The quotation below is from today's New York Times, "In Europe, the Arts Ask for Alms," brings up an important point on public arts funding. While I more than clamor and dream about this kind of support in the U.S., journalist Michael Kimmelman poignantly addresses what can happen when it's taken for granted -- and I think Germany's Fest system is a great example.
It is a glorious gift, and I am grateful to a public financing system that in this particular case is not yet in thrall to, or is proudly resisting, the marketing strategies that have turned the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London into the equivalents of Wal-Marts on Black Friday. Bureaucratic benign neglect likewise sustains dozens of German opera companies, whose proliferation is a point of national pride. At the same time, by freeing these companies from market forces, it allows them to answer to pretty much no one except themselves. The abundance of mediocre opera productions in Germany is a consequence.
(emphasis is mine)
I wouldn't put this last sentence as a grand generalization, but it's been known to happen in more than a few hamlets. One could also say the same about regional productions in the U.S. -- though private funding and the "free market" sustain these.
Thoughts?
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