CORRECTION APPENDED

Ever since Socrates banished us from his Republic, artists (and, as is my case, would-be artists) have had to justify their existence. Plato thought we were morally questionable and, sad to say, over the millennia, not much has changed. In England in the 17th century we were accused of decadence. In France in the 19th century we were accused of dissolution. In America, ever since the Puritans conquered the New World we’ve been caricatured again and again as indolent. So we have a bit of a bad rep. And unless you’re a rapper, it’s not a rep that’ll do you any good—especially during these hard times.

There’s a wave of anti-elitist populism sweeping the country as you read this. As Robert Reich, former U.S. labor secretary, puts it, “typical Americans are hurting very badly right now. They resent people who appear to be living high off a system dominated by insiders with the right connections.” Considering the repeated labeling of the money allocated for the National Endowment for the Arts in the stimulus bill “pork barrel spending,” it’s a real fear that the people of the U.S. may refocus their ire, or at least part of it, from beleaguering the avaricious Wall Street charlatan toward berating that namby-pamby parasite, the artist.

It might be an overstatement to say that that the $50 billion for the arts has been the most contentious of the $759 billion the bill will apportion out, but it sure seems that way. [SEE CORRECTION BELOW] The Boston Globe called the NEA support “a lightning rod” for criticism. Eric Cantor, a Republican from Virginia and the third-ranking GOP member of the house, has been (as one could expect) virulently opposed to the plan. His office released a statement condemning the plan, as it “uses taxpayer dollars on NEA programs instead of common-sense tax relief targeted to revitalize small businesses and create jobs for middle-class families facing economic challenges.” And those words ring true with more of America than anyone would like to admit.

In a way, Cantor is right. The funding for the arts is not going to create as many jobs as if the money had been shifted, as Cantor desired, to road infrastructure. In the arts, a lot more money is going to be spent per individual, a lot more money is going to be spent on imported materials, and ultimately, the product born of this expense will be accessible to a few, rather than accessible to many, as the infrastructure would have been.

But isn’t there something more to art than what cold economic calculus reveals? Isn’t there something more that art does that can’t be quantified? Isn’t there a greater purpose that art serves?

John Dewey proposes that art is important because it is, ultimately, all that survives of civilization, that it is civilization’s lasting contribution to the world. All that is left of Greece and Rome is their “glory” and “grandeur,” their literature and architecture. Dylan Thomas put art’s raison d’être lyrically when he wrote, “A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.”

The theories, however, just don’t seem to hold water. These reasons, albeit of noble sentiment, seem superfluous to survival, to the daily nine-to-five grind, to making the next mortgage payment. Can’t this all wait until the economy is back on its feet? Why is it important that we produce art now?

I’m asking these questions not because we should bend to the tyranny of the majority, to the citizens of this nation who look on art dubiously, but rather because the potential of backlash highlights the grim predicament that the arts currently face. Right now, we are stranded in the midst of the recession. Brandeis is liquidating its art holdings and closing its Rose Art Museum. The publishing industry is disappearing faster than Bernard Madoff’s money. And, as we descend further into economic chaos, the situation of the arts can only be supposed to get worse. We must make our case not just that we need the money now, but why we will need money in the future. We must make our case for why it is urgently important that art exist. We have to prove, not to ourselves—for each of us has our own reason to make our art—but to society at large, that our art is valuable. That is our task.

Why should Joe the Plumber give a shit about Joyce when he’s losing his job? Why should Cindy the Nurse care about Kandinsky when her hours are being carved up like the old man of a “Tell-Tale Heart”? I don’t know right now. But it’s something that I know we have to find out.

 —Columnist Sanders I. Bernstein can be reached at sbernst@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION

The Feb. 20 arts article "The Role of Artists in the Face of Recession" incorrectly stated the amount of money allocated to the National Endowment for the Arts in the recent stimulus bill. The legislation earmarked $50 million for the NEA, not $50 billion.