies altogether.

The last time state governments attacked a program with such cost-cutting zeal was welfare reform in the mid-'90s.

So why the arts, and why now? The obvious reason is that state governments are hurting for money and have big deficits they have to close. If it's a choice between arts and public safety or arts and roads, you know that truck has already left the turnpike.

Anticipating these all-too-familiar choices, arts leaders have spent much of the past decade churning out dozens of economic-impact studies to show that the arts are a great public investment: You want return? For every dollar government invests in nonprofit arts, eight dollars are returned to the economy. You want economic stimulus? The arts generated $134 billion in economic activity across America in 2001. You want jobs? The arts produce 4.85 million full-time equivalent American jobs. If money seems to be a language legislators understand, then arts leaders figured they'd give them economic ways to think about the arts.

The strategy seemed to be paying off, too. Between 1993 and 2001, state public spending on the arts more than doubled, from $211 million in 1993, to $447 million eight years later, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.

But those were boom years, and as soon as the economy started to sour, states began cutting their arts budgets, slashing $93 million combined in the past two years. This year's cuts could whack off another $100 million or more, bringing arts spending down to levels of a decade ago. Worse, the massive cuts don't just put a crimp in state arts funding, they cripple or eliminate longstanding core programs. Government is redefining its relationship with the arts while arts supporters are left sputtering their economic impact factoids and wondering why no one seems to be listening. (Pssst, have you heard that more people attended arts events last year than professional sports events?)